All posts - page 41
A collection of 2,592 blog posts
Experimentation and iteration lie at the heart of a lot of things we do at Buffer. If you’ve been following the Open Blog for some time, or even if you’ve just popped by (hey there!), you might notice that we reflect on remote work–a lot . Our remote setup enables our distributed team to work wherever they’re happiest and that freedom is a much-valued perk that Buffer teammates enjoy. Our employees feel trusted to be in control of their job, and for us, we
At Buffer we strive to have at least all new code tested, and to add tests for legacy code when we can. This helps us catch bugs before they’re released, and watch out for regressions. This also leads to a notable amount of time spent writing tests. And let’s face it, that can get repetitive.There are some things that can help, like helper functions, factories, and test robots. Still, there’s a number of things you find yourself repeating. Is there a way to improve this? I’ve saved some time by
How to subscribe: iTunes | Google Play | SoundCloud | Stitcher | RSS 2019 is here and gone are the days where generating audience engagement on social media was primarily a passive process. The always-online audiences of today want to be involved, interact, and co-create. The brands that are successful in delivering personalized experiences to their audiences are the brands that are likely to thrive with their social media strategies in the coming year. But in order to be able to capita
1 Values refresh Our company values are a blueprint for everything we do and, as so much has changed at Buffer in the past five years since we initially defined our values, we decided to take the time to refresh them in 2018. After an extensive six months of teammate interviews, nearly 200 pages of notes, 50,000+ words and five drafts, we unveiled our six updated values in April! See our updated core values 2 Hackathons During our first fully remote hackathon in July, our entire engineeri
We hope you’ve had a great year. We’ve had a lot of fun here at Buffer , and have learned a lot while serving our customers and building our business this year. And, as always, we’ve done our best to capture all these learnings here on the Open blog to share with you. Thinking about all that’s happened here over the last year, several key moments stand out. We’d love to look back with you on some of the biggest Open blog posts from 2018
Modularization in android applications is nothing new – I previously outlined the different types of modularization and the advantages they bring over in this post , and in this article we’re going to be focusing on feature modularization. When thinking about about modularization, at first it may appear as a case of moving a collection of files over. But what about the Dependency Injection setup? Referen
Here at Buffer, we believe that what gets measured, gets managed. That’s important because with effective management and oversight, we have the tools and knowledge to effectively make change happen. But how do you measure an emotion? Certainly, you may notice the signs of an emotion like happiness trending up or down. When it’s trending downward, you’ll notice that productivity wanes, morale decreases, and people leave for other jobs. And when it’s tre
How to subscribe: iTunes | Google Play | SoundCloud | Stitcher | RSS When in doubt about your marketing strategy, turn to the social media experts. Often the best way to learn about a craft is from someone who has been in your shoes before. Social media marketing is becoming increasingly pivotal for businesses around the world. More emails are being sent and more blog posts are being published on a daily basis than ever before in history. But where are marketers to go for reliable insig
One of our favorite year-end activities — and one of our favorite everyday cultural values — is to pause and reflect on all that we’ve seen and done at Buffer over the past twelve months. (You can check out our reflections on the past two years: 2017 and 2016 .) We’ve done the same year-in-review again for 2018 , and having gathered this data for three years in a row now, we are able t
How to subscribe: iTunes | Google Play | SoundCloud | Stitcher | RSS Video content is one of the most popular mediums for businesses today, and for good reason. Video is more engaging, more memorable, and more popular among consumers than any other type of content. And there’s data to back that up, too! For example, did you know that 76% of businesses say video has helped them increase sales? Or that 80% of marketers say video has increased time spent on their website? This week we’re
Growing pains. Every company gets them, and the pains come in all sorts of ways, from the tactical (tools ) to the philosophical (this post). As your company grows, some of your team members may feel like they have less impact. You may find it harder to set accountabilities and goals. Things can start to feel “top down.” We find ourselves dreaming about being empowered, making our own decisions, and setting our own goals. Wouldn’t it be nice to ma
