Blog - Page 58
A collection of 2,507 blog posts
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 a strong foundation and look toward the future with confide
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 outside
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
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 done in less time. That being said, spreadsheets are not always easy. Finding or building the right ones and figuring out how best to use them can be time-consuming tasks. We’d love to help. To give you a hand wi
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 challenge look tantalizingly solvable. Using a combination of d
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 May) * $1.22m cash in bank * 81 t
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://
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, #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 fre
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, creating spreadsheets, and experimenting at a rapid rate. I spent my time studying
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
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 which Buffer is a proud sponsor!) to spread awareness that you don’t have to code to work in
If you’re anything like me, there are only a handful of things more exciting for a social media marketer than when a Tweet “goes viral.” And so I set about with the audacious goal for this post of trying to unravel the great social media mystery of virality: Figuring out the formula for Twitter’s most successful tweets. Better yet, I hoped to determine the formula for Buffer’s most successful tweets so that I could repeat the process and share what I’ve learned with marketers everywhere. Now
This week in #bufferchat, Buffer’s social media manager, Brian Peters, stopped by to share his expertise all about Instagram marketing. We were super excited to discuss strategies, share advice and swap tips, the day after we launched Buffer for Instagram! In the chat, we talked about the kinds of posts that get the best engagement, our essential Instagram tools, and much more! Catch our weekly Twitter chat, #bufferchat, at TWO times every Wednesday for valuable industry insights and networki
Across the globe, there are over 700 million Instagrammers — more than 300 million of whom use Instagram every single day, sharing an average of 95 million photos and videos per day. Those are huge numbers. And no matter who your audience is — age, gender, occupation, anything — you’ll be sure to reach them through Instagram. So the question becomes … How to promote your business on Instagram? How can you stand out among the other 95 million photos posted each day? How can non-designers and a
This post originally published on September 22, 2014. We’ve updated it here with new extensions, images, and a Product Hunt collection. There are a few actions I perform over and over again as I work through my social media marketing plan. Do you know the feeling? You click on the same few buttons or type in the same URL. And then, one day, someone shows you a browser extension that completely rocks your world for the better. I’d love to share some of those world-rocking browser extensions wi
Instagram has fast become one of the largest, most lucrative social networks: 400 million people use the app every day, more than 15 million businesses use Instagram and Instagram’s users spend more in purchases than any other major social network. That’s a huge audience and a huge opportunity! We’re thrilled at the chance to help you succeed there. There are many different tactics and strategies for finding success on Instagram—timing, consistency, hashtags, links, and more. Being able to ac
There’s only one shortcut in life, according to David Cancel. The serial entrepreneur (and sometimes Buffer advisor) is currently working on his fifth startup, Drift, which allows you to talk to your website visitors and customers in real-time, from anywhere. But his biggest passion—and his top secret to a great life—is continuous, voracious learning. It’s a topic he explores in his own podcast, Seeking Wisdom. (It’s one of our CEO, Joel’s, favorites!) His startup background runs deep: He’s f
It’s easy to get tunnel vision as a marketer. You’ve got lots of goals to achieve, and only so many hours in the day to get there. So you put your head down, get focused, and get results. At the same time, it’s important to let yourself be inspired by others. Our industry can be creative, groundbreaking and a lot of fun. If you’re in need of a marketing recharge, here are 28 amazing marketing campaigns and experiments—and the amazing people who dreamed them up. Read on, and get inspired to ad