Blog - Page 62
A collection of 2,459 blog posts
Not too long ago, our pals at Product Hunt were kind enough to ask Buffer founder Joel Gascoigne to host an “ask me anything” chat session . 10,000+ words and many dozen questions later, we wanted to share some of our favorite questions and answers with you, too. 1. Joel’s average weekday Q: What’s your average weekday like? A: These days I generally have a lot of quick meetings with different people in the team.
The Buffer team has just returned from our 7th all-team retreat in Hawaii , during which more than half of the team was meeting face-to-face for the very first time. One of our first-timers, Ross Parmly, shares this reflection of the week. Celebration has followed so much of my Buffer journey. Celebrating the moment Carolyn ‘s name showed up in my inbox for the first time. Ce
Awhile back, we were fortunate to try some neat email tactics that helped double our email list growth in just one month’s time. Then we stopped growing our list altogether. We shifted our learnings from growing an email list into growing Buffer signups. And we’ve yet to go back. Odd? Strange? Counterintuitive? Yep, probably all those things. Most online marketing advice today will advise you to build an email
Facebook carousel ads are extremely engaging and fun way to promote your business. According to data collected by Kinetic Social , these ads can also drive up to 10 times more traffic to advertisers’ websites than static sponsored posts on Facebook. And LOVOO found that they got a 72%higher click-through rate versus single image mobile app ads. It feels clear t
It’s one of the biggest pieces that will make or break us as we try to become a great company, and I only recently realized it. We’ve been back and forth a number of times about the topic of feedback, and it’s an area where we still have a lot of work to do to get right. People often say, “You have this value of positivity and no complaining [https://buffer.com/resources/no-
A few years ago, my girlfriend proposed an interesting thought: How well do I really know my friends and family? My initial thought was that of course I knew these people. We all get along and things are great. I’m friendly, they’re friendly. What more is there? However, it wasn’t as simple as I thought. This simple question started a reflection over the past few years on how I really interact in my relationships. Was I really curious and deeply invested in the people who I call my family and
You’ll notice that I made the title of this post sound quite impressive (at least I hope I did!). But the great thing about this story is that anyone can have such an impressive outcome, and it’s not at all as daunting as it might sound. In fact, all these outcomes came from doing small things every day over a long period. I’m a big fan of working smarter, not harder and finding small ways to make my work more
What is the next big wave of social media? Maybe it’s Peach—or another hot new social network. Maybe it’s a strategy like posting times or text faces. (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧ It’s really hard to say! (And yet here I am saying it.) ? To ride the wave of the next big thing in social media, it often takes a lot of trial-and-error, a good deal of trendspotting, and some courage to try new things. I’ve spent some time reading up on what’s to come for social media and I’d love to get your thoughts on three n
As a social media startup, Buffer is constantly learning about what it takes to build great products. Whether it’s giving a unique role to our Product Creators or evolving the structure of our teams , we try to treat everything as an experiment with opportunities to continually learn and improve. One of our more recent sources of learning has been the launch of Pablo , our so
Imagine getting off a plane in a new state or country, heading to a place you’ve never seen, to spend a week with 70-plus coworkers you’ve never met (plus some of their partners and kids). That’s what happened to more than half of the Buffer team over the weekend. This week, our fully distributed team is all in one place—Honolulu, Hawaii—for our 7th all-team retreat . We’ll spend a full we
“Could you pop into a quick morning standup, Ash?” “I’ll be there in a minute,” I’d reply. “I’m just finishing up a Facebook post.” As a community manager, most of my mornings would start along these lines. One of the toughest, and most time-consuming, tasks in community and social media management is finding a stream of high-quality, engaging content to share with your audience every day. A social media calendar is an excellent way to keep on top of this. But staring at a blank calendar can
A lot of people want to help women succeed in the business world lately, which is an awesome trend to see. There are an ever-growing number of programs and initiatives focusing on everything from getting girls interested in coding to getting professional women into leadership roles. One interesting offshoot of this trend has been an emphasis on language and speech—it feels like more and more well-meaning people are giving thought to the words women should say [https://www.washingtonpost.com/b
