Blog - Page 42
A collection of 2,459 blog posts
Heads up! We’ve updated our transparent salary formula since this post originally was published. Learn more about the latest formula and see all the team’s current salaries here . Four years ago we introduced transparent salaries at Buffer. The practice has in many ways come to define us. We’re proud of this, and the positive impact that it has had both within the team and in the wider community. A growing company brings change and new learnings. Over time, our tea
In case you haven’t used App Shortcuts in Android yet, it’s an awesome feature that allows us to provide our users with a way to quickly access parts of our apps from the home screen of their device. As developers, we can make these shortcuts either static (meaning they’re statically defined in an XML file) or dynamic [https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/ui/
When you’re a small news team with a big workload, how do you keep social media updates flowing steadily around the clock? For U.S. business and technology news website Business Insider , the answer was Buffer. Paul Szoldra was a fan of Buffer’s simple scheduling power even before he became Business Insider’s West Coast Editor. “Basically, I pitched Buffer to everybody,” Szoldra says. “Once I started at BI and took over with the social media, I recognized that
There is a lot of imagery that comes to mind when someone says “working from home.” A quick Google Search yields results that are anything from someone working on the floor surrounded by pets, to people holding babies during calls, to someone working in pajamas. Source: Ray Wenderlich A lot of these things (the pajamas and family at least) are things you can’t always do at a regular office. Sometimes the pets
We often recommend crafting your social media posts according to your audience. But how do you know who the individuals that make up your social media audience are? And how do you know what content they like? Answering these two questions is essential if you’re looking to execute a successful social media strategy. And often, you’ll find the answers by turning to data and social media analytics [https:/
Until pretty recently, we didn’t have a “product process” at Buffer when it came to how we built the product. Initially, we were proud of our super lean approach with an engineer or two collaborating with a product manager and figuring it out as they went along. This worked well when we were smaller, but as our team grew and we wanted to build more ambitious products , timelines started to get unrealistically long and we were shipping cars all in
When I first started diving into Facebook marketing for business I was happy to simply send out an error-free post. No typos? No poorly-cropped images? No negative feedback? Perfect! But with each new post came new learnings about Facebook marketing best-practices until it came to a point where I could explore all of the useful featur
I recently had a video call with Buffer’s Director of People, Courtney . She asked me, “How is it feeling to work in your timezone?” That might seem like a rather odd question, but the reason why she asked is illustrated below: That’s me, over on the right. Right now, I’m the only person in Australia working in a company of 70+ people, spanning 12 different timezones. After reflecting on what it’s like to work in a one-person timezone, I thought I’d share
What if I told you that LinkedIn, a social media platform that is now 14 years old, is the next big opportunity for marketers and brands? While much of the focus over the last few years has been on perfecting our Facebook and Instagram marketing strategies, LinkedIn has been silently growing their user base to more than 500 million users. The reason for this sudden growth? LinkedIn is no longer known only for their résumé and job searching capabilities. It’s evolving into a thriving network o
Buffer Transparency Report Q3 2017 * Last quarter’s report * All Transparency reports * All Buffer reports MRR $1,312,614 ARR $15,751,368 EBIDTA $957,883.16 (+38.3%) Paying customers 76,293 (+3.8%) Q3 Revenue 3,840,296.81 (+8.16%) Cash in bank $4,367,158 (+23.5%) In the past seven years that we’ve been building Buffer a lot has changed. The Buffer product has evolved, the social net
At Buffer, we’re big fans of using data and research to guide our social media strategy . So when it came to finding the best Instagram strategy, I turned to social media studies . I read through more than 20 studies on Instagram marketing from companies like Facebook, Simply Measured, and News Whip. Some analyzed the top Instagram accounts while
It’s pretty difficult to get excited about research, right? It’s not exactly the most flashy subject and I don’t really know any kids who dream of doing customer research when they grow up. Yet, if you dig into the practices of the most successful companies of the past few decades such as Amazon , Airbnb , and IBM [https://www.amazon.com/Who-Says-Elephants-Cant-Dance/d
