Hailley Griffis
Hailley is the Head of Communications and Content at Buffer and Co-Creator of MakeWorkWork.
A collection of 104 posts by Hailley Griffis - Page 4
Like many other tech companies, we used to have an unlimited vacation policy as a way to encourage employees to take vacation days when it felt best to them. When unlimited vacation didn’t seem to be working, because it’s hard to tell how much time unlimited really is, we switched to a minimum vacation policy this time last year. With our unlimited policy, the highest percentage of vacation days was in the range of 5 – 10 days per year, closely followed by the 10 – 15 days range. It wasn’t quit
There’s this powerful myth that exists in the working world: the more you work and less you rest, the more you will get done. It turns out that our bodies and our brains don’t quite work that way. What’s surprising is that the opposite is in fact true. If you rest more and work less, you’ll be more productive, healthy, and creative. Not to mention, one author believes more rest can positively impact climate change and gender equality — I’ll elaborate on all of that below. We gave this a try a
When we think of continued learning and self-improvement, reading naturally comes to mind. That’s why we’re so excited to be celebrating International Literacy Day, a global celebration planned by UNESCO. This celebration is a strong reminder of how digital technology and the internet enables each of us to do more reading, writing, and learning. Source: UNESCO We have more ways than ever to get access to books and reading materials. But how much reading are we doing? One survey reports that “[
Hi there! This is an older post that we’ve kept around for transparency but that means that sometimes the information is no longer accurate. Head to our homepage to view our most recent posts. We believe in constant experimentation and self-improvement at Buffer. You might know this if you’ve followed along with our trying self-management or making regular changes to our vacation policy [https://buffer.ghost.
How do you create something that lasts in marketing and social media? Not just for 15 minutes, or even for a year. But for a lifetime. Today, we as marketers are so focused on what’s next . We create content, ship it, and move onto the next project without even blinking an eye. Is there another way? A way to create perennial sellers [https://www.amazon.com/Perennial-Seller-Making-Marketing-Last
“How do you know that people are actually working if you’re all at home?” This is a question many of us get asked at Buffer. We’re a fully remote in multiple time zones around the world, and unless you’ve experienced remote work in this way, it can be a bit tricky to wrap your head around. Specifically, this question of how to tell who’s actually working is one of the major curiosities. To put the question another way, perhaps what people are really asking is how trust functions in an environm
One of the 10 Buffer values we aspire to is constant self-improvement, which includes learning new skills, new information, new everything. Little did we know how much there was to learn about learning itself! Recently, we’ve specifically sought out even more ways to encourage learning for our whole team at Buffer, with projects spearheaded by our People team and our teammate Deborah. The main question she’s been asking is: How can we help encourage a culture of learning on our team? That’s w
Our whole team engages with many people online every day across various platforms. Most of these experiences are happy, positive, thought-provoking, and often quite funny. We have some truly wonderful Buffer customers , and getting their messages throughout the day makes the whole team smile. Sometimes though, things are less happy and positive, and more angry and negative, like with online hate or when a customer might become abusive towards a Buffer teammate.
