Blog - Page 40
A collection of 2,458 blog posts
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
Can you remember where you were seven years ago? I was in my apartment in Birmingham, UK, coding up the very first version of Buffer as a tool to schedule tweets. So much has changed since then: the Buffer product has evolved, the social networks themselves have matured, and social media managers have grown exponentially in skills and influence. Today, I’m excited to share an early look at what we believe these ch
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
This week on #bufferchat, the wonderful Angelia Trinidad (founder and CEO of Passion Planner ) stopped by to share her inspiring thoughts on the importance of investing in yourself. The community discussed how to set personal development goals, how to make time for creativity, ways to celebrate our successes, and much more! Read on to discover all of the awesome insights that were shared during the chat! Catch our weekly T
Engineers tend to be hardwired for knowledge sharing. Because of our Buffer culture , contributing to the open source community has never been an uphill battle. We’ve never had to “convince” anyone that this a good idea and that we should let engineers spend time on it
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
This week on #bufferchat, Jay Acunzo of the Unthinkable podcast stopped by to share his expertise and insights on the anatomy of a great podcast! The community discussed why they listen to podcasts, what keeps them hooked, the makings of a great podcast host, and much more. Read on to discover all of the awesome insights that were shared during the chat! Catch our weekly Twitter chat, #bufferchat, at TWO times every Wednesday for valuable industry insights and to meet hundreds of other smart m
One happy side effect of Buffer’s value of defaulting to transparency and sharing lots of what we’re working on and going through as a company is that you get to have lots of great conversations. Folks from other companies read what we’re up to and share advice about similar situations, or share a challenge they’re going through and ask for advice. And the No. 1 question I get asked is this: How does a company begin to approach the topic of diversity and inclusion for the first time? Folks are
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
Is social media best used for sales or for brand awareness and engagement? The age-old question that marketers have been debating even before Mark Zuckerberg started TheFacebook in his tiny Harvard dorm room back in 2004. So what’s the right answer? Is there one? Many marketers lean towards the side of brand awareness and engagement, while others can’t quite see the point of social media unl
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
This week on #bufferchat, we talked all about the value of transparency in business — the why, what and how! Our community shared insights about the benefits of transparency, how it impacts business, the first steps to talk toward a more transparent company, and much more! Read on to discover all of the awesome insights that were shared during the chat! Catch our weekly Twitter chat , #bufferchat, at TWO times
I’ve always been a person who follows the rules. No coloring outside the lines. Work within the system. At times, this has worked out fine. More often, though, I’ve had to work to retrain myself to take bigger risks, speak up more and be less afraid of “getting in trouble.” Especially at work, rule following can be a bit of a double-edged sword. Getting tough feedback for being out of line or overreaching is hard, but so is missing an opportunity you know y
Do you remember your first social media profile? Or, how about your first social media post? My first profile was on Myspace, my first friend was “Tom from Myspace,” and my first post was something like, “Myspace is awesome!” The rest is history. Social media has changed and evolved so much since the early days, it’s almost hard to believe how far we’ve come. How people use social media has changed as well. Gen Zs (now beginning to enter the workforce) only know a world with social media, com
This week on #bufferchat, our community shared stories about the positive impact of social media on our lives and businesses. Seven members of the Buffer team joined in from around the globe to chat with the community and tell their stories via video! Read on to discover all of the wonderful stories that were shared during the chat. Catch our weekly Twitter chat , #bufferchat, at TWO times every Wednesday for
Finding the right balance between role performance and personal development is not easy, and it’s something that I got very wrong at first and am still trying to perfect. Over the last few months, I’ve had a lot of experience trying to balance my performance as a Happiness Hero (on our customer support team at Buffer) and my passion for learning more about engineering, which allows me to help my team outside of the Happiness inbox.
When you hear the term ‘stock photo’, what’s the first thing that comes to mind? My hunch is it’s probably a photo of a group of friends awkwardly laughing, business people staring at charts on a wall, or something along those lines. Probably not the best connotations, right? Used correctly, though, free stock photos can really bring your ads, blog posts, and content to life. And at Buffer, we use stock photos daily. Here’s why: * Stock photos are cost effective (mostly free ?) * If you
This year at WWDC 17, several promising new technologies, frameworks and APIs were revealed to eager developers. Each year Andy and I try to focus on not only the keynote, but the Platforms State of the Union session to get a sense for what we should prioritize for the upcoming iOS release among all the new things introduced. For iOS 9, Apple pushed multitasking. Last year, Message Extensions were quite prominent. This year, there was no doubt about what we really wanted to hone in on: The new
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
This post was originally published in 2016 and has been updated with the latest tips and tricks to grow your following on every social media network. It also includes the latest podcast episode from The Science of Social Media! You’re taking the dive into a new social network, or you’re itching to grow your existing profile. You’ve got a social media strategy in place and a plan in mind. You’re raring to go. What would be one of the most encouraging signs when you’re first starting off? We’d i
This week on #bufferchat, we talked all about how to use Snapchat for businesses , brand building, and customer engagement. The community discussed tips for producing great content, building a following , partnering with influencers, and much more! Read on to discover all of the awesome insights that were shared during the chat! Catch our weekly Twitter chat [https://buffer.com/library
Startups get a lot of advice. And for good reason – there are millions of decisions to be made as you begin the journey of building a company. Some of the advice is clear-cut. More often, you’ll hear a chorus of voices with different experiences and points of view. Perhaps nowhere is the advice more confusing than when it comes to if, when and how a company should add HR or People functions into a team. (For a little taste, read through this Quora thread.) There are a lot of reasons why this
What’s working for you on social media these days? One of our goals at Buffer is to always be iterating and experimenting with what we do on social media and in marketing. Whether it’s cutting our posting frequency, curating content, or creating square videos , we’re always up for trying new strategies ! Lots of times these experi