All posts - page 42
A collection of 2,598 blog posts
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 know how important that element is to engage your followers and fans. But there’s one question we get asked quite often: Where can you find free images that are high quality and cleared to use for your blog posts or
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
How to subscribe: iTunes | Google Play | SoundCloud | Stitcher | RSS According to the U.S. Small Business Administration, an incredible two-thirds of small business owners and entrepreneurs (66%) are personally responsible for three or more areas of their business, including marketing. From email and social media campaigns to pricing, branding, and strategy, it can be a challenge for many small business owners to excel at marketing while also focusing on growing their business. That’s w
An incredible 500 million people around the world use Instagram Stories on a daily basis (with that number rapidly growing by the minute). Besides being an interesting and fun way to connect with friends and family, Stories offer businesses a unique opportunity to capture the direct attention of audiences and potential customers. But where do you start? And what makes for great stories content? We partnered with Delmondo to answer these questions, and more! Together we analyzed more than 15,0
Having managers isn’t something we do at Buffer just because it’s what other companies usually do. We’ve always been proud to be different and to follow the path less travelled — even when it comes to people management. Over the past few years, we’ve tried it all: from experimenting with full self-management (no managers) to having leads and managers supporting our team [https://bu
How to listen: iTunes | Google Play | SoundCloud | Stitcher | RSS In speaking with thousands of marketers and businesses over the past several years, we’ve learned that marketing has an incredible potential to impact people’s lives. In fact, the American Marketing Association defines marketing as: “The activity, set of institutions, skills, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large
Repurposing your content across channels is a great way to get the most from your social media strategy. However, sometimes, certain channels will perform better than others. When GQ posted a video about Kylie Jenner and Travis Scott on its YouTube channel (with 2.5 million subscribers), it was watched almost 30 million times. The same video on their Facebook Page (2.8 million fans) was watched 4.7 million times. A snippet of the video on their Instagram account (4.3 million followers) was watc
Today’s top influencers aren’t just content creators or media buys – they’re both. According to Invesp , influencer marketing can drive 11 times the ROI of traditional digital marketing. And with 71 percent of marketers believing ongoing influencer ambassadorships are the most effective form of influencer marketing, finding the right influencer for your brand is an incredibly important part of your digital strategy. Check out the tips below
How to subscribe: iTunes | Google Play | SoundCloud | Stitcher | RSS * If you try to do everything with your marketing strategy you end up doing next to nothing. Focus is key when developing new marketing ideas and exploring opportunities. * How and when to challenge your current assumptions and best practices on everything related to marketing. * Nine effective marketing ideas that don’t include blogging such as: podcasting, video series, live events, and tons more! Join 18,000+ weekly
With transparency in business on the rise, more and more businesses have been talking openly about their hiring, their diversity and inclusion efforts, and even their revenue. Transparency is more than just a PR or marketing ploy for a business. There are significant advantages to productivity, trust, culture, and morale when you embrace transparency. We are fortunate to have been learning about transparency for the past seven years at Buffer — lots of lessons, good and bad, that we’re ex
When you’re working on large projects, sometimes it can be difficult to ensure that all of your libraries are kept up-to-date. Whilst we can periodically jump into our build.gradle file, this is a manual task and let’s face it, us humans can sometimes slip a little when it comes to this. We recently had a notice from a third-party SDK about a performance issue in the version of their SDK we were using – whilst this wasn’t a breaking change, it’s something that would have saved them (and us) time
Whether you are a seasoned social media marketer, a marketer looking to venture into social media marketing, or a business owner looking to leverage on social media, it’s helpful to know the most popular social media sites around. This will allow you to maximize your brand reach on social media, engage with the right people, and achieve your social media goals. Of course, it isn’t only about the size of the social media sites. It’s also whether the social media site is a right fit for your busi
If you want your business to have a presence on social media, Facebook is probably one of the first or the first social media platform you think of. More than 1.4 billion people use Facebook every single day, and many multiple times a day. It’s almost certain that your potential customers are on Facebook and using it actively to connect with their family, their friends, and their favorite brands. Whether you’re running a brick and mortar store, an ecommerce site, an agency, or a software c
What do all of your favorite social media accounts have in common? Most likely they are consistent, and you can immediately recognize their style when they pop up in your feed. To ensure this consistency, they’re probably following a social media style guide. A social media style guide is your map to guide how your brand appears on social media. Your style guide will relate to and be part of your overall marketing brand guidelines. It should be a living document that can evolve over time. Bu
How to subscribe: iTunes | Google Play | SoundCloud | Stitcher | RSS Looking to catch up on the latest social media news, but short on time? We have you covered! This week (episode #117) we’re chatting about all of this and more. * For those launching a new product or tool or even project, Product Hunt can be a serious game-changer in terms of awareness, traffic, feedback, and so much more. * Twitter is a great place to repurpose content. If you’re creating content of any form: videos, b
Can you tell when you’re talking to someone from Buffer ? Absent any Twitter handle or an email “From” name or other identifying element, if you were essentially Internet-blindfolded, could you distinguish between a conversation with one brand versus another? If so, what a powerful impact that brand must have! We’d love to cultivate this type of unified voice and style at Buffer. As part of that journey, we created a company-wide content style guide as a resource on communi
Instagram is rumored to be building a standalone shopping app, IG Shopping. But what would a separate shopping app mean for the future of ecommerce on the platform? Social media marketer, Thea Neal, investigates. With more than 25 million Instagram Business profiles, and more than 2 million advertisers, Instagram is constantly evolving, testing new features, and experimenting with new ways to increase the value businesses can get from its platform. For example, in June 2018, Instagram unveile
For the past year, my team and I have been building a brand new social analytics solution within Buffer called Buffer Analyze. We’ve done our best to distill research, data, and intuition into a lean, lovable solution, and we’ve been fortunate to find early signs of product/market fit. (Currently, the Analyze beta is open to Buffer for Business customers. You can learn more about Analyze’s social analytics features here [https://buffer.com/analyze?utm_source=open-b
How to subscribe: iTunes | Google Play | SoundCloud | Stitcher | RSS * Influencer marketing is here to stay. Beauty, business, and tech influencers, among others, can help businesses to reach what can be difficult demographics. * Savvy brands recognize consumers want honesty and are using transparency and openness as a differentiator in influencer marketing campaigns. * Great influencer marketing campaigns include content that is compelling to your target audience, authentic to the story
Today, we’re excited to launch, SocialChat by Buffer, a simple, free tool that enables visitors to start social media conversations on your website. Each and every day, people visit your website to learn more about your business. The problem is a large percentage of websites don’t really support visitors in helping them to find what they want. In reality, most website visits are simply ignored — that was excusable a couple of years back, but not so much now. People in 2018 don’t want to have