New Marketing Content Strategy for the New Year

Kevan Lee -

Buffer Marketing Report

January 2017

Buffer signups

18,922 +26%

Buffer for Business trials

1,732 +16%

Social blog sessions

1,321,003 +27%

Email subscribers

89,424 -4%

NPS

45 +10%

Kicking off 2017 with a new strategy for content

At the start of 2017, we launched a new approach to our content strategy: Every week, for three out of every four weeks, we cover a new topic on social media marketing on the Social blog. One out of every four weeks, we cover a new topic on “future of work” on the Open blog.

Here’s a bit how it looks in practice:

  1. We plan three weeks ahead for each topic.
  2. Each topic includes 1 podcast, 1 long-form/guide, 1 roundup/how-to/listicle plus any republished content.
  3. Each topic is tied to our Twitter chat (#bufferchat), weekly videos, LIVE social media, account takeovers, community chats, swag giveaways, etc.
  4. CTAs on this content lead to targeted webpages or custom messaging.
  5. We publish all this throughout the week.
  6. We celebrate and measure it all on Friday through “Total Reach” as our main metric.

(For “future of work” topics, we skip the podcast and focus the CTAs on email signups instead.)

In January, our themes were Facebook advertising, goal setting and social media for teams.

Here are our top three posts from the Social blog in January in case you’re up for sharing or seeing this strategy in action!

How to Create an Extraordinary Social Media Strategy for 2017
Up for sharing? Add this to your Buffer.

The Complete Guide to Getting Started with Facebook Ads
Click here to add this one to your Buffer

Facebook Ad Specs and Image Sizes [Fully Updated for 2017]
Click here to add this post to your Buffer

What we’re planning for February

Coming up in February, our topics and posts will include:

  • Storytelling on social media:
    • 20 Ways to Use Social Media for Storytelling
    • 11 Storytelling Formulas to Supercharge Your Marketing
  • Video marketing:
    • What counts as a video view on each social network? The guide to video metrics
    • 50 Social Media Video Marketing Statistics You Should Know in 2017
    • Wistia partnership
  • Instagram marketing:
    • 9 Powerful Time-Saving Instagram Marketing Tips for Your Business
    • All You Need to Know About Instagram Takeovers
    • The Complete Guide to Advertising on Instagram

Feel free to follow along in our public Trello editorial board.

Bufferchat topics for February include:

  • February 1st: Technical Tips for Making Social Videos (guest: Jenny Mudarri from Wistia)
  • February 8th: The Art of Storytelling (no guest)
  • February 15th and 22nd topics still in the works.

Podcast episodes and guests:

A few upcoming podcast guests and topics to look out for:

  • February 6th: Lindsay Smith, Nat Geo – Storytelling on Social Media
  • February 13th: Sunny Lenarduzzi – Video Marketing and YouTube
  • February 20th: Michael Stelzner – Social Media Algorithms and How to Get Content Seen
  • February 27th: Lauren Naturale – Creating a social media voice for a brand with Merriam Webster

In-person events and meetups:

February 8th
Toronto Meetup with our teammates Roy, Tom R, Pioul and Hailley

February 15th
San Diego social media workshop hosted by Brian

Marketing partnerships

We’re collaborating with Wistia on a piece of content for the Social blog. Buffer to create blog post, Wistia working on videos to accompany the piece. Wistia will also promote to their audience on social.

We also started chatting with the Skillshare team to help produce a super high-quality social media course sponsored by Buffer on their platform. Looks like we might kick things off in February!

Over to you

Are there any topics you’d love to see us cover in our Social or Open blog? What are you looking forward to in February? We’d love to hear from you in the comments!

Check out other reports from January: