Using Zapier as a solopreneur is one of the ways you can accomplish a lot with less manual effort. In this post, I’m sharing a little bit about some of the automations I used or have used for my business, and why I love them.
This post may contain affiliate links, which means if you click through and buy, I'll earn a commission at no extra cost to you. But I never recommend things I don't love or haven't used!
Copying new CRM contacts to an email marketing platform
Specifically, I use Zapier to copy new 17hats contacts over to Flodesk. So when someone fills out my 17hats lead capture form (or requests a booking through my scheduler), their name and email automatically gets pushed over to Flodesk and they’re added as a subscriber.
I can also set double opt-in permission in this process, too!
I love this because it’s one less barrier to effective email marketing… making sure my list stays updated!
Automated updates to Google Business Profile
Google Business Profile isn’t really considered a social media platform, but it has aspects of one. You can keep your profile up to date by automatically adding updates from your Instagram for Business feed posts, for example!
The specific trigger and action to look for are: “new media posted in my account” (Instagram) and “create post” (Google Business Profile).
I love this one because it can be challenging to keep up with social media posts in the first place; I want to make sure every single one gets maximized!
"I want to make sure every single one gets maximized!"
Calendar automation for managing workload
You might already know that you can automate your Google Calendar through Zapier, but did you know that it can be both a trigger event and an action event in the same automation?
You’re not going to find this Google Calendar to Google Calendar automation available as an app pairing, but when you build your zap from scratch you’ll see options like “new or updated event” and “new event matching search” that serve as great triggers… plus “quick add event” and “create detailed event” for actions.
My specific use case for this automation is when a client books their Clarifying Call with me to begin their 17hats setup, this Zapier automation then blocks off some time for me to work on the client’s project.
I love this zap because it helps me be realistic about what additional bookings or projects I can add to that day and week of the Clarifying Call.
Recording Stripe transactions in Google Sheets
Not to be confused with any kind of bookkeeping, tax or financial advice, this next automation idea can help you compile sales data from multiple sources as you do your own bookkeeping.
I use Stripe to process payments to invoices made through my 17hats CRM, and it’s also used as my payment processor in my course platform, Thrivecart. So I’ve got two zaps set up to grab transaction info from these respective Stripe accounts and place it into a Google Sheet for me to work with.
Obviously Google Sheets is a powerful data tool in and of itself, but I like to then take it to the next level and feed this data into Looker Studio for some interactive and easy to consume graphs that track my sales over time.
Anyway, all of it starts with this Zapier automation, and in the process you can also map details like tax amounts and processing fees!
I love this automation because it pulls together data from multiple sources and allows me to see a lot of sales data at once.
Automatically posting to Instagram after a blog post
You want to know what happened immediately upon my publishing of this blog post? Zapier grabbed the blog info from Wix and made an Instagram feed post for me! (I wasn’t kidding when I said that keeping up with social media is a major struggle of mine!)
Through this automation, I can grab the title of the blog post from Wix, place it in my Instagram caption along with info about how to navigate to my blog in my link in bio. The last piece is to have an image URL for the feed post, which can be generated through sites like Imgur.
I love this zap because it’s a tiny, lovely, little step towards repurposing and sharing content.
Drafting an email after a quiz is taken
This final example is an automation I no longer use, but thought might be worth sharing anyway.
I once had a Google Forms quiz kicking off a Zapier automation that drafted an email to the quiz taker in Gmail. As part of the automation setup, I wrote a collection of possible responses into the automation. Then when I was alerted to a new quiz being submitted, I could easily go into Gmail drafts to quickly choose the best response to include in my message, delete the unneeded responses and send!
I loved this one because it helped me customize quiz responses easily, without manually typing in every message and without paying for a quiz platform.
Conclusion: Zapier for solopreneurs
These are just a few ideas that can help you utilize Zapier as a solopreneur. If you try any, I’d love to hear! Need help? Let’s hop on Zoom for some Tech Check calls!
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