Typepad 101: Cross-Posting from Instagram to Your Blog

May 29, 2013

Welcome to Typepad 101! Whether you want to add some new features to your blog's design, or simply make your blog more functional, Typepad 101 has you covered. This tip is suitable for bloggers at all levels - no special tricks or upgrades needed!

If you're on Instagram (the convenient, fun way to share photos with friends and family), chances are you've wished for a way to cross-post your photos to your Typepad blog. Instagram hasn't yet added an option to publish directly to your blog from the app, but thanks to IFTTT and Gmail, cross posting from Instagram to Typepad is not only possible, but hassle-free.

IFTTT is a service that lets you create connections between other services where no connection previously existed, using their special blend of channels, triggers, and actions (read more here). Just create an IFTTT recipe, add your ingredients, and boom: you're photo blogging.

To get started, either log in to IFTTT or start an account (it's free!), then click Create a Recipe:

The next steps are pretty obvious! Just start clicking:

And then!

Woo, easy! Next, choose a "trigger," the thing that makes the cross-posting magic happen. If you want to have any new photo you post to Instagram appear on your blog, just choose "Any new photo by you". Want to have only specifically tagged photos post to your blog? No problem! Choose "New photo by you tagged" - you'll specify which tag during the next step.

Then just click Create Trigger, and IFTTT will take you here:

Next, choose an action channel - in this case, we'll want to choose Gmail, so make sure you already have a free Gmail account. Click the red Gmail icon, then click Send an email and enter your information, starting with your Typepad Secret Email Address (make sure to use your own - it will not look the same as the one in the example), which you can find at Blogs > Settings > Post by Email (read more here).

Next, you'll want to customize the rest of the fields or leave them as is - for instance, you may want to edit the Body field if you'd prefer for your post not to say "via Instagram".

Click Create Action, and you're almost done!

Finally, give your recipe a name, and click Create Recipe. That's it! IFTTT will take you back home, where your new recipe is on and ready to go. There, you can turn your recipe off and on, delete it, share it with others, and edit, check, or view it.

IFTTT runs triggers about every 15 minutes, so if you don't see your next Instagram photo on your blog right away, don't worry! It will appear there in short order, automagically!

Want to see Instagram to Typepad cross-posting in action? Just check out my test blog, right here! And be sure to leave us a comment (or post in the community) telling us your favorite ways to cross-post to Typepad!

11:25 AM in Typepad University | Permalink | Comments (4)