How to Connect app.net with your other Social Networks

So you’ve signed up for the new cool social media kid on the block, app.net, and you’re not sure what to do with yourself? Well, firstly, do come on down and say hi to me. I am iagdotme on app.net as well as Twitter.

I thought I would write a shortish blog post on how you can use some 3rd party apps to improve your experience and link app.net with your other social networks. Most of these make use of the app IFTTT (If this then that) which launched a new channel for app.net a short time ago.

Firstly, if you haven’t already got an IFTTT account, head on down and sign up- it is very easy. You’ll also need to activate the relevant channels, and in particular the app.net one.

1. Get Notified when someone follows you

On Twitter you can receive an email every time someone follows you. You also get this information in the @mentions tab. Currently the alpha of app.net doesn’t give you this information, but you can activate an IFTTT recipe that does this for you. You’ll need to activate both the app.net and email channel to do this. Click on the image to view the recipe:

You can also get notified on your smartphone if you use the app, Pushover. You can view the recipe for this here.

2. Cross post to Twitter from app.net

I’m not a fan of completely synching social networks. As I have said in the past, all social networks work differently and have different audiences. I am, however, a fan of selective synching. By this, I mean, posting two multiple networks sometimes.

This IFTTT recipe will update your Twitter account when you post an update on app.net whilst including a hashtag– #tw. This means that whenever you use #tw in an app.net post, it will be posted to your Twitter account. This is useful as I don’t want all my app.net posts tweeted. The resultant tweet will not contain hashtags, but you can modify the recipe if you want to keep them.

3. Cross Posting to Twitter from app.net with a link

Very similar to the previous recipe, but this will post to Twitter with a link back to the original app.net post. To do this all you need to do is include a different hashtag– #twurl.

4. Post to app.net from Twitter

If you want to post to app.net from Twitter, then this is possible with the following recipe. To do this you need to include the hashtag #tw2adn. I avoided the hashtag #adn as I am probably going to use this hashtag to refer to app.net.

5. Archive your app.net posts and mentions using Dropbox

One of the great things about app.net is that what we put in we can get out– it’s our data and we can use the data export tool to download our data. However, there is a really easy way to archive all your posts and mentions to your Dropbox. Every time you post an update, IFTTT will append this to a text file in your Dropbox.

6. Post to Facebook from app.net

Similar to the recipe for Twitter, this allows you to post to your Facebook profile from app.net. It will only post when you use the hashtag #fb

You can also create a recipe that allows you to post to a Facebook page. Create a recipe that connects app.net to a Facebook page using the hashtag #fb

7. Post from Google+ to app.net

This isn’t as easy as it should be, basically as Google haven’t sorted out their API yet. It’s probably best having a look at an earlier post I wrote entitled “How to update Twitter and Facebook with your Google+ posts”. Using the same technique you can get Manage Flitter to sync your Google+ posts to Twitter. If you put the hashtag #tw at the start of your Google+ post and you use the recipe I mentioned in (2), IFTTT will post this to app.net.

8. LinkedIn

I haven’t included an example recipe for this, but it is easily done. If you want to synch posts between LinkedIn and app.net, you can do this using IFTTT reciples. I recommend doing this selectively using hashtags

9. Schedule your app.net updates with Buffer

I love Buffer. It allows you to schedule your Tweets (and other social network updates) at the times that your followers are most likely to see them. Buffer now has an app.net channel. So you can cross post to all your social networks very easily and at the most optimum time. For more information on how to do this, check out the app.net post on the Buffer blog.

10. Multiple Network Synching

Of course you can use a combination of the above to post to multiple networks from app.net or the other way around. For example if I include the hashtags #fb and #tw2adn in a Twitter status, it will post to app.net and as long as I have activated Selective Twitter, it will post to Facebook. If I post an update on Google+ with the hashtags #fb #twt #twadn then it will update app.net and Facebook.

Conclusion

If you want to see other IFTTT recipes I have created, then head on down to my IFTTT profile. Did you find any of these recipes useful? Can you think of any other ones? Do let me know in the comments below!