Blog - Page 32

A collection of 2,569 blog posts

Case StudiesApr 10, 2019
Inside Look: How Two Teams Share a Social Media Inbox

Only 10% of customer messages are answered on social media . Yet some brands find a way to answer 100% of requests. What’s their secret? Having many hands on deck certainly helps. We’ve found that some of the fastest-responding, maximum-delighting brands on social media employ a two-team approach to responding. Customer support teams handle all inbound product questions, and m

8 Unexpected Marketing Lessons from History’s Most Influential Leaders

How to subscribe: iTunes | Google Play | SoundCloud | Stitcher | RSS This wee

OpenMar 29, 2019
Our Latest Pay Analysis: Examining Buffer’s Gender Pay Gap in 2019

Thanks for reading our equal pay report. See our updated 2021 pay analysis here.  Progress seldom looks like the straight line we all wish it might. Real life is much messier, filled with false starts, mistakes, and backtracks. That’s an especially tough truth when it comes to issues like the gender pay gap that affect real people’s lives so deeply. But in advance of this year’s Equal Pay Day, Buffer has a progress story to tell – and it looks nothing like a straight upward line. What is E

The Art of Copywriting: How to Write Better Captions that Get Engagement

How to subscribe: iTunes | Google Play | SoundCloud | Stitcher | RSS What you’re trying to do, when you tell a story, is to write about an event in your life that made you feel some particular way. And what you’re trying to do, when you tell a story, is to get the audience to have that same feeling. – Pete Docter While we don’t typically associate the art of copywriting with social media captions, the two are deeply intertwined. A really good caption informs us about the things we canno

7 Easy Ways to Improve Your Retargeting Ad Campaigns

How to subscribe: iTunes | Google Play | SoundCloud | Stitcher | RSS Retargeting, also known as remarketing, is a powerful form of digital advertising in which audiences (potential customers) are targeted with specific ads based on their behavior online. In other words, retargeting campaigns turn internet “window shoppers” into real paying customers for your business. While we as marketers would love to live in a world in which a majority of online visitors became customers, the truth i

I Used to Call My Coworkers “Family.” Here’s Why I Stopped.

There was a time where I wholly embraced calling our team — our company — a family. I’ve written cards to our community members and called them part of our Buffer family. I’ve sent custom packages to welcome our new teammates to the Buffer family (and we’ve grown from 25 teammates to nearly 90 in about four years.) I relished how the term “family” made everyone feel so welcomed, accepted, and appreciated. There’s nothi

OpenFeb 25, 2019
Continuing to Improve on Pay: Our Latest Changes to the Salary Formula and How Much it Costs

Hi there! This is an out of date post that we’ve kept around for transparency purposes. Go here to view the latest version of this post or view our salaries page . We live in a world where things are constantly changing, and Buffer is no exception, especially when it comes to how we pay our team! It’s been over five years since we first introduced transparent salaries and a salary formula [https://buffer.com/resou

AdvertisingFeb 19, 2019
Does Vertical Video Make a Difference? We Spent $6,000 on Tests to Find Out

There has been much discussion recently on industry-leading publications about the effectiveness of video on social media. For example, did you know that video posts on Facebook receive at least 59 percent more engagement than other post types? Since our 2017 research with Animoto comparing square vs. landscape video, little has been published around the impact of video format on overall video engagement. Specifically, vertical video vs. square video. While we know that square video (1:1

The 10 Top Social Media Tools Brands are Using to Succeed in 2019

How to subscribe: iTunes | Google Play | SoundCloud | Stitcher | RSS Marketers are faced with an ever-growing list of responsibilities. From social media marketing to customer experience and advertising, it can be a challenge to stay on top of everything. Luckily for us, there are a plethora of great social media tools on the market to help you succeed in your role and stay productive. Tools for content curation, discovery, scheduling, publishing, analytics, and more can be us

OverflowFeb 8, 2019
Creating a custom video SeekBar on Android

Header Photo by Jakob Owens on Unsplash A new feature we’ve been building out required the use of a thumbnail picker for video files. After looking around for open-source implementations, it was clear that there wasn’t something that already existed which would fit in with our app – for this reason we needed to build our own video thumbnail picker component. This component, Thumby, can be found over on GitHub [ht

Case StudiesFeb 5, 2019
Nike’s Secret to Success on Instagram: Building an Engaged Community

This post is part of our Instagram Marketing Strategy series. The series provides you with actionable insights and lessons on how businesses are using Instagram. Next up, Wes Warfield from Nike shares how it handles engagement on Instagram.  Chances are you’ve come across Nike on Instagram at one point or another. With more than 83 million followers around the world, Nike is easily in the top 20 most followed Instagram accounts globally (out of nearly one billion). As you might imagine, t

Case StudiesFeb 5, 2019
Building an Ecommerce Business: From Zero to $100,000 in Revenue from Instagram Ads

In February 2017, when Remi and his girlfriend Alondra were visiting Tokyo, the last thing they were thinking about was starting a business together. But a chance discovery in a Tokyo stationery store changed everything for the couple. “We stumbled upon a shelf full of stickers made by B-Side Label,” Remi explained. “The stickers were extremely high-quality and unlike anything we had ever seen.” The pair purchased a few stickers and didn’t think any more of it until the following day when they

