Blog - Page 61

A collection of 2,459 blog posts

News and TrendsMar 7, 2016
Google Debuts a New Way to Share Content In Search

Google has started to experiment with an entirely new, almost Twitter-like format of search results. These results could eventually allow any celebrity or business to have a content feed built directly into Google Search results. The new results, which have been rolled out for US presidential candidates and selected small businesses, feel like stripped out versions of Google+ posts and have been given prominent positions on search result pages. The product is being positioned as an “experiment

Self-ImprovementMar 4, 2016
What We’re Listening To: 57 Podcasts Recommended by the Buffer Team and Audience

Check out our new podcast! Hey there, podcast fans! We recently launched a new podcast of our very own, Buffer CultureLab! We’d love for you to check it out and share any thoughts, feedback or ideas with us! You can listen on iTunes here or Google Play here. :) OK, now back to the post! We’ve talked a lot about podcasts at Buffer. We’ve shared some top marketing podcasts. We’ve talked about podcasting tools. We’ve even provided a blueprint for starting your own podcast. But one thing we have

Customer ServiceMar 2, 2016
The 6 Step Playbook for Handling Social Media Complaints

Dealing with complainers and haters in social media can, of course, be tricky. What you need is a framework for how to do it right. This is that framework: F-E-A-R-S: You may notice that I didn’t include “be fast” as a specific component. This is because it is axiomatic. Today, nearly 40% of all social media complainers who expect a response, expect that response to arrive within 60 minutes, according to the research I conducted for Hug Your Haters .

News and TrendsMar 2, 2016
Facebook Now Ranks Live Videos Higher in the News Feed (Plus A Quick Guide on How to Use Facebook Live Video)

The Facebook News Feed is designed to deliver the best, most relevant content from the people and Pages you’re closest to. Even if that content was posted a few hours ago. That approach isn’t a great fit with Live video, though. It doesn’t matter if a video was broadcast live if you missed it and had to catch a replay. To counter this Facebook have made some updates to the way the News Feed works when it comes to displaying Live video

Tips / How ToMar 1, 2016
Making Waves: A Guide to Getting Started With Social Audio on Anchor

Social media has evolved to become inherently visual, with text, video, and photos dominating on almost every platform. Sharing a great looking photo on Instagram is quick and easy, as is sharing a video to Facebook, but until now, creating and sharing audio content has been very difficult. Anchor is looking to change that. Anchor is a free iOS app that makes it easy to broadcast short audio clips in seconds. Listeners can talk back, sparking instant group conversations.

OpenMar 1, 2016
The Power of Your Point of View

I often read quotes, blogs and books by some of the great minds of startups , and realize that I don’t fully take on board what they mean until some time later. A while back, I reached a point where I felt like I understood the following Basecamp quote: “Great businesses have a point of view, not just

OpenFeb 29, 2016
Transparent Pricing 2016: Here’s Where Every Penny of Your Buffer Subscription Goes

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. I truly believe our value of transparency makes Buffer a better company than we might be otherwise. There wasn’t one specific reason why we began to share so openly about nearly everything we do, like: * Salaries of all team members * Revenues of Buffer’s combined paid plans, consisting of the Awesome

Optimizing for Slow Motion Video in iOS

When Buffer first introduced video on our platform, it was quite clear that the feature would be a perfect fit for our mobile users. We know that videos can be an important part of a social media strategy, so making sure this rolled out to our whole audience was important to us. Fortunately, we were able to get things moving quite fast on mobile. Uploading videos to Buffer o

Buffer NewsFeb 25, 2016
Deliver Exceptionally Responsive Customer Support: Introducing Buffer Reply

Editor’s Note: Reply was sunset in May 2020, read more about the decision here. As social media has evolved, our use of social networks has changed: We’ve found new ways to use Twitter, Facebook, and more to share, to communicate, to talk about our favorite things. We engage more than ever with brands and businesses – brands and business like you and yours! At Buffer, we’ve been fortunate to have a front row seat to watch this evolution of social media for businesses, as it’s expanded f

Facebook Reactions: Meet Facebook’s New Supercharged ‘Like’ Button

Your Facebook newsfeed is about to get a whole lot more meaningful. After nearly a year of testing in various markets around the globe, Facebook has now released their new, supercharged ‘like’ button. For the first time, Facebook users globally can now react to status with more than just a thumbs up. Facebook Reactions enable you to express yourself with five additional emojis, alongside a “like.” The new Reactions are: ‘love,’ ‘haha,’ ‘wow,’ ‘sad,’ and ‘angry.’ Curious to learn more about t

OpenFeb 24, 2016
Why Startups Are So Hard, The Future of Buffer and My Biggest Mistake (So Far!): Tweets From My Airplane AMA

On a recent flight to Hawaii, I tried a little experiment and did an “AMA in the Sky.” On a flight (sitting in a chair in the sky with wifi!) ✈️? Got a little time, ask me about @buffer / startups / anything and I’ll reply! — Joel Gascoigne (@joelgascoigne) February 20, 2016 It was incredibly fun and kept me busy for about 2.5 hours, nicely passing some of the flight time. I think I ended up answering

OpenFeb 23, 2016
A Tale of Two Books: How What I Read Affects How I Lead

“Absorb what is useful. Discard what is not. Add what is uniquely your own.” – Bruce Lee I’ve felt lucky to learn so much from being an avid reader in the past few years. I’ve come to believe that there is such immense power and knowledge contained within books. As a natural introvert, I’m a reflective person and love to read books and think about what we could try to apply at Buffer. In fact, we’re such believers in the power of reading at Buffer that all new team members (and family members

