Blog - Page 56
A collection of 2,474 blog posts
This week in #bufferchat, we all talked about working smarter and not harder! We discussed what “work smarter, not harder” means to us, how we manage our energy and be productive, our favourite ways of taking breaks and making time for ourselves and much more. Catch our weekly Twitter chat , #bufferchat, at TWO times every Wednesday for valuable industry insights and networking with nearly 400 other smart marke
We’d love to share what we’ve learned (so far) through the Twitter Squad experiment!
It’s hard to believe that this used to be a totally acceptable way to advertise a product in America: Thankfully, our world has taken quite a few steps forward since this ad of the 1950s. Today, the marketing that wins hearts and minds is likely to look more like this: Even as “masculine” a pursuit as beer-drinking is getting in on the act, with Budweiser going from an ad like this in the 1980s: …to an equal pay ad in 2016. Beer ads that support equal pay? Feminine hygiene brands redefining
What would happen if you were to “like” everything you saw on social media? The developer Rameet Chawla found out when he built a script that liked every photo that passed through his Instagram feed. * He grew his followers by about 30 a day * He got invited to more parties * He got stopped on the street by people who recognized him from Instagram * He got message after message from friends encouraging him to post more. He said it was “almost like they were frustrated, like they were longi
Social media has been found to be the most effective digital advertising channel for getting more impressions, clicks, and conversions. Facebook in particular stands out — in some cases, 7x cheaper than the next most affordable social media ads channel (Twitter). You can spend as little as $5 per day on Facebook advertising [https://buffer.com/library/faceb
See the most recent investors’ report → See all investors’ reports → See all Buffer reports → In July, we launched a big new feature, had our first cashflow positive month of 2016 and rallied around a strong vision for Buffer’s future. Here are the highlights: Key metrics * MRR: $926.0k * ARR: $11.1m * MoM: +3.1% Further metrics * 62,201 paying customers (+3.0% from June) * 255,158 MAU (+0.0% from June) * 159,995 WAU (-1.0% from June) * $1.29m cash in bank (+5.7% from June) * 80 t
This week in #bufferchat, we all talked about creating brand awareness! We discussed the components of a memorable brand, ways to build and measure brand awareness, how to involve the community to share about a brand and much more. Catch our weekly Twitter chat , #bufferchat, at TWO times every Wednesday for valuable industry insights and networking with nearly 400 other smart marketers and community managers.
See last month’s marketing report → See all marketing reports → See all Buffer reports → Marketing Report July 2016 This past month, we announced Buffer for Instagram to the world (go team!). We ran Facebook Live videos and Snapchat takeovers (we’re @buffersnaps for any Snapchatters out there). We set some exciting, audacious, fantastic goals for what we want to achieve between now and October. And oh yeah, the decision was made that community should combine with marketing, so in the
See the previous hiring report → See all Buffer reports → People Report July 2016 As we’ve grown at Buffer, it’s been fun to watch the People evolve. This group works to build, retain and encourage the best team we can at Buffer, and includes roles focused on recruitment, human resources, inclusivity, and team-building and togetherness. Here’s what we got up to in July! July’s People metrics Applicants: 543 Interviews: 18 first stage interviews Offers made: 1 (Full-stack Develope
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:
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
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
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
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
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
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 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 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
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
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
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
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
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
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