From YouTube to WordPress: A Time-Saving Automation Solution

The problem

Our client has an active blog and YouTube channel. They regularly share their latest YouTube videos on their blog, with additional commentary. However, the process used to be time-consuming, where each new post for a new video required multiple manual steps:

• Creating the post
• Copying the share code for the video and adding it to the post
• Copying the relevant parts of the video description and pasting them to WordPress.
• Uploading the thumbnail
• Setting the correct category and tag
• Setting the correct published date

The client needed a way to automatically create a post every time a new video was published. This would eliminate manual effort and ensure that no videos were overlooked, improving the consistency.

The solution

Using Zapier, we developed an automated workflow that:

1. Monitors the channel for new videos
2. Applies a series of 3 filters to ensure only qualified videos meeting specific criteria get published to WordPress:
   1. The privacy status is set to public
   2. The video has a custom thumbnail
   3. The video contains hidden text to signify it should be sent to the blog
3. Utilises Zapier’s formatters to extract part of the text from the video description and add one day to the date
4. Uploads the thumbnail from YouTube to WordPress and creates the new post.

Each post’s publication data is scheduled 24 hours in the future from the video publication. This gives the editorial team time to add additional content before the post goes live.

Systems Integrated

• YouTube
• WordPress
• Zapier