Alfred Lua
A collection of posts by Alfred Lua
A collection of 95 posts by Alfred Lua - Page 3
Should our business be on Instagram or Snapchat? Or both? With Instagram and Snapchat becoming increasingly similar, many social media managers find themselves asking these questions. To help you figure out which platform — Instagram or Snapchat — is more suitable for your business, we decided to analyze the differences between the two platforms. We compared six key aspects of the two platforms: 1. Users 2. Content types 3. Discoverability 4. Engagement rates 5. Analytics 6. Ad What we
More than 700 million people use Instagram and 400 million of those users check the app daily. With such a large audience, and some incredibly business-friendly updates such as Instagram Ads , Stories , and Business Tools , Instagram is becoming a must-have channel in many social media marketing strategies [https://buffer.com/resources/social-m
Facebook has recently launched Groups for Pages, enabling the 70 million+ Pages on Facebook to create their own unique communities and feeds. This update provides new ways for brands to boost engagement and could go some way to countering the decline in organic reach Facebook Page owners have been experiencing for the past few years [https://buffer.com/resources/s
Every company is a media company these days, and Buffer is no different. We started the Buffer Social blog in January 2011 and since then it has been a key component in the success of the company. We have published more than 1,000 posts—and we’re honored to receive more than 1.5 million visits every month. It’s been a long, challenging journey, though. We first hit one million sessions in a calendar month during March 2015—a full 4 years after launching—and after months of floating around 1.1
In the past, if you wanted to run Snap Ads (Snapchat ’s full-screen video ads), you would need to go through one of their ads partners. Now, though, you can create Snap Ads yourself through Snapchat’s new self-serve ads tool, Snapchat Ad Manager. Snapchat has even included a video creation tool in the Snapchat Ad Manager to make creating engaging, awesome-looking vertical videos a breeze. We’re thrilled by the possibilities that Snapchat Ad Manager has bro
Social media is changing. It used to be a one-to-many channel. Businesses would publish links, photos, and videos on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, hoping to reach as many people as they can and drive a high number of leads and sales. When marketers first started using social media as a marketing channel, there was less content, less noise, and people were willing to click on almost everything they saw on their news feed. Then, we hit content shock. There is now more content on social pla
Facebook Cover Photo Size The ideal size is 820 pixels wide by 462 pixels tall. According to Facebook, your cover photo is displayed at 820 pixels wide by 312 pixels tall on your Page on desktops and 640 pixels wide by 360 pixels tall on smartphones. But if you want to use a single image that works pretty well on both desktop and mobile, 820 pixels wide by 462 pixels tall seems to be the best. The Facebook cover photo. It feels like it should be so easy to pick one, and yet finding the perfect
Keeping up with new changes on the various social media platforms is essential to staying ahead on social media. Did you know for example that Facebook now allows you to upload GIFs ? Or that Facebook has also changed the News Feed to encourage high-quality links to be shared ? If a piece of social media news is big enough (such as the lau
This might sound contradicting — and it’s scary for us to admit. But, despite building a product that helps people succeed on social media, we have committed a good number of social media mistakes ourselves. Mistakes that have cost us reach and engagement, maybe even fans and customers. Now that we have learned from many of those mistakes, I would love to share our top 10 and how you can avoid committing them yourself. Let’s get started… Learn from These 10 Social Media Mistakes We’ve Made
I used to think the few seconds I save by using keyboard shortcuts are not useful. I mean, what can I do with those few seconds? A lot, it seems… A few seconds here and there can add up. And according to Brainscape , you can save up to eight workdays per year! Just by using shortcuts—enough time for a long vacation. Being a social media marketer , you spend a lot
How do you know what’s working with your social media? And what’s not working? The social networks provide us with a ton of data about our posts but it can be hard to distinguish the signals from the noise. Imagine having a framework to pull out the signals from the noise — a framework that points you to the key information about your social media performance. With this framework, you can easily identify successful posts and understand why they did well. The key is social media analytics and
Over 8 billion videos or 100 million hours of videos are watched on Facebook every day. These stats were reported early last year so imagine how much larger the numbers are today as Facebook continued to grow and double down on videos. Now seems to be the perfect time to take a closer look at Facebook video and how to use videos to engage more fans on the platform. Wit
Instagram places a big emphasis on search and discovery of content. It’s one of the few social media platforms with a Search and Explore tab in its app. Being featured in the search results or in Instagram’s Explore section can be a great way to boost your success on the network with added exposure and the chance to reach new users who may not have otherwise seen your content. There are also several other ways you can use Instagram’s Search and Explore for your business — finding the best hash
Running social media campaigns can be quite different from managing your social media profiles on an ongoing basis. Unlike your ongoing social media marketing, campaigns tend to be for a specific purpose and only last for a certain time period. The strategy you’d take for running a social media campaign might be different from your usual social media marketing strategy. So how do you run a successful social media campaign? Through case studies of successful social media campaigns by companies
Writing a great social media manager job description is not an easy task. The job description is one of the first few things potential applicants read and a well-written job description can increase the chances of you hiring the best social media manager for your company. We’re thrilled that you’re looking to hire a new social media manager and would love to help you as much as we can! Here’s everything you need to know about writing a great social media manager job description (and more).