Hi there! This is an older post that we’ve kept around for transparency but that means that sometimes the information is no longer accurate. Head to our homepage to view our most recent posts. Have you ever worked on a project where it was unclear who — if anyone — was leading? ✋? I have. And it made me realize that knowing who is responsible for what and who is leading which projects makes a huge difference in really accomplishing work. In one of my 1:1s with
Being spread across 50 different cities, we place a high priority on communication, going so far as to adopt it into our ten values. For us, communication tends to break into two types, asynchronous or synchronous. At most companies, synchronous communication is the norm. Everyone is online at the same time, chatting with the same tool, attending the same meetings and calls, etc. Asynchronous communication becomes more critical for distributed teams. Asynchronous means not everyone needs to b
Facebook ads are quickly becoming a staple of almost every successful social media strategy. They have the power to benefit your business or brand on so many different levels. From understanding your target audience to driving sales to raising brand awareness, Facebook ads are a compelling way to spend your social advertising dol
Goal-setting has always been one of my favorite activities. I love the feeling of accomplishing something within a set timeframe and getting to cross it off a big list of other goals. I love seeing the progress and celebrating the achievement — in fact, I love it so much that you’ll find me routinely setting and revising goals throughout the year, both at work and for my personal life. We recently made the shift away from OKRs as a company-wide goal-setting framework, and we started experimenti
Managing social media for a small business is a unique and sometimes overwhelming challenge for so many entrepreneurs and marketers. On one hand, you have a business to run. On the other, you want that business to grow and flourish. And although you know that social media has the power to be an important part of your overall marketing strategy , there’s tons of completely valid reasons why it never quite happens. Time, resources [https://
What do you do when the product you’re supposed to market is a dictionary? You make it fun, interesting, and bold! That’s exactly what the team at Merriam-Webster did when they started experimenting on Twitter with, well, being themselves. Since then, their account has grown by more than 200,000 followers in just one year – gaining the attention of major publications like Mashable, BuzzFeed, NPR (and more) and winning awards along the way. The brains and v
Thanks for reading our equal pay report. See our updated 2021 pay analysis here. At Buffer, we feel a close connection to the conversation about salaries. We strive to pay all employees fairly and equally, as evidenced by our adoption of a transparent salary formula. We share this formula publicly (you can try it for yourself here), and we share the actual salaries of the entire Buffer team: Every one of our salaries is available in a transparent spreadsheet. We whole-heartedly embrace trans
How does someone with little-to-no marketing or social media experience go from a line cook to Director of Marketing for some of Silicon Valley’s most successful companies? By taking calculated risks. As humans we naturally tend to forget that stepping away from the norm and trying things that are inherently risky can actually be a good thing in both our personal lives and careers. Clair Byrd , Director of
When I hear the words “LinkedIn marketing” my mind immediately jumps to traditional sales tactics . Cold emailing or messaging, following up, following up again, and then sometime down the line, closing the deal. Although a robust sales tool, LinkedIn rarely gets brought up in conversations about effective social media marketing channels for businesses. But Candice Galek [https://www
Instagram Stories is quickly becoming one of the go-to marketing channels for some of the world’s top brands. Take Bustle, for example, with more than 1.4 million followers on Instagram alone, they are seeing incredible results from investing in a consistent and thoughtful Instagram Stories strategy. In fact, they’re seeing so much success that they’ve dedicated an entire position to creating beautiful Stories 5-6 times per week. Behind those Bustle Instagram Stories? Hannah Caldwell. Hannah
In the past when our marketing team was only two or three people, it was easy to work on projects together. Finding time to meet and discuss was also easy, as we only had to coordinate between a few people and we were in fairly close timezones. In the past year, our marketing team has grown from a team of four to a team of eight (yay!). Timezones are mildly more of a challenge now that we are based all around the world — from the West Coast in the US to the East Coast in the US to Canada, to th
With more than 25,000,000 adoring fans across social media, National Geographic Travel is a poster child for the power of storytelling in marketing. Their secret? Going where no one else has gone before. This is the approach that National Geographic Travel takes to every one of their stories. Undiscovered places around the world and tales of incredible human feats fill our social feed – we can’t help but click and be inspired. And Lindsay Smith, Producer at National Geographic Travel, helps
Public relations can mean a variety of things, especially at a startup where many people wear any number of hats. My first job out of university was as an intern at a startup doing public relations (PR) for them. I cold-called reporters with pitches, wrote press releases and even did some ghost writing. I was the first PR person they had ever hired, and have since been the first person to be hired in a full-time public relations role at three other startups. I completely adore PR (and social m
Social media has the power to spread great content across the web like wildfire. One share from an influencer or one read from the right publisher might result in thousands of page views and shares. But creating a rock solid content strategy and executing on that strategy on a consistent basis is a tall order. Luckily, the content team over at First Round Review might have found a formula for success. Their deep
Sleep is one of my favorite things. I adore it. I’ve never been one for alarms though. Potentially because they mark the end of my sleeping. I started working remotely a fews years ago, and intermittently went between working from home and working at an office. Having a more flexible schedule meant I didn’t need to wake up at a certain time unless there was a meeting. Because of this, I’ve experimented with eliminating my morning alarm from my life. Here is how I went about it and how you can
Can you believe that 2017 is around the corner? The end of a year always has me excited for a fresh year with new goals and exciting projects. Plus of course, looking back at the past year for learnings, takeaways, smiles and memories. This year at Buffer we decided to put together something we’ve never done before, and invite you to take a look back at a few of our favorite moments of 2016 to celebrate the year we’ve had. Check out Buffer’s End of Year Report : 2016 from A – Z ! Why share a