Working Remotely: How we develop Buffer over 10 different timezones

At Buffer, we’re a fully distributed team. We recently closed our office in San Francisco and now have a team in 12 different timezones . One of the frequent questions we receive is, “How do you work as a remote developer with so many timezones?” It’s such a great question and helps me reflect on some the unique aspects of working as a full-time developer at Buffer. It’s been such a fun journey working remotely for over t

News and TrendsFeb 18, 2016
Everything You Need to Know About The Latest Twitter Features (And Some Thoughts on Its Future)

This post originally published on February 18, 2016. We’ve updated it here with the latest change to Twitter’s algorithm-based timeline. Over recent months, there has been a lot of debate about the future of Twitter. Growth has halted, share prices have fallen, and some are even saying #RIPTwitter . With all that in mind, the future of Twitter still feels extremely exciting, though. It feels like something big is afoot. And in order to kick

BufferchatFeb 18, 2016
B2B Strategies for Social Media: A Bufferchat Recap

This week in #bufferchat, we were joined by Amanda Vera to explore B2B strategies for social media! We discussed how B2B social media marketing differs from B2C, the particular social media platforms that work well for B2B companies, what metrics are important to focus on, and so much more. Catch our weekly Twitter chat [https://buf

OpenFeb 16, 2016
From the Other Side: What I Learned As a Partner On a Buffer Retreat

As a psychotherapist in the mental health and counseling industry and the partner of a Buffer team member , I jumped at the chance to attend Buffer’s recent retreat in Hawaii . I was curious to learn more about the world that my partner is so passionate about—this particular job has affected him so profoundly. And as my own industry is built on ideas of empathy, relationships, and human interaction, I hoped to ge

Self-ImprovementFeb 15, 2016
Productive Failure: How to Keep Going When You Feel Like Your Work Sucks

“Everyone sits in the prison of his own ideas; he must burst it open.” — Albert Einstein Einstein was right about a lot of things, but in my mind this sentiment is one of his finest discoveries (OK, the general theory of relativity is pretty good, too). Creating—building something from nothing and sharing it with the world—requires a lot of bravery. In the end, it can feel a bit like breaking yourself free. I’ve chronicled both my own idea prison [https://buffer.com/resources/6-ways-brain-stops-m

Tips / How ToFeb 15, 2016
11 Facebook Tips, Tricks and Facts You Probably Don’t Already Know

Over 1.5 billion people regularly use Facebook. And as the social network has grown, the rate at which Facebook shares news, and releases new features and products has accelerated. It can be a little hard to keep up sometimes. With this in mind, I’d love to share 11 Facebook tips, tricks, and facts with you. This post will give you plenty of great stuff to help you get the most out of and better understand Facebook. From why you get shown certain ads and which types of posts get the most eng

OpenFeb 11, 2016
The Transparent Pay Revolution: Inside the Science And Psychology of Open Salaries

How many people know your salary? Your boss, of course. Your partner, perhaps. Maybe a few friends you can trust. What if everyone knew it? And not just everyone at your company; everyone like everyone—Internet commenters. Friends of friends. People you’ve never met. This is the experience of every team member at Buffer, where we’ve been sharing our salaries with the world since 2013. And we’re not alone in breaking the salary taboo: * The startup SumAll shares employee salaries within the

Slack meet Looker. An experiment in bringing data to the team.

A while back I read a pretty inspiring blog post, Serving Analytics the Right Way It’s a great read by Kevin Teh, a Data Scientist at OpenDoor. Like at Buffer, they also use Looker as an analytics platform. One part of the post I really liked was the idea of ‘Bringing data to the Team’. “all of the data is updated in real time without requiring an analyst to do any repetitive manual work. However, t

OpenFeb 9, 2016
When Transparency Meets Inconsistency: My Philosophy on Sharing Openly Even As We Change Course

I’ve been fortunate to have many great mentors over the years, and as a result I try to spend a lot of time helping other founders. When Buffer was going all the way with our self-management experiment , I was meeting weekly with someone who championed this concept within her company and successfully got the team started in this direction. After several chats, Buffer hit a key phase of growth and I wasn’t able

Tips / How ToFeb 9, 2016
How to Add and Manage Multiple Accounts on Instagram

Instagram has now released one of its most requested features. The ever-popular photo sharing app announced that following the release of version 7.15 for iOS and Android users will have the ability to switch between multiple accounts. This news is sure to make power users and social media managers jump with joy as managing multiple accounts for brands (or your pets) has been a time-consuming task up until now. Here’s a super-quick guide on how to add and manage multiple accounts on Instagram

OverflowFeb 8, 2016
From Idea to App in 45 Days: How We Built a Mobile Tool for Our Remote Team’s Retreat

Solving the challenges we face at Buffer has always brought us to some unique places. From trying many different forms of management to recovering from a serious hacking incident, we are always learning valuable lessons along the way. Recently, we just wrapped up our 7th Buffer retreat. As our distributed team from corners all around the globe prepared to meet up in Hawaii, we thought one thing that we could improve would be a way of letting everyone on the team know where things are happening

AdvertisingFeb 8, 2016
The Best 5 Minutes We Spend on Ads: See the Daily Ritual We Use to Boost Traffic to Our Best Posts

The world of paid ads can sometimes feel a little overwhelming, especially if you’re new to the game and wondering where to even start. Wouldn’t it be nice to find a nice and easy (and effective) way of dipping your toes in? I’m only a few months removed from this post exploring paid ads as a total noob, which I remain, and I’ve done my very best since to be a sponge for all the paid ads experiments and strategies I can find. We just so happened to come onto a neat one here at Buffer. It’s s