Alfred Lua

A collection of posts by Alfred Lua

A collection of 95 posts by Alfred Lua - Page 2

What Do the New Twitter Rules Mean for Social Media Managers (and Buffer Customers)

Keeping Twitter safe and free from spam is a top priority for us. — Yoel Roth, API Policy and Product Trust at Twitter This year, the team at Twitter has taken additional action to keep Twitter free from spam. Specifically, they have introduced new rules around automation and the use of multiple accounts. You might be wondering, “why is this important to me?” In short, Twitter might suspend your account if you fail to comply. These rules are also encouraging good sharing practices on Twitter

Tips / How ToApr 4, 2018
How Much Does Social Media Influencer Marketing Cost?

Do you know how much an influencer marketing campaign costs? Or how much you should be paying an influencer? If you’re not quite sure, don’t be worried. I’m like you. I didn’t know much before I did the research for this blog post. And in truth, there’s no exact science to figuring out how much you should pay influencers, as one social media executive explained to Digiday: “We have no idea what to pay them. That’s the problem.” 5Digiday, 2016 While there isn’t a clearcut answer to this quest

ToolsMar 15, 2018
Are You Listening? The 20 Best Social Media Monitoring Tools

How do you know if your customers (and potential customers) are talking about you on social media? If they tagged your social media profile in their posts, you could check your notifications. If they didn’t, maybe you could search on each social media platform every time you want to find out. Sounds tedious? Here’s a better way: Use social media monitoring tools. There’s a great deal of wonderful social media tools out there. Among them are tools built specifically to help you pick out releva

ResourcesMar 6, 2018
How to Create Engaging Short Videos for Social Media (Including 7 Excellent Examples)

When was the last time you watched a video on social media? Videos are becoming increasingly popular on social media, especially on mobile. Over the past year, the time people spent watching Facebook Live every day has increased by four times and Instagram videos by 80 percent. To create engaging social media videos, Facebook recommends creating videos as short as 15 seconds. Sounds easy? But where do you start? In this guide, you’ll learn step-by-step how to create short social media videos

A Simple 6-Step Framework for Running Social Media Experiments (with 87 Ideas Included)

Experiment with ideas. Test and see which works better. Analyze your data. These are phrases we often use on this blog. To us, social media marketing is a bit of a science . We recommend testing things, running experiments, and analyzing data — because it worked for us. This experimental mindset has helped us grow our social media results . But one thing w

Why LinkedIn Groups Can Be Great for Businesses (and How to Create a Successful One)

LinkedIn Groups do not have a great reputation. Many of them are filled with self-promotion and spam rather than valuable discussions and meaningful interactions. Hence, it can be easy to turn down the idea of creating a one for your business. “It wouldn’t work.” While it is true that there are few good LinkedIn Groups, it doesn’t mean that they aren’t useful for all businesses. With the shift in social media usage in the recent years, closed

10 Ways Universities Can Use Facebook to Market to and Connect With Students

When I was in university two years ago, Facebook was already intertwined with student life. We heard about news and events through Facebook Pages and collaborated on group work through Facebook Groups . After graduating, I’ve been getting updates about the university through the alumni Facebook Page. Nowadays, it’s also common for prospective students to research on Facebook whe

How the Twitter Timeline Works (and 6 Simple Tactics to Increase Your Reach)

Understanding the social media algorithms is important to social media marketers, especially since it can heavily impact a brand’s reach on social media. We’ve talked about the Facebook News Feed algorithm and the Instagram Feed algorithm. This time, we would love to dive into the Twitter timeline algorithm. Up until 2015, the Twitter timeline displays tweets in the reverse-chronological order. In an attempt to improve the Twitter experience, the team at Twitter has gradually introduced changes

ResearchJan 25, 2018
2018 Social Media Trends Report: 10 Key Insights Into the Present and Future of Social Media

Social media is changing at a rapid pace. For example, the content format Stories was introduced on several major social media platforms slightly more than a year ago. Now, it’s one of the most popular content individuals are posting. More than 300 million people are sharing stories on Instagram and WhatsApp separately every day, and 70 million people were posting daily to Messenger Day just six months after its launch 10TechCrunch, 2017a; TechCrunch, 2017b . Due to its popularity, many

Your Annual Social Media Conferences Guide: 20+ Top Conferences to Attend in 2018

Social media conferences are one of the best ways to learn from top practitioners in the field, connect with fellow social media marketers, and be inspired to do more great things on social media. But how do you know which one to attend? We hope to make things easier for you with this go-to guide for social media conferences in 2018. This guide includes more than 20 top and biggest social media conferences throughout the year and their key details, such as date, location, and ticket price. 2

ToolsJan 17, 2018
20 Top Social Media Tools to Try in 2018

Now that 2018 is here and in full swing, you might be looking for new social media tools to add to your marketing stack. According to Scott Brinker of the Chief Marketing Technologist Blog, there are now more than 5,000 tools in the marketing technology landscape 2Chief Marketing Technologist Blog, 2017 . So where do you start? As part of our State of Social Media 2018 campaign, we partnered with the team at Product Hunt to put together a list of the latest trending social media tools for m

Buffer NewsJan 12, 2018
10 Top Tips for Smarter Social Media Marketing with the Buffer Mobile App

How often do you read and share an article on your phone? Or how often do you snap, edit, and share a photo with your phone? If you like creating and scheduling social media posts with your phone, we would love for you to try our mobile apps. They will make social media marketing on the go super easy and smooth for you. In this post, you’ll learn more about the Buffer mobile apps (Android [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=o

AdvertisingJan 11, 2018
How Effective is Twitter Promote Mode? We Tested It for 30 Days.

