How to Automatically Post to Threads From WordPress

Since Threads launched in 2023, I’ve been experimenting with different ways to share my WordPress blog posts there automatically. Like many website owners, I initially posted manually, but that quickly became time-consuming as I managed multiple sites and social channels.

Between summarizing content, researching the right hashtags (and even emojis!), and formatting everything, I was losing valuable time that could be better spent growing my business. 

That’s why I started looking for an alternative that could speed up the entire process. And after testing a few different tools, I found a plugin that allows you to automatically post from WordPress to Threads — no coding required.

In this guide, I’ll walk you through straightforward steps that connect your WordPress site to Threads, allowing you to grow your audience and say goodbye to tedious manual posting.

Why Share Your Content on Threads?

For small business owners, one of the best ways to grow and get traction is to build a loyal community. One easy way to do that is by engaging with your users directly on social media platforms, including X, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and now Threads. 

Threads launched in 2023 as a Meta (formerly Facebook) product to compete directly with X (previously Twitter).

Within 5 days, Threads had over 100 million users, making it the fastest-growing consumer application in history. Plus, at the time of writing, there were over 320 million active users every month.

With those types of numbers, you can assume that many of your users and customers are active on Threads!

While there are many similarities to X (Twitter), Threads has some key differences:

• There’s a higher character limit than with X’s free accounts (500 vs. 280).
• There’s no advertising.
• Direct messaging isn’t supported.
• The interface is simpler and more streamlined.
• Only 1 tag is allowed per post.

Of course, the biggest reason to integrate your WordPress site with Threads is that you can do so with very little cost and effort. With an automation plugin like Uncanny Automator, you can set up an automated workflow that posts periodically to your Threads account with no oversight needed.

This is exactly what I do on my own small business website. As new blog posts are published, I share them automatically on Threads.

I also use Automator to share occasional tips about buying and selling secondhand clothes. And in this article, I will show you how to create these types of recipes on your own 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 is the best WordPress automation plugin that lets you build automated workflows with no code. It connects with hundreds of plugins and third-party apps, including social platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, Threads, X, and more.

You can read this complete Uncanny Automator review for more information.

By connecting your WordPress site to Automator, it can automatically generate and share your posts in the background while you create content on your WordPress site. 

Besides Threads, Uncanny Automator also connects directly with OpenAI, which is how we will create shareable, high-converting posts on Threads. The post content will be generated automatically based on guidance we send to OpenAI, with no user oversight needed.

You can use the free version of Uncanny Automator for this tutorial, along with an OpenAI API key. The free plugin license uses a credit system, and if you need a higher posting limit, then Uncanny Automator Pro licenses provide unlimited posting credits. 

First, you need to go to Plugins » 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 need any help, see this guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Step 2: Connect WordPress to Threads

After setting up Uncanny Automator, the next step is to connect Threads to your WordPress site. You must have a Threads account set up and ready to use with Automator.

To connect your Threads account, just go to Automator » App integrations.

In the list of integrations on the left side of the page, scroll down to ‘Threads’.

You have to click that to see the details for the integration, and then click the ‘Connect Threads account’ button at the bottom of the frame.

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

Next, we need to connect OpenAI, which you’ll use to generate the content for your social posts on Threads.

While still on the App integrations page in Uncanny Automator, scroll up to ‘OpenAI’ in the menu on the left. Then, follow the ‘Setup instructions’ by clicking the button. This will walk you through the process of connecting your OpenAI account to Uncanny Automator.

Make sure that your OpenAI API account has been funded (this is different from a ChatGPT account) and that there’s a balance available so that you can access the latest GPT models. 

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”.

On my website, one of my objectives with Automator and Threads is to automatically share summaries of new blog posts with my followers on Threads.

So, that’s what we’ll be covering in this recipe example: an automated workflow that is started whenever a new blog post is published (the “trigger”) that generates suitable content for a social post that is then shared on Threads (the “actions”).

Once the recipe is set up, it will run automatically for all future blog posts.

To create this recipe, you need to go to Automator » Add new recipe.

