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
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
Editor’s note: Google announced on October 8, 2018, that they will be shutting down Google+ for consumers in 2019. Farewell, friend! Here are some ideas on where you could share your content instead . I’ve personally always been a huge fan of Google+, but it’s been several years since I’ve been consistently active: It simply became too difficult to keep u
In a world where customer service is becoming the new marketing – understanding how to find, monitor and respond to social mentions is a great skill for marketers to develop. It can help to shape your marketing strategy, too! Knowing where to listen for important conversations online will allow you to react in real-time to trends in your industry and deliver the content or answer that your audience is looking for. We had the privilege of spea
How active is your brand on Pinterest? With 150 million monthly active users spending an average of 98 minutes per month using the platform, Pinterest can be an underused network for some, while a primary source of website traffic for others. Earlier in 2016, we did a study on brand marketing [https://buffer.ghost.