There’s so much to learn with social media advertising that it’s difficult to know exactly where to start. For example, audience targeting, budgeting , A/B testing, pixel tracking, writing, designing, and analyzing all need to be taken into account if you want to see positive ROI from social media advertising. There’s time and resource
More than 1 billion people use Instagram every month 2TechCrunch, June 2018 , and over five million businesses use Instagram to tell their stories visually, connect with their fans, and build their brand 2Instagram business blog, September 2017 . If you’re new to Instagram, it might be daunting to think about how you can stand out in such a large crowd. But getting started with Instagram is much easier than it might look. In this post, you’ll learn the basics of using Instagram, from how t
Hi there! This is an older post that we’ve kept around for transparency but that means that sometimes the information is no longer accurate. Head to our homepage to view our most recent posts. Imagine working at a company where on your first day the CEO says: “We are really excited to have you here. Now, how can I use my personal network to help you get your next job?” That’s exactly how Jon Bischke from Entelo kicks off the first day for his employees on day on
Have you ever been curious about other people’s processes? How they start their day, how they work remotely, or how they focus their energy levels? I definitely have, and I know so many people who feel the same way. After all, what better way to learn than by looking at what is working for others! We’re fortunate to have access to an incredible community at Buffer, and over the years we’ve collected actionable advice from this community during our weekly bufferchat on Twitter [https://buffer.c
If you do Facebook marketing , one thing that you might want to understand is the Facebook algorithm. The Facebook algorithm helps make sense of the huge number of posts that people and businesses share every day and chooses the posts to show in our News Feed based on a huge number of factors. We want to help you understand how your Facebook posts get viewed on Facebook. So we’re collecting all the relevant Facebook algorithm factors, updates, an
Much has been written on the Buffer Blog about social media strategy . In the last month alone, we’ve covered (in great detail) everything from Facebook Messenger marketing and managing multiple social media accounts to creating remarkable content [https://buffer.com/library/what-to-post-on-each-socia
A while ago we published this article on how we were trying to tidy up the Android project for the Buffer for Android app: /2016/09/26/android-rethinking-package-structure/ . However, our project is now moving towards a modularised approach – so our package structure is changing (but also staying slightly the same). We wanted to keep the package-by-feature approach in place so we can continue to benefit from its advantages suc
The ability to change one’s mind, change course and try again is one of the things I like most about working at Buffer. It’s totally normal to share about not just successes but also times we didn’t know the answer, mistakes we’ve made and experiments we’ve tried that didn’t quite turn out like we thought they might. So even though the last time I wrote about performance reviews it was to share why we don’t do them, it’s not actually that weird (at least at Buffer) to return to the topic only
Many experts predicted that 2017-2018 would be the “age of video marketing on social media ” and the data is showing that they were overwhelmingly correct. Video has erupted onto the scene with brands and businesses creating more video than ever before – with no signs of slowing down. Consumers are loving it, too! HubSpot, for example, found that 90% of users reported that product vi
This week on #bufferchat, our community discussed the value of creating a brand style guide and all that goes into making an awesome one. We talked about the key elements of a brand guide, tips for articulating a brand’s voice , advice for getting employees on board with consistent branding, and much more. Read on to discover all of the awesome insights shared during the chat! Catch our weekly Twitter chat [https://buffer.com/library/tw
Like many other tech companies, we used to have an unlimited vacation policy as a way to encourage employees to take vacation days when it felt best to them. When unlimited vacation didn’t seem to be working, because it’s hard to tell how much time unlimited really is, we switched to a minimum vacation policy this time last year. With our unlimited policy, the highest percentage of vacation days was in the range of 5 – 10 days per year, closely followed by the 10 – 15 days range. It wasn’t quit
There are now more than 1.3 billion people using Facebook Messenger every month 44Techcrunch, 2017 . Yes, billion with a b! Have you considered the possibility of using it for your Facebook marketing? We certainly have. And we have been experimenting with different ways to include Messenger as one of our go-to marketing tools, by sending out our latest blog posts through Messenger and engaging and helping our customers through the platform too. Since we are in the midst of figuring thin