Blog - Page 67
A collection of 2,481 blog posts
We’ve been lucky at Buffer to receive a number of acquisition offers along our journey so far. When I mention this to people, a key question that often comes up is “how did you decide not to sell?” The earliest offer we had for Buffer was not long after we had started, and it felt fairly easy for us to say no, simply because we felt we wanted to see where further our current path leads. In many ways, the reason we haven’t accepted an acquisition offer is in order to continue on our path. How
How do the best-performing Facebook pages get all that amazing engagement? And how can you and I do the same? The Facebook pages that are doing wonderfully well with likes, shares, and comments on their posts have so much to teach about new tactics and worthwhile strategies . Our friends at BuzzSumo analyzed 500 million (!) of these Facebook posts, and we’ve learned some amazing takeaways that you can im
I recently re-read two books that had a big impact on my upbringing: The Alchemist and The Little Prince. Those two novels capture a fascinating concept: Serendipity. I love how the characters embark on journeys where they learn a lot by trying to find their own path, through many chance encounters and learnings. Outside of the fantasy world and back in our own reality , I got to wondering what these concepts look like in my own life. We all want to maximize our productivity, and many of us t
How well do you know the humble GIF? The Graphics Interchange Format (the GIF’s fancy, formal name) has been around for decades—it was introduced by CompuServe way back in 1987 and went on to become one of the first image formats commonly used on the web. Today, GIFs are a big part of social media—and you can now share them directly through Buffer with Buffer for Video! In honor of this pivotal moment, let’s take a moment to praise the often misunderstood GIF, a pivotal and growing part of In
Emily Ahlbum of Emagine joined #bufferchat to chat all about content marketing. How do you define it? Where do you find your best ideas? and more! Catch our weekly Twitter chat, #bufferchat, every week on Wednesdays, 9 am PT/Noon ET/4 pm GMT, for valuable industry insights and networking with nearly 400 other smart marketers and community managers. How do you define “content marketing?” From
I like to think of myself as a “doer”—someone who can make things happen by himself. On occasion, I neglect the role that help from others has played and over-estimate the things I’ve achieved himself. Often, when I catch myself thinking like that, I’m a bit disappointed and I wish I was instead more connected to reality and the people around me. The most recent time I pondered on that topic, I decided to go through my life and re-collect the many incredible offers of generosity I was able to
A prevalent concept is the idea that as a CEO or executive of a company, you need to shield your team from bad news, the risks of a startup, and other negative aspects that are inevitable on the startup journey. I believe this concept could actually be quite dangerous. One of our core values at Buffer is to default to transparency. This means absolutely everything in the company is shared knowledge. It was scary at first, not least because the idea goes very much