New!Check out Board viewCheck out the new Board viewOrganize and track your social content ideas with the new Board view.Learn more

Blog - Page 54

A collection of 2,473 blog posts

ReportsAug 4, 2016
Connecting the Team, Finessing our Finance Model

See last month’s finance report → See all Buffer reports → People Ops Report July 2016 The Buffer team has changed a lot in the last few months, and our People Operations team is focusing on helping the team grow through creating new guidelines and recommendations and updating the ones we already have. Our People Ops team covers many roles to foster the daily operations within the company. This includes finance, hiring, internal processes, benefits and more! Important numbers to note:

ReportsAug 4, 2016
In Search of Product-Market Fit Inside the ‘Buffercelerator’

See all Buffer reports → Rocket Report July 2016 Rocket is a “startup within a startup” here at Buffer, just like Respond. (A really awesome product if you haven’t checked it out yet.) Each month we’ll share more and also reflect later on the whole experience and journey of Rocket. We’re excited to share some July updates from the project, though so many things here are still taking shape! What is the Buffercelerator program? The Buffercelerator program gives the Rocket team 9 weeks

ReportsAug 4, 2016
Integrating Mobile Into Buffer’s Product Process, Plus a Sneak Peek at Our New Content Library

See all Buffer reports → Product Report July 2016 We’re excited for our first product report! Every month, we plan to update you on the latest goings-on within the Buffer product. Currently, we have three “tribes” underneath the Buffer product umbrella—Buffer, Buffer for Business and Growth. We’ll walk you through the product overall and then share some some key metrics and updates from each of those tribes! Key numbers to note: * 155,386 weekly active users (across Individual and A

ReportsAug 4, 2016
Happiness Experiments: Peer Reviewed Emails, Snippet-Free Days and More

See the most recent happiness report → See all previous happiness reports → See all Buffer reports → Happiness Report July 2016 Customer happiness continues to be a cornerstone of all we do at Buffer and we’re constantly evaluating how best to measure and push ourselves to better this experience. Our Happiness team consists of 19 Buffer teammates serving in roles from Chief Happiness Officer, Customer Success, Twitter Heroes, Happiness Heroes and more! Here are a few initiatives and

ReportsAug 4, 2016
Respond’s New Vision, Prototype and Product Process

See all Buffer reports → Respond Report July 2016 We’re excited to share the latest news from our startup-within-a-startup, Respond. Buffer acquired Respondly in late 2015 and we’ve since been working hard to create a product that helps our customers build great relationships with their users, fans and customers through social customer support. July’s top stats * Booked revenue was up +3% month-over-month * We’re nearing 100 paying customers which to date includes some of the amazin

ReportsAug 3, 2016
Engineering Innovation Ahead: Instagram, Redux, Snackchats

See all past engineering reports → See all Buffer reports → Engineering Report July 2016 Welcome to our first innovation & engineering report! We’ll be sharing all the highlights from engineering and technical teams at Buffer. These includes snippets from our product engineering, data, systems and architecture teams. This past month has seen a major product launch, Redux building, diving deeper into service-oriented architecture and also internal webinars called “Snackchats.” Here’s

OpenAug 3, 2016
How We Celebrate Our Customers with Personalized GIFs

When you’re a fully remote team , all forms of communication take on much more importance. Since we don’t see each other face-to-face very often at Buffer, we have to think up other ways to express ourselves, so we focus a lot on our written communication , including emojis and lots of exclamation points, and of course, GIFs. The same applies for our wonderful Bu

Instagram Stories: The Complete Guide to Using Stories

Instagram Stories is a feature that lets users post photos and videos that vanish after 24 hours. The feature feels much like Snapchat Stories, a Snapchat feature that was introduced in 2013 and a pivotal part of the company’s growth. And like Snapchat, the photos and videos shared in your Instagram Story are ephemeral and can’t be viewed once 24 hours have elapsed. Content shared to stories also won’t appear on your profile grid or in the main Insta

How Google Sets Goals: Inside Buffer’s Experiment with OKRs

How many goals have you achieved today? Setting goals is key to making progress in any area. We know that those who write down their goals are 95% more likely to achieve them and that two best practices for goal-setting include making them measurable and giving them a deadline. We’ve even explored a variety of formats for setting goals on the blog before. One format that has particularly intrigued us at Buffer is the practice of OKRs, which stands for Objectives and Key Results. A system that

9 Unique Ways to Explain Social Media Marketing to Pretty Much Anyone (Even Your Boss)

Quick quiz for social media marketers: Raise your hand if you’ve ever been asked, “So, you get paid to go on Facebook?” Probably quite a few of us, right? People get social media. But it seems many are still bewildered by social media marketing. So how can you explain the value of what you do, to those who matter most to you? To be sure, social media marketing is an incredibly new (and ever-changing) industry, unlike finance, engineering, sales, law, medicine, and more established fields. Pl

Tips / How ToAug 1, 2016
How to Grow a Twitter Chat to Reach 1 Million People: Learnings From Two Years of #bufferchat

From productivity and social media strategy to self-care and reflecting — even gifs! — we’ve had a blast getting to join with our community every week for the past two years in #bufferchat. More than one hundred chats later, #bufferchat has turned two! ? What began as a curious community experiment has grown into a pillar of our community efforts. We are so grateful to have an amazing community who keeps coming back each week, offers a breadth of knowledge and drives us to be a better company

ReportsJul 29, 2016
June Financial Report: Our Highest Growth of 2016, Recovering From Cashflow Crisis

