Category: enhancements

Withdrawal of all but “Clean” image frames for the nIFTTTy Scheduler’s use in Pinterest

After consulting with Zazzle, we’ve removed all except the “clean” image frames. Those were the ones that were available to the nIFTTTy Scheduler when creating pins for Pinterest. Zazzle were concerned that they looked like adverts coming from them, not us.

Zazzle required a specific statement to be placed on the image frames themselves and it was just too much effort to go back and update / remake all the exisiting ones. If we’d just removed the offending ones, there wouldn’t have been enough left to give variety between us all 😞

The “clean” image frames are the ones where the frame colour follows the average colour of the product image. As the text used is applied programatically, it’s something I’ve been able to change easily.

example of a "clean" frame with a product image in place
Example of a “clean” frame

Now we’ve made the change, all existing nIFTTTy Schedules that were using image frames have now automatically switched over to using the clean ones.

There’s nothing for you to do – all will happen “behind the scenes”.
If you were one of the ones who put in the effort of designing image frames for everyone to use, thanks and sorry it’s turned out this way 💐

We’re pleased that we’ve been able to respond so quickly to make sure the Nifty tools are fully compliant with Zazzle’s terms and conditions.

Improvements to the Product Stager’s Video feature

As is usual, since first releasing the video feature of the Nifty Product Stager, we’ve been improving things. We’ve tweaked the timing for each animation and the pause at the end of each cycle.

What does this mean? It means a viewer has more time to view and take in each design.

Here’s one we just made for one of the great designers at Zazzle. We loved the cute dragon!

visit: http://bit.ly/2Skq4Iv to pick and buy

The Product Stager gives you a shortened bit.ly link to use when sharing the video on social media.

It leads to an auto-generated page on our new PickFromHere.com site showing all the products in the “pull” from which the video was made. They’re laid out in a product grid, with each linked to its product page on Zazzle.

If you want to have a look, visit: http://bit.ly/2Skq4Iv

Note: if you’re going to share on Pinterest, you can’t use the bit.ly link because Pinterest doesn’t allow shortened links. Instead you need the long link in the Useful copy-paste items for your share section at the bottom of the Product Stager.

Society6 nIFTTTy Scheduler now has auto hashtagging

With auto hashtagging, your automated pins / shares / tweets will now be much easier for people to find – and that means more reach and more referral commision and sales for you!

When the scheduler picks up the product to pass to IFTTT, it now also gets the product name and the first five tags (if there are that many) recorded against the design and adds them to the end of the title as hashtags.

Here’s what one looks like on Pinterest:

a screenshot of a Pinterest pin showing the automatically added hashtags
automatically added hashtags

If you want to try it with your store, pop over to the Society6 Nifty CPanel, put in your storename and choose the nIFTTTy Scheduler in Step2.

Remember, you’ll need an IFTTT account and you’ll need it to be connected to your Pinterest account. That’s all there is to it – happy automated promoting with Nifty!

To advance to 50/50 referral commission sharing, don’t forget to put in your curator id when your in Nifty putting in your store id.

New image frame type for Pinterest in nIFTTTy Scheduler

We’ve added a new image frame type for use on Pinterest with your nIFTTTy schedules. Here’s an example of what one looks like:

a screenshot showing an example of the new image frame in use
example of new image frame type

The frame is in a 6×9 proportion as recommended by Pinterest. The frame colour follows that of the included design. The text at top and bottom is chosen at random from a few we’ve made available.

Here’s where you select it in the nIFTTTy Scheduler:

a screenshot showing the new image frame type choice in the nIFTTTy Scheduler
choosing the new image frame type in the nIFTTTy Scheduler

Improved nIFTTTy Schedule setup when filtering

We’ve improved things when you use filtering in what you’re scheduling. When you are, you’ll see a new button count remaining after filtering.

When you click it, behind the scenes Nifty works out how many are left after applying your filter(s) and then fills in the box with the answer.

The absolute maximum that Zazzle lets you get at is 1000 and so filtering will always get you fewer than that.

screenshot showing new button you get when using filters
a new button appears when you’ve set up filtering in Nifty

🤓

The geeky bit – please feel free to ignore 🙂

It’s important to make sure that Zazzle has at least as many available as the number you put in the how many to schedule box. When you’re not filtering, max possible is the way to go (unless you want fewer for some reason).

It’s important because it’s used to create a list of numbers representing the products to be scheduled. If there’s more in the list than there are products available, then you’ll end up not getting a pin / share for each missing one.

It takes the scheduler no time at all to get the size of the list of numbers to make except when you’re filtering. It just takes too long to work out how many are left after filtering each time IFTTT runs your applet (aka connection). Going that way, IFTTT would time out and therefore would fail to pin / share.

And that’s why, when you use filtering, it needs to be worked out ahead of time with that new button.