Since the 2023 debut of Threads, I have explored methods for automatically sharing WordPress blog posts on the platform. Like many site owners, I started with manual posting, which quickly became a burden as I juggled various sites and social media.
Summarizing content, finding relevant hashtags (and emojis!), and formatting everything consumed significant time. This time could have been better allocated to business growth.
Consequently, I searched for a way to expedite the process. After trying several tools, I discovered a plugin that enables automated WordPress posting to Threads, without requiring any code.
This guide presents a clear, step-by-step process for linking your WordPress site to Threads. Automate your posting, expand your audience, and eliminate manual effort.
Note: This post is contributed by Kelly from Ultimate Thrifting, who shares advice, tools, and stories about earning money through thrifting and reselling used clothes.
Why Share Your Content on Threads?
For small business owners, community building is key to growth. Social media platforms like X, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Threads provide easy ways to directly engage with your audience.
Threads, a Meta product, launched in 2023 as a competitor to X (formerly Twitter).
Threads quickly gained over 100 million users within five days, achieving record growth. Currently, it has over 320 million active monthly users.
Given those statistics, it’s reasonable to believe a substantial portion of your audience uses Threads.
While Threads shares features with X (Twitter), some important distinctions exist.
- Threads allows more characters than X’s free tier (500 compared to 280).
- Threads currently does not include any advertisements.
- Direct messaging is not available on Threads.
- The Threads user interface is more basic and efficient.
- Each Threads post can only contain one tag.
Integrating WordPress with Threads offers significant advantages, especially in terms of cost and effort. Using an automation plugin like Uncanny Automator, you can establish an automated system for regular Threads posts without continuous management.
This is how I manage content on my small business site. When new blog content goes live, it is automatically shared to Threads.
I also automate the sharing of tips about secondhand clothing using Automator. I’ll guide you through building similar automations on your WordPress site.
Related Posts: Learn how to automatically post your WordPress content to Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram.
Step 1: Install Uncanny Automator on Your Website
In this tutorial, I will show you how to use Uncanny Automator to automatically publish from WordPress to Threads.
Uncanny Automator stands out as a leading WordPress automation plugin, enabling code-free workflow creation. It integrates seamlessly with numerous plugins and external applications, including social networks like Facebook, LinkedIn, Threads, X, and others.
For a more in-depth look, read the full Uncanny Automator review.
By linking your WordPress site to Automator, new posts can be automatically created and shared in the background as you focus on content creation.
Beyond Threads, Uncanny Automator offers a direct connection to OpenAI. We’ll leverage this to generate engaging Threads posts automatically, guided by prompts sent to OpenAI, and requiring no manual intervention.
For this guide, you can use the free Uncanny Automator plugin, along with an OpenAI API key. The free plugin uses a credit system, while Uncanny Automator Pro provides unlimited posting credits if you need higher limits.
First, navigate toPlugins » Add New Plugin and search for the free Uncanny Automator plugin. Click to install and activate it.
This will then launch the onscreen setup wizard.
You can either continue with a free account or sign up for a paid Uncanny Automator account. Just follow the onscreen instructions to finish the setup.
If you require assistance, consult this guide on WordPress plugin installation.
Step 2: Connect WordPress to Threads
With Uncanny Automator set up, link Threads to your WordPress site. Ensure you have a Threads account ready for use with Automator.
To connect your Threads account, just go to Automator » App integrations.
In the integrations list on the left, find ‘Threads’.
Clicking it reveals integration details; then, select ‘Connect Threads account’ at the frame’s bottom.
You will be directed to Threads to sign in and give Uncanny Automator access to your Threads account.
Just follow the prompts to connect Threads to Uncanny Automator.
After allowing the connection, you will be returned to your website, and you can start using the Threads integration in your Automator recipes.
Step 3: Connect to OpenAI
Now, connect OpenAI, which will create content for Threads social posts.
Note: If you lack an OpenAI account, create one on their website first.
On the App integrations page in Uncanny Automator, find ‘OpenAI’ on the left menu. Click the button to follow the ‘Setup instructions,’ which guides you in connecting your OpenAI account.
Ensure your OpenAI API account (separate from ChatGPT) is funded with a balance for GPT model access.
After generating and copying your API secret key, paste it into the ‘Secret key’ field and click ‘Connect OpenAI account’.
Step 4: Create a Trigger to Post From WordPress to Threads
Now that the Threads and OpenAI accounts are connected, we can create the automation that will automate our Threads posting. In Uncanny Automator, this is known as a “recipe”.
Using Automator and Threads, a primary goal for my website is to automatically distribute concise summaries of new blog entries to my Threads followers.
This guide demonstrates an automated sequence initiated upon publishing a new blog post (the trigger). It formulates content appropriate for a social media update and subsequently posts it on Threads (the actions).
After initial configuration, the recipe will execute autonomously for all subsequent blog posts.
To begin, navigate toAutomator » Add new recipe.
Uncanny Automator provides several recipe categories for selection.
Given that this recipe is activated by a WordPress user’s blog post publication, it will always be associated with an account, specifically that of the post’s publisher. Select ‘Logged-in users’ and then click ‘Confirm’.
Assign a descriptive title to the recipe. For this demonstration, we’ll use ‘Share new blog posts on Threads’.
Within the Trigger section, select ‘WordPress’ since the recipe is initiated by an event occurring within WordPress; in this instance, a user publishing a post.
