Blog - Page 57
A collection of 2,507 blog posts
Humans are, by nature, very visual beings. In the brain itself, there are hundreds of millions of neurons devoted to visual processing, nearly 30 percent of the entire cortex, as compared with 8 percent for touch and just 3 percent for hearing. Each of the two optic nerves, which carry signals from the retina to the brain, consists of a million fibers, compared to the auditory nerve carrying a mere 30,000. That’s all to say that social media images are a vital part of your content reaching th
Most people don’t read content online. In fact, eight out of ten people will only read the headline. For content writers, that fact is alarming. But it also places extra importance on the headlines we choose for our content, as headlines have the power to influence readers even if they don’t read any more of the article. I don’t believe the perfect headline exists, though. Not anymore, anyway. The evolution of social media and search has also complicated the playing field. When we write a hea
Many of the best experiences in life are totally unplanned. I remember one of my last days in high school when the entire grade 12 class (all boys) hopped over the fence of the neighboring girls’ boarding school in the middle of the night and went streaking. I made a wrong turn and — with nothing but running shoes on — stumbled upon a legion of young girls staring out of their dorm windows. Totally unplanned, 100 percent memorable. *Yes, I’m well aware that this story is a little odd for a po
Whenever you’re working solo on a project, chances are you’re writing in ‘your’ style – which often makes it easy to make all your code look and feel the same (but not necessarily clean). And when there’s more than one team member contributing to a project, it can be difficult to ensure that code is kept both clean and readable. Chances are that everyone has their own way of doing something, even when it comes down to things such as the way variables are named or the ordering of methods within a
Taking an event from idea to sell-out is no easy feat. And half the battle of organizing an event is marketing it. When it comes to the marketing channels that drive attendance, hype, and engagement, social media is right near the top. Best of all, social media event marketing isn’t as time-consuming as you may think. You can do it! One of the greatest feelings in the world is walking into one of your own events and seeing it jam-packed with people. Social media can help get you there. When
Hometown. Siblings. Childhood memories. High school activities. Travel, spouses, friends. Life goals. These are things you might know about your significant other, close friends. How about your coworkers? At Buffer, we’ve discovered that sharing more of ourselves — our whole selves — is a key component in bringing team members closer together. At our past in-person retreats, we’ve called these exercises “personal stories,” and it’s become one of our favorite ways to connect. Now, we’re scaling
One of the great joys of working with my marketing clients has been helping them grow their Twitter followers and implement consistent tweet schedules. Meanwhile, my own account has collected dust with a lame, month-old tweet sitting at the top. Until recently. I first joined Twitter over seven years ago, back in 2009, and I’ve been grateful to learn so many best practices, strategies, and tactics from the community. The only problem was I didn’t apply any of this Twitter strategy to my own T
1/6/2016: We’re excited to share an update to this article about our Snapchat strategy here at Buffer. All of the details are below. In short, we’ve felt encouraged to see the strides Snapchat has made with diversity and inclusivity initiatives, and we’re eager to return to the network! How we came to the decision to rejoin Snapchat In August of last year, we chose to take a break from Snapchat (details in the full article below). Over the course of the last few months we’ve kept up with the
One of the keys to moving fast and being successful as a social media team is to have everyone on the same page, using the same voice, and sharing in the same style. But is it really possible to share a brain with a team of fellow marketers? The good news is, yes, it’s possible. And the even better news is, you betcha, it can be done a lot faster than you might think. The team at Torchbox is a prime example. They take on an enormous volume of social media sharing for their clients — a few of
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 marketers and community managers. Same topic, same place, just at different times – feel fr
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 in the 1980s. …to an equal pay ad in 2016. Beer ads that support equal pay? Feminine hygiene brands redefining how
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 and see significant results. Sounds great, right! We’d love to make it easy for you to get up and running with Facebook Ads. These are the exact steps and lessons we’ve be
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. Same topic, same place, just at different times – feel free to join whichever chat tim
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
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 n
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 w
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 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
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 am
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.” Her
