10 Helpful WordPress Zapier Recipes and Tips to Automate Your Site

Want to automate key tasks at your WordPress site to save time and simplify your workflows? With the WordPress Zapier recipes and tips that Ill share in this post, youll be able to connect your WordPress site to a ton of different websites, tools, and apps, to automate WordPress in some neat ways.Ill start with a very brief introduction to what Zapier is, in case youve never heard of this wonderful tool. Then, Ill get into some of the most helpful WordPress Zapier recipes you can start using today. If youre not familiar with Zapier, its a tool that lets you connect two different apps together.For this example, one of those apps is your WordPress site. As for the other app thats what this post is about!Zapier supports thousands of apps, so youll be able to connect your WordPress site to:Social media networksEmail marketing servicesCRMsGoogle Docs/Sheetsplus a whole lot more!Each connection is called a recipe. So a WordPress Zapier recipe is just one specific connection between your W ordPress site and another tool.Ten helpful WordPress Zapier recipes and ideas to automate your siteReady for the fun part? Here are some of the best WordPress Zapier recipes (or ideas for recipes) that you can start applying today.When possible, Ill share a link to the Zapier recipe page so that you can use the premade template, rather than setting up each WordPress Zapier recipe from scratch. And for each recipe, Ill also share the relevant actions and triggers.If youre not sure how to use these actions and triggers in WordPress Zapier recipes, Ill give you a quick tutorial for that at the end of the post.1. Automatically share WordPress posts to social mediaOne of the simplest uses for Zapier is to automatically share your new WordPress posts on social media.You can set it up so that whenever you publish a new WordPress post, Zapier automatically shares that post on:FacebookTwitterPinterestLinkedInEtc.Each social network is technically a separate recipe, but Im lumping them all to gether for simplicitys sake.Alternatively, you can also automatically add posts to Buffer, from which you can push them out to any of your social channels.Trigger: New Post (WordPress)Action: Choose your preferred social network (or click the links above)2. Post Instagram or YouTube content straight to WordPressZapier can also help you go in the other direction.For example, maybe you want to automatically share your Instagram content or YouTube videos on your WordPress site as blog posts.Rather than doing this manually, you can use Zapier to automatically create a new WordPress post whenever you share a new image on Instagram or publish a new YouTube video.Another option would be to grab an RSS feed for those sources and import RSS feed items as blog posts.Trigger: New content on Instagram or YouTubeAction: Create Post (WordPress)3. Get notifications for WordPress comments or WooCommerce ordersZapier includes a WordPress trigger that lets you kick off a recipe when theres a new comm ent at your site.You can use this to automatically get comment notifications in a few different ways. For example, you could receive:Slack notificationsText messagesEmailsEtc.Similarly, you can also use Zapiers WooCommerce actions to trigger notifications for new WooCommerce orders. Again, you can receive these notifications via any app/method that Zapier supports.Trigger: New Comment (WordPress) or New Order (WooCommerce)Action: Choose your preferred notification channel4. Automatically add new WordPress users to your CRMIf you allow public registration like a membership site or an online course you can use Zapier to automatically add new users to your CRM of choice.With Zapiers New User WordPress trigger, you can pass information from new users to any of the CRM tools that Zapier supports.Trigger: New User (WordPress)Action: Choose your preferred CRM and the relevant action5. Create new Trello cards from WordPress postsHere at ThemeIsle, we use Trello to organize all of our edit orial efforts. If you do the same, there are a number of ways that you can use Zapier to connect your Trello boards with WordPress.Here are some ideas. You can create a cardIn a Promoting board after you publish a post (heres an example recipe)To have your designer make a featured image when you save a post as PendingWhenever you save a new draft (e.g. as you start to create a new post)Trigger: New Post (WordPress)Action: Create Card (Trello)**Zapier has other helpful Trello actions, too. For example Add Members to Card, Update Card, Move Card, etc.6. Make a front-end post submission form with Google FormsWant visitors to your site to be able to submit new WordPress posts or custom post types? Normally, youd need a pricey premium form plugin for that.But with Zapier, you can set it up for free so that whenever a user submits something via Google Forms (or some other form tools), you can automatically turn that information into a WordPress post (or custom post type).Youll also be ab le to choose whether or not to automatically publish the content, or hold it for moderation.Trigger: New Response in Spreadsheet (Google Forms)Action: Create Post (WordPress)7. Back up WordPress posts or media to cloud storageWhile you should certainly have a separate backup process in place for your entire site, Zapier includes some neat features to back up the text of your blog posts or the media that you upload, which might come in handy in the future.Trigger: New Post (WordPress) or New Media (WordPress)Action: Choose your preferred cloud storage service (e.g. Dropbox or Google Drive)8. Add new WooCommerce orders to a Google SheetIf youre running a WooCommerce store, you might want to get your order data into Google Sheets for further analysis. With Zapier, you can automatically add new orders straight to your chosen spreadsheet.Theres a premade recipe for that here. Or, you can also do something similar with Trello.Trigger: New Order (WooCommerce)Action: Create Spreadsheet Row (Google Sheets)9. Connect WordPress forms to ZapierMany WordPress form plugins include dedicated Zapier integrations that let you connect form submissions to any of the apps on Zapier.Unfortunately, these integrations are often not free, but they do let you get creative with custom WordPress Zapier recipes based on your WordPress forms.Examples of form plugins with Zapier integrations are:WPFormsGravity FormsNinja Forms10. Get creative with your own WordPress Zapier recipesThe really great thing about Zapier is that its so flexible. That is, the ideas in this post are just scratching the surface. So once you get the hang of things, I encourage you to consider creating your own recipes.In total, Zapier gives you the following triggers and actions for WordPress†¦Triggers:You can start recipes based on any of the following conditions.New†¦CommentPostTaxonomyPost typeUserComment StatusCategoryPost FormatAuthorPost StatusMediaActions:Based on a trigger from another tool, you ca n perform the following actions at your WordPress site:Create PostUpload MediaBeyond that, WooCommerce also has its own set of triggers and actions. And if you want even more triggers and actions, the Uncanny Automator plugin adds triggers and actions for tools like bbPress, LearnDash, The Events Calendar, and a lot more.Sobrowse the full collection of Zapier apps. Then, come up with some unique ways to apply those triggers and actions to your own workflows!How to create your first WordPress Zapier recipeIf youre not sure how to implement all those recipes I showed you above, heres a quick tutorial on how to set things up.If you go to create a new recipe from scratch, youll first choose the Trigger for your recipe (AKA what starts the recipe):Then, youll need to connect Zapier to the account for whatever service youre using as your trigger.For example, if you choose a WordPress trigger, youll need to enter your admin username/password:Then, youll set up more specific details about t he trigger, like which post statuses should count as a trigger:After that, youll basically repeat the same idea but for the Action (AKA what happens once a trigger condition is met):And thats it! Once you finish up your action, your recipe will be ready to start saving you time.Have any other questions about how to use WordPress Zapier recipes to automate your workflows? Ask away in the comments section! Save time by automating your #WordPress site with @Zapier 🠤â€". 10 recipes and tips to get started