In the list of available WordPress triggers, you need to choose ‘A user publishes a post’.
Simply click to select it.
To ensure the recipe operates exclusively for blog posts, restrict the trigger’s scope to the ‘Post’ section within the ‘Post type’ field.
After selecting the post type, simply click ‘Save’ in the trigger.
Step 5: Configure Actions for Threads Posting from WordPress
The next step involves incorporating actions into the recipe. These actions specify what occurs whenever new blog posts go live.
To get started, click the ‘Add action’ button in the ‘Actions’ section of the recipe.
The OpenAI action should be the initial one, as it creates the content intended for Threads. The sequence of actions matters because subsequent actions rely on the output of the preceding ones.
Choose the ‘OpenAI’ integration to see a list of possible actions.
We’ll use the ‘Use a prompt to generate text with the GPT model’.
This choice offers maximum adaptability alongside various model options.
Within the OpenAI action, some fields are mandatory, while others are optional.
Below is an explanation of how we’ll utilize these fields:
- Model: To manage expenses while maintaining quality, we’ll employ the gpt-4o-mini model. Note that OpenAI models are subject to change, and this model may not always be available.
- Temperature: A value of ‘0.5’ balances creativity with a focused response.
- Maximum length: Given that most blog posts are fewer than 2,000 words, we’ll set the token limit to ‘4000’ as a precaution (and to reduce costs slightly).
- System message: A system message is not used in this example.
- Prompt: This refers to the instructions sent to the OpenAI model to get a response.
Crafting an effective prompt is often the most challenging part. It needs to provide OpenAI with precise instructions, ensuring a clear understanding of the task.
Also, confirm that the AI knows its response will be directly posted without human review.
Here is a sample prompt that can be used:
For further ideas, explore this collection of top ChatGPT prompts designed for bloggers, marketers, and social media specialists.
In the preceding image, notice dynamic values, marked with gray ovals. These are ‘tokens’, used by Uncanny Automator recipes to incorporate dynamic data.
In this particular case, we are retrieving data connected to the specific post that activated this recipe.
Begin by entering the desired prompt into the ‘Prompt’ text area within the action settings.
To insert the necessary tokens, select the asterisk (*) icon located on the right side of the ‘Prompt’ field.
Clicking the asterisk displays all available tokens, organized by type for this action.
After inserting the post title, reposition your cursor to the precise point in the prompt where you wish to insert the post body.
Next, click the asterisk again to choose a token, and this time choose ‘Post content (raw)’ from the tokens in the ‘A user publishes a post’ list.
With your prompt and instructions configured, select ‘Save’ within the action settings.
That completes this section’s requirements.
Next, we need the Threads action to take the response from OpenAI and post it to our Threads account.
Therefore, you should select ‘Add action’.
Next, choose the ‘Threads’ integration.
Simply click to choose it from the provided list of integrations.
To include the action in the recipe, you must select the ‘Create a thread post’ option.
Simply click to select the desired option.
The action requires the ‘Content’ for the post first, so we’ll click on the asterisk again to choose tokens for our post body.
Since we want to use the OpenAI response primarily in the body, just expand the OpenAI action tokens section and choose the ‘Response’ token.
Including the post URL in the body is also a good idea.
Add custom text, then insert the post URL token (from the trigger) into the body.
In the ‘Image URL or Media library ID’, you need to click the asterisk to show a list of available tokens.
In the ‘Trigger’ section, expand ‘A user publishes a post’ and choose the ‘Post featured image URL’ token.
If your post uses a featured image, this step will attach it to the Threads post.
After completing these steps, your ‘Create a thread post’ action should resemble the provided example.
To finalize and keep your updates, click ‘Save’ within the action.
Although the recipe is not yet active, you’ve configured the necessary triggers and actions for the automation.
To activate the recipe, find the ‘Draft’ toggle on the right side and switch it to ‘Live’.
Once the recipe is live (indicated by the solid blue switch), new articles will trigger automatic Threads posts!
As an example, this recipe runs roughly 4 times a month on my website, publishing new posts related to buying and selling secondhand clothing.
Posting to Threads manually previously took me about 15 minutes per post, so taking 20 minutes to set up this one recipe saves our organization approximately 12 hours per year!
If your business posts more frequently, then this automated workflow can save you even more time and let you invest your time more productively instead.
Bonus: How to Publish Automated, Recurring Posts on Threads
With the Pro version of Uncanny Automator, you get more triggers and actions, unlimited posting, and lots of additional features.
One of those extra features is the Schedule integration, which allows recipes to run automatically on a recurring basis.
For instance, we use a recipe with the Schedule integration as a trigger to post content automatically on Threads. Every few days, we share thrifting and resale tips on our Threads profile. This allows us to generate content automatically and engage with our users without any extra manual work.
Here’s what the Trigger part of the recipe looks like:
And here is the first part of the Actions section.
It has the OpenAI prompt to create the content for the Threads post.
Finally, this is the final Action.
It actually posts this content to Threads.
This recipe won’t work for all industries, of course, but it’s a useful example of how you can generate and post social content automatically. This type of recipe will also become a lot more useful when the OpenAI API supports external sources and calling URLs directly. That way you can pull content directly from your website.
We trust this tutorial clarified the process of automating Threads posts directly from your WordPress site. Complementary reading includes our guide on integrating social media feeds into WordPress, along with our curated selection of top social media plugins for WordPress.
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