Case StudiesFeb 5, 2019
How Blenders Eyewear Creates Profitable Instagram Ad Campaigns

This post is part of our Instagram Marketing Strategy series. The series provides you with actionable insights and lessons on how businesses are using Instagram. Next up, Grace McLaughlin shares how how Blenders Eyewear uses Instagram ads to grow its business.  “We are a visual brand with a visual product so the image sharing platform makes for the perfect ad channel,” Grace McLaughlin explained to me over email. “We have a loyal community of content creators and brand ambassad

Case StudiesFeb 5, 2019
How Bustle Ignited Engagement and Created New Revenue Streams Using Instagram Stories

This post is part of our Instagram Marketing Strategy series . The series provides you with actionable insights and lessons on how businesses are using Instagram. Next up, Hannah Caldwell shares how Bustle uses Instagram Stories. Stories were introduced to Instagram in August 2016, and as soon as the new featured dropped, the social media team at Bustle — a premium publisher reaching millennial women — we

Case StudiesFeb 5, 2019
The Secret to Instagram Success: Square’s Community Curation Strategy

This post is part of our Instagram Marketing Strategy series . The series provides you with actionable insights and lessons on how businesses are using Instagram. Next up, Nick Dimichino shares exactly how Square’s been able to grow an engaged following on Instagram. When your product powers millions of businesses and sellers around the world , you’re bound to find some incredibly inspiring stories to share on social media. Yet

Case StudiesFeb 5, 2019
How Turn Studio Transitioned a Side Project into a Thriving Ecommerce Business with Instagram

This post is part of our Instagram Marketing Strategy series . The series provides you with actionable insights and lessons on how businesses are using Instagram. Next up, Kenny Sing, founder or Turn Studio, discusses how to grow an audience on Instagram. “I never jumped into Instagram as a way to make money. For me, it was much more awareness and follower focused. Instagram was – and still is – a real-time feedback loop for my work. It’s a way to find

AdvertisingFeb 4, 2019
How to Create Facebook and Instagram Stories Ads That Get You Results

This post is part of our Instagram Marketing Strategy series. The series provides you with actionable insights and lessons on how businesses are using Instagram. Next up, Alfred Lua discusses the power of stories ads, and how we use them at Buffer.  Businesses have been shifting their advertising budget from Facebook and Instagram feed ads to Facebook and Instagram Stories ads due to the lower costs and better results they see with Stories ads. Simon Lejeune, head of user acquisition a

Case StudiesFeb 4, 2019
How to Sell on Instagram: A Stories Strategy That’s Generated ‘Hundreds of Thousands’ in Sales

Prefer audio? Press play to listen to this post. This post is part of our Instagram Marketing Strategy series. The series provides you with actionable insights and lessons on how businesses are using Instagram. Next up, Jay Perkins shares how Kettlebell Kings has used Instagram to generate ‘hundreds of thousands of dollars’ in revenue.  “We all had what I guess you call ‘real jobs’,” Jay Perkins told me. Back in 2013, Jay worked at Bigcommerce, an e-commerce software provid

InstagramFeb 4, 2019
How Instagram Helps Callie’s Hot Little Biscuit to Serve Over 250,000 Customers Per Year

This post is part of our Instagram Marketing Strategy series . The series provides you with actionable insights and lessons on how businesses are using Instagram. Next up, Tarah Boyleston shows us how Callie’s Hot Little Biscuit uses Instagram to drive in-store sales. Snap, filter, post, then eat. If you’re a millennial, Instagramming your meals is probably a guilty pleasure, and an occasional part of your mealtime routine. An incredible 69 percent of

OpenJan 27, 2019
How Individuals Advance at Buffer, Without Becoming Managers

The concept of a career path at Buffer has changed a lot over the past seven years. We’ve gone through various phases as an organization: beginning as an early-stage startup where everyone did a bit of everything, then to a period when we decided against having managers and leaned into a flat structure , and now to a lean level of management

6 Powerful Psychological Biases and How They Influence Human Behavior Online

How to subscribe: iTunes | Google Play | SoundCloud | Stitcher | RSS A large majority of marketers wouldn’t consider themselves psychologists. Yet understanding the growing field of marketing psychology can help persuade and influence audiences in powerful ways online. Great campaigns happen at the intersection of marketing and psychology. The sweet spot where your content and messaging connects with your audience on a deep, human level. Which, in a sense, makes all marketers aspiring p

Video: Automate Everything – From Review to Release [Bufferdevs Snackchat]

At Buffer we regularly hold what we call ‘Snackchats’. These are short & informal presentations of something that we want to share with our team which help to build on our engineering culture and help each other to grow as engineers. Anyone on the team has the opportunity to give these talks ? Once a discussion has been proposed, a day/time can be picked ready for people to grab a drink (and snack!) to take some time out of their day to learn something new. These have been happening at Buffer f

ProductivityJan 14, 2019
Effective Communication on Technical Topics

Photo by Nik MacMillan from Unsplash . At Buffer we’ve always been interested in how to communicate in concise and clear ways. In fact, it’s been part of our company values from the beginning. Every organization values communication, and I’d submit to you that it’s doubly important for remote companies such as ourselves. It occurred to me recently how critical, and equally difficult, it can be to talk about technical topics as an engineer. It’s hard enough to s