Science plays a key role in marketing, especially the science of psychology. We have written about the 15 psychological principles in marketing and studied seven social media psychological research. This time, we’d love to dive deeper into one of the most powerful and prominent psychological phenomena… Social proof. The use of social proof can be found in many areas of both offline and online marketing. In this post, we’ll focus on the use of social proof on social media to boost your marketi
How big is your social media budget? I’ve heard of companies that spend millions on marketing and others who spend zero (we skew toward the zero side at Buffer). Regardless of how much you spend, you aim to spend it well. That’s why a hypothetical situation like — what would you do with $100 to spend on social media marketing ? — can be an extremely valuable exercise. I have some ideas on what I’d do with the $100, ways to wring the mos
The Instagram algorithm, just like the Facebook News Feed algorithm, is so mysterious yet ingenious and brilliant in showing the best content to the most people. If you are creating great content, more followers — and non-followers — are going to see it. But how does the Instagram algorithm work? In this post, we’ll break it all down for you. We’ll go through the factors that could influence the ranking of your content on your followers’ feed and explain why the Instagram algorithm is
Since Instagram started sorting posts on users’ feed with an algorithm , many marketers have noticed a decline in their organic reach and engagement. But that doesn’t have to be the case for you. In fact, it could be possible for you to reach more of your followers now than without the new Instagram algorithm. In this post, we’ll share 10 straightforward ways you can use to increase your organic reach on Instagram today. Buffer for Instagram now c
We’re making the camera the first augmented reality platform. — Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook F8 conference 2017 Facebook’s F8 conference was once again filled with incredibly exciting announcements. Augmented reality (AR) could be seen as the main theme of this year’s conference. From augmented masks and special effects to 360 video camera to Facebook Spaces (an app where you can hang out with your family and friends virtually), Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook want to enable us to connect with one
More than 15 million businesses now use Instagram as a marketing tool. And one of the most important aspects of any Instagram marketing strategy is a clear focus on Instagram analytics. Without analytics, your Instagram marketing efforts can be a little hit-and-miss. How do you know if your Instagram marketing strategy is going well? How do you track your Instagram performance and improve your content? Analytics are often essential for answering your questions. With Instagram analytics,
Ninety-three percent of marketers we surveyed are actively using Facebook for their business. And almost everything that Facebook does to its family of products can have a great impact on marketers. From releasing stories across Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp, and Messenger, to going all-in on live video, Facebook’s product decisions affect billions of people globally. Imagine how it may feel like to know about Facebook’s upcoming developments and begin to plan how you can utilize them — perhap
As a marketing team spread around the world — from the West Coast in the US to the East Coast in the US to Canada, to the UK and Singapore, we always keep an eye on the latest marketing and productivity tools to help us stay connected and do our best work. Our team also covers a range of marketing disciplines from social media to community building , to press relations, to con
Facebook is still the leading platform for marketers. From our State of Social Media 2016 report , we found that 93 percent of marketers are actively using Facebook for their business. As social media marketers, we spend a lot of time on Facebook, managing our Pages , engaging our fans , finding good content [https://buffer.com/l