“@buffer, you’re invited to our beta program” Late last October, we received an email from Twitter with the above subject line. We were lucky to be the few selected for Twitter’s new automated ads beta program, Promote Mode. The idea is simple: For $99 a month automatically promote your Tweets and profile to expand your audience and attract new followers. At Buffer, we are always excited to experiment with new things , especially around soc

We Studied Our Top Social Media Posts of 2017. Here’s What We Learned.

We are grateful for people who share what worked (and what didn’t) for them on social media. And we’ve learned a lot from their experiences. With 2017 coming to an end, I thought it might be helpful to do a review of our social media performance and share the findings with you. In this post, you’ll find our top five posts of the year of each of our social media profiles and what we’ve learned from them. Plus, you’ll also learn about o

10 Free Tools to Help You Understand Your Social Media Audience

We often recommend crafting your social media posts according to your audience. But how do you know who the individuals that make up your social media audience are? And how do you know what content they like? Answering these two questions is essential if you’re looking to execute a successful social media strategy. And often, you’ll find the answers by turning to data and social media analytics [https:/

ResearchNov 7, 2017
I Read More Than 20 Instagram Studies so You Don’t Have to. Here’s What I Found.

At Buffer, we’re big fans of using data and research to guide our social media strategy . So when it came to finding the best Instagram strategy, I turned to social media studies . I read through more than 20 studies on Instagram marketing from companies like Facebook, Simply Measured, and News Whip. Some analyzed the top Instagram accounts while

Tips / How ToNov 1, 2017
Getting Started with Instagram for Your Business: 8 Simple Steps

More than 1 billion people use Instagram every month 2TechCrunch, June 2018 , and over five million businesses use Instagram to tell their stories visually, connect with their fans, and build their brand 2Instagram business blog, September 2017 . If you’re new to Instagram, it might be daunting to think about how you can stand out in such a large crowd. But getting started with Instagram is much easier than it might look. In this post, you’ll learn the basics of using Instagram, from how t

News and TrendsOct 18, 2017
Decoding the Facebook Algorithm: A Fully Up-to-Date List of the Algorithm Factors and Changes

If you do Facebook marketing , one thing that you might want to understand is the Facebook algorithm. The Facebook algorithm helps make sense of the huge number of posts that people and businesses share every day and chooses the posts to show in our News Feed based on a huge number of factors. We want to help you understand how your Facebook posts get viewed on Facebook. So we’re collecting all the relevant Facebook algorithm factors, updates, an

Tips / How ToOct 3, 2017
7 Facebook Messenger Marketing Strategies You Can Try Today

There are now more than 1.3 billion people using Facebook Messenger every month 44Techcrunch, 2017 . Yes, billion with a b! Have you considered the possibility of using it for your Facebook marketing? We certainly have. And we have been experimenting with different ways to include Messenger as one of our go-to marketing tools, by sending out our latest blog posts through Messenger and engaging and helping our customers through the platform too. Since we are in the midst of figuring thin

Tips / How ToSep 28, 2017
How to Engage With Your Social Media Followers Quickly and Authentically

How do you feel when people comment on your social media posts? Awesome, right? A comment is or some form of engagement is usually a sign that people love your social media content . And it’s important to reciprocate and respond to these interactions. But at the same time, engaging with your followers can be time-consuming. If you are a solo social media manager or a small

ResourcesSep 26, 2017
The Ideal Cover Photo Size for Each of the Major Social Media Platforms

One of the first few things people see when they visit your social media profiles is your cover photo. Whether it’s your Facebook Page, LinkedIn Company Page, or YouTube channel, your cover photo is the biggest image on the page. And people will see your cover photo even before they see any of your posts. So how do you make your cover photo show up the exact way you want it to be? One of the key factors is the size. Without the correct dimensions (width and height), your cover photo might be

Tips / How ToSep 19, 2017
Post Less, Boost Top Posts, and More: 14 Ways to Increase Your Facebook Page Engagement

Engagement on Facebook Pages has fallen by 20 percent since the start of 2017, according to BuzzSumo who analyzed over 880 million Facebook posts by brands and publishers. As a social media marketer, it is worrying to see these trends. But we feel there are ways we can combat this organic reach decline on Facebook and we’d love to share some strategies with you. In this post, we’ll share 14 straightforward ways to increase your Facebook Page engagement — many of which are proven and have work

ToolsSep 6, 2017
20 Tools for Creating Engaging Social Media Videos, Images and GIFs in Minutes

Creating social media content takes time. And creating great social media content takes even more time. You don’t just need to think about what types of content you’re going to create, but also how you can customize your social media posts for each platform. For example, you might create: * A video for Facebook * A GIF for Twitter * An infographic for Pinterest How do you find the time to create so many pieces of social media content? Well, here’s some good news… with the right tools, yo

Tips / How ToAug 31, 2017
The Rise of Micro-Influencers: How to Run a Micro-Influencer Campaign

The interest in influencer marketing has been growing steadily over the past few years and more people are seeking to understand more about it now than ever before. Just take a look at this Google Trends chart: According to eMarketer , 48 percent of marketers decided to increase their budget for influencer marketing in 2017. And only four percent had plans to d