Uncanny Automator offers a choice of recipe types.

Because this recipe will start when a WordPress user publishes a new blog post, it will always be linked to an account (the account linked to the user publishing the post). So, choose ‘Logged-in users’ and click ‘Confirm’.

Choose a title for the recipe and enter it. For this example, we’ll use ‘Share new blog posts on Threads’.

In the Trigger section, you need to choose ‘WordPress’ because the recipe will run when an activity happens on WordPress (in this case, when a user publishes a post).

In the list of available WordPress triggers, you need to choose ‘A user publishes a post’.

Just click on it to select it

We want to make sure that the recipe runs for blog posts only, so it’s important to narrow the scope of the trigger to the ‘Post’ section in the ‘Post type’ field.

After selecting the post type, simply click ‘Save’ in the trigger.

Step 5: Set Up Actions for Posting to Threads From WordPress

We need to add actions to the recipe next, which define what happens when new blog posts are published.

To get started, click the ‘Add action’ button in the ‘Actions’ section of the recipe.

The OpenAI action must be added first, because it will generate the content to share on Threads. The order of actions in a recipe is important since we need to use the output of the first action in the second action.

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 is because it provides the most flexibility and model options.

Inside the OpenAI action, several fields are required, and others are optional.

Here’s an outline of how we’ll use the fields in this recipe:

• Model: To keep costs down but still return high-quality output, we’ll use the gpt-4o-mini model. OpenAI models change periodically, so you may not see this model as available.
• Temperature: A value of ‘0.5’ balances creativity with a focused response.
• Maximum length: Blog posts on many websites are typically under 2,000 words. We’ll use ‘4000’ tokens as a safe upper limit (and also to keep costs a bit lower).
• System message: We won’t use one for this example.
• Prompt: These are the instructions we’re sending to the OpenAI model that will yield a response. 

Writing a great prompt is perhaps the hardest part of this recipe. It should include clear instructions for OpenAI so that it understands exactly what to do.

Ensure that it also understands that the response will be posted as-is to social media and won’t be reviewed by a human.

Here’s a basic prompt that we might use for this purpose:

You may also want to see this roundup of the best ChatGPT prompts for bloggers, marketers, and social media for more inspiration.

In the image above, you will notice some dynamic values identified by grey oval shapes. These are called ‘tokens’, and they’re used in Uncanny Automator recipes to add dynamic data.

In this example, we’re pulling in records related to whichever post triggered this recipe. 

Start by adding the prompt you want to use into the ‘Prompt’ text area in the action.

Then, to add the tokens you need, you must click the asterisk (*) icon to the right of the ‘Prompt’ field.

Clicking the asterisk shows all available tokens for the action, grouped by token type.

After adding the post title, you have to move your cursor to the location in the prompt where you want to populate 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. 

Once your prompt is set up with your instructions, click ‘Save’ in the action.

That’s all we need to do for that section.

Next, we need the Threads action to take the response from OpenAI and post it to our Threads account.

So, we need to click on ‘Add action’.

Next, choose the ‘Threads’ integration.

You can just click to select it from the list of integrations.

You have to choose the ‘Create a thread post’ action to add it to the recipe.

Click to select it.

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.

We also want to include the URL of the post in the body.

So, consider adding some text and then a token for the post URL (from the trigger) to the body as well.

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.

Assuming that your post has a featured image, completing this step will include the image in your Threads post.

Now that you’ve followed all these steps, your ‘Create a thread post’ action should end up looking something like this:

To save your changes, just click ‘Save’ in the action.

The recipe isn’t live yet, but we have added the triggers and actions that we need for the automation.

To take the recipe live, you need to look for the ‘Draft’ toggle on the right side of the page and click it so that it says ‘Live’.

Once the recipe is live and the switch is a solid blue, all new blog articles will generate posts on Threads automatically!

For example, on my website, this recipe runs about 4 times per month as new posts are published about 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 hope this article helped you learn how to automate posting to Threads from your WordPress website. You may also wish to see our post on how to add your social media feeds to WordPress or our expert pick of the best social media plugins for WordPress.

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