How can you increase Twitter reach and engagement? That’s something that many marketers are thinking about, including Rand Fishkin, the founder of SparkToro, who has been wondering if Twitter gives tweets with a link less visibility than tweets without a link. And recently I’d been wondering the same. Then I heard about Aytekin Tank’s 17-million-impression tweet. Just a few months ago, Aytekin, the founder of Jotform, repurposed one of his popular Medium posts into a Twitter thread. He also p
Among the many existential questions of building and distributing software is the question of product marketing. What even is product marketing? Is it launching new products and features? Is it finding ways to increase product adoption? Is the goal of product marketing to offer customer education, retention, activation, or engagement? All of the above? Product marketing can mean various things in different company contexts, which makes it hard to find
How to subscribe: iTunes | Google Play | SoundCloud | Stitcher | RSS Social media algorithms play a very important role in the ability for marketers and business owners to make an impact online. And although algorithms are often difficult to understand, we need to learn to work with them and not against them if we want to find success. Luckily for us, big social networking sites often share updates on exactly what their algorithm prioritizes. For example, Facebook recently shared that m
Deploying mobile applications tends to be a fairly different process than when it comes to web applications. On the web we can push updates and fixes regularly without the concern of versioning, and at the same time our users can access these changes almost instantly from within their browser. When it comes to mobile applications, things work a little bit differently. First of all, we don’t have the luxury of instant changes — for example, if we need to push a change to our android application
Black Friday is the busiest shopping day of the year in the U.S., with more than 116 million people hitting the shops in search of a great deal. But REI, an outdoor clothing and equipment brand, does Black Friday differently to other retailers. For the fourth year in a row, REI closed its doors on Black Friday 2018, giving every one of its 12,000 employees the day off to enjoy the
In life and business, though, change is inevitable. And just as popular culture, music, and fashion move on, Facebook should too.
When you experiment with work culture as much as we do at Buffer, you tend to receive a lot of questions about it. What is it like to work remotely? How do you collaborate across time zones? Do people really feel okay making their salaries public? Can you become friends with teammates when you’re not in an office? Do you miss working in an office? Do you basically live in pajamas? (Quick answer to that one: not usually, though I definitely have spent a work day or two in pajamas!) These qu
Here at Buffer, we think a lot about visual content. We’ve shared our own study on the importance of images in Twitter posts for more social sharing. We’ve explored tools that help anyone create visual content . Our social media management tool incorporates image posting because we kno
Our annual State of Social report will be coming out soon, and we need your help. Last year, more than 1,800 marketers shared their thoughts on social media marketing for our second annual report. And as 2019 is on the horizon, we’d love your help to make this year’s report even better! If you can spare a few minutes, we’d be keen to hear your thoughts on the current state of the social media industry. We anticipate it’ll take no longer than 3-5 minutes to complete. Click the ‘Start’ button b
When Tommy Williams was growing up in Austin Texas, he probably didn’t think his love for cooking and local farmers markets would lead to starting a nationally-recognized food brand. But that’s exactly what happened. Williams began to embrace his entrepreneurial spirit after college. As a graduate, he started selling a variety of salsas and spice mixes in local retailers — and this is where his passion for promoting a healthier way of eating really came to the fore. In 2014, Tommy’s Superfood
Almost two years ago, I fell into becoming a manager . In my past career, I never thought that this would happen. Most of my life I’ve been a maker: working as an engineer, solving technical problems and building apps, products, or just circuit boards. People management was a huge change. I learned a lot of things the hard way through trial and error, success and failure — but also by reading a lot [https://buffer.com/resources/how-to-read-more-a
As a social media marketer, a big part of your job is to build awareness of your brand and drive conversions on various social channels. This could mean creating an engaging video for Facebook. Planning out and scheduling your tweets for the week. Writing a thought-provoking article for LinkedIn Pulse. The list goes on… You do all of this because you want to use the unique, native features of each channel to connect with your audience. You want everyone to have the best possible experience e
Social media marketers are always looking to uncover the “next big thing”, and as we head into 2019 personalized social media engagement is becoming the latest must-have strategy for businesses of all sizes. According to recent Epsilon research , 80 percent of consumers are more likely to do business with a company if it offers a persona