Last month we published the toughest news Buffer has ever shared —that a cashflow crisis caused by hiring too quickly forced us to make the hard decision to say goodbye to 10 teammates. Since we shared that news, we’ve been working to make many financial, accounting, and organizational changes and transitions needed to become stronger and more financially sound. We’re also actively searching for a finance director who can help us build

Buffer’s Pablo Partners With #WOCinTechChat for More Diverse Image Options

Something really awesome happens when you search for images of an “entrepreneur” in Buffer’s super-simple social media image maker Pablo: We’re so delighted to add the Women of Color in Tech Chat photos into Pablo, to complement our other great photo partners including Pixabay and Unsplash. When you search Pablo using words like “entrepreneur,” “designer,” “developer,” “engineer,” “business,” “founder” and more, you’ll see these high-quality, free-to-use images from Women of Color in Tech Chat

BufferchatJul 28, 2016
The Business of Blogging: A Bufferchat Recap

This week on #bufferchat, Val Geisler of ConvertKit stopped by to share her expertise and advice on the business of blogging! We discussed strategies for building an engaged readership , tips for creating a content plan , suggestions for multiple revenue streams, and much more! Catch our weekly Twitter chat [https://buffer.com

ResourcesJul 27, 2016
Why Snapchat Memories Will Be Pivotal (And Why Marketers Are So Excited)

If you could travel back in time to when Facebook or Instagram first started grabbing mainstream attention, knowing what you do now about the opportunity they hold for brands, you’d jump aboard, right? Well, that opportunity is now on Snapchat. Snapchat, a platform built on short ephemeral messages, seems destined to become a long-lasting social media powerhouse. This future seems all the more realistic with the addition of Snapchat Memories — a way to share photos and videos captured outsid

3 Dads On What It’s Really Like To Take Family Leave At a Startup

We believe in bringing your whole selves to work. Many times, that might mean stepping away from work for a bit to celebrate and wholly focus on your family. This is a foundational pillar here at Buffer and we’re committed to supporting our team members in many different ways: perks, flexible time off and a fully-paid family leave. In our experiences as a growing startup, no two individual’s experience is quite the same—especially with family leave. So Buffer has a loose policy that recommends

ResourcesJul 26, 2016
Take Back Your Time With These 10 Ready-Made Spreadsheet Templates (And Our Top Tips and Time-Savers)

One of our cultural values at Buffer , is to live smarter, not harder. We like to think this extends into our workflows as well. This is why marketing spreadsheets have been such a boon for us, helping us to track important social media metrics , see our blog growth , and get more work don

PodcastsJul 25, 2016
Happy People Is The Goal: An Interview with Atlassian’s Head of Diversity

What if bringing more diversity into tech could be as simple as having a coffee with someone new? At Atlassian , where Aubrey Blanche is the global head of diversity and inclusion, one successful program is just that simple: Women of Atlassian opt in, are matched randomly with a new teammate, and grow their professional network through an occasional latte. It’s just one example of the way Aubrey makes the tech industry’s diversity cha

ReportsJul 22, 2016
Buffer in June: $10.8m ARR and an Update on our Financial Position

Editor’s Note: Every month we share an update with all of Buffer’s investors. We also publish that note in full for our Buffer Open audience in keeping with our value of transparency . Hi Team, Thanks for all your continued support. I’d love to share an update on what’s happening at Buffer: Key metrics MRR: $897.0 ARR: $10.8m MoM: +4.9% Further metrics: * 60,413 paying customers (+3.5% from May) * 256,882 MAU (+0.0% from May) * 159,995 WAU (+1.5% from Ma

7 Types Of Awesome Social Media Content Your Brand Can Be Creating Right Now

Have you ever wondered why people love eating at buffets? It’s not because all-you-can-eat options are better for your wallet; in fact, economists have proved ordering traditional dishes is actually cheaper . Humans crave variety. With a buffet ticket, you can try the dumplings, the salad, the spare ribs, brussels sprouts, and the pasta—and that variety makes you feel good [https://

BufferchatJul 20, 2016
Customer Support on Twitter: A Bufferchat Recap

This week on #bufferchat, we were joined by one of Buffer’s Twitter Happiness Heroes, Darcy Peters , as our guest! We discussed the best tools and workflows for support teams , how to approach negative tweets, how to go the extra mile for customers , and more ! Catch our weekly Twitter chat

Online MarketingJul 20, 2016
These Are the 9 Best Tips We Got on Medium Marketing: 3 Worked, 6 Didn’t

A few months ago, Leo and I decided that we really wanted to step up our Medium game to truly understand how the platform worked and how we can provide the best value to our audience there. Truthfully, I was pretty clueless to begin with. Logging into the Buffer account was likely my second time on Medium — ever. I was super excited to take on the challenge. Everything was started from scratch, with researching, creati

ToolsJul 20, 2016
The Big List of Twitter Tools: 93 Free Twitter Tools and Apps to Fit Any Need

Twitter is a fascinating adventure of relationships, entertainment, education, and fun. Now imagine layering on a few dozen power-ups . That’s how it feels sometimes when you find just the right Twitter tool. And there’s a tool for practically every desire or whim. Tools for productivity , for efficiency, for re

PodcastsJul 18, 2016
You Don’t Have to Code: An Interview with Ariel Lopez of 2020Shift

Sometimes it seems like everyone in the world is learning to code . Coding jobs are plentiful, and coding bootcamps have become their own cottage industry. But coding isn’t the path to workplace happiness for everyone, and there’s a growing realization of the limitations of the “everyone needs to code” mentality. That’s where Ariel Lopez comes in. The entrepreneur and career coach founded 2020Shift (of whic