If you’ve been on social media for any length of time, you may be well aware that images can help boost your online engagement. But while it’s true that a picture can add some pizazz to your posts, it’s not always easy to determine the best type of image to publish. They can also take a long time to create, especially when you’re not sure what you’re trying to communicate. Thankfully, deciding which format best suits your posts can be a straightforward process. In this post, I’ll outline a few
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 remember the feeling—the sleepless night beforehand, the nervousness in the pit of my stomach. I was waiting for the results of my annual performance review. Performance reviews—most often yearly—are how many companies provide feedback to their employees. They often involve a numeric rating and maybe
The Oxford English Dictionary’s word of the year for 2015 was in fact not a word. It was the ‘Face with Tears of Joy’ emoji. This one ? You’ll no doubt recognise it – here’s how it looks across different platforms: This feels like a significant acknowledgement that the way a large number of us communicate is shifting. It’s no longer just teenagers or younger people who are using emoji’s, hashtags and neologisms – they’ve reached the mainstream. In this post, we dig a bit deeper into how ou
First college graduate from my family. Vegan. Working mom. Cherokee. Mormon. Queer. There are so many beautiful forms of diversity, and we’ve had an amazing crash course. In spring of 2015 we opened up Buffer’s Diversity Dashboard , a passion project for me and many other Buffer teammates focused on creating an inclusive team. The dashboard shares real-time data on the demographic diversity of the Buffer team, as well as thos
Hi there! This is an out of date post that we’ve kept around for transparency purposes. Go here to view the latest version of this post. One of the things we’ve always been interested in doing at Buffer is looking at compensation differently and transparently. In the latest update of our transparent salaries formula, one key change was that we began to pay teammates more money if they had dependents, or family members who depended on their income. The formula that we originally came up with o
In the #bufferchat this week, Anil Dash shared his thoughts and insights about diversity and inclusivity in the tech world. We discussed how diversity impacts technology, how to work through challenges, and how we can foster a more diverse tech community. It was an hour of thoughtful conversation and idea sharing! Catch our weekly Twitter chat, #bufferchat, every week on Wednesdays, 9 am PT / 12 pm ET / 5 pm UTC, for valua
We talk about Social Media a lot! Everyone wants to be part of it, everyone tries to keep up with it and understand it, and everyone tries to find the latest tips and tricks to be better at it. But what is social media really like? How does it feel to be part of it? What if an alien came to earth and you had to explain social media and what it feels like to them, how would you do it? We have gathered 20 metaphors that we feel explain social media perfectly (okay, technically they are similes,
Every so often a new app will suddenly appear on App Store and get everyone talking. The latest app to do this is Peach – a new social networking app from Dom Hofmann, co-founder of video-based social network Vine. Peach is “a fun, simple way to keep up with friends and be yourself,” and has exploded onto the scene – breaking into the top #10 Social Networking apps in the App Store already (there’s currently no Android version). We decided to drive below the surface and investigate how Peach
The Internet is becoming increasingly cluttered. In 2005, we were reportedly exposed to over 3,500 brand messages per day. Nowadays, that figure is closer to 10,000 (if not already higher). 5.3 trillion display ads are shown online each year, 400 million Tweets sent daily, and 4.75 billion [https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10151908376716729&set=a.10151908376636729.1073741825.2053131672
Life is a mashup of passions, purposes, and pursuits. The role we play at work is only a small part of who we are . Yet often, it’s the only part employers care about. Traditionally, when we arrive at work, we leave something at the office door—and the same applies to getting home. We almost separate into two different personas. In fact, a fascinating study by Deloitte [https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/u
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. Buffer is a fully distributed team, which means that our teammates work from anywhere! Our official headquarters is in California, but we don’t have an office anywhere anymore. Although this is rare, it seems to be a growing trend. As we grow, it has been great to see how larger remote companies such as
For years, there have been rumours flying around that Twitter would one day remove their 140 character limit. It appears that day could be close, as on Tuesday (January 5th, 2016), Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey gave the biggest hint yet that this may become a reality. In his post Dorsey explains : “We’ve spent a lot of time observing what people are doing on Twitter, and we see them taking screenshots of text and tweeting it.” (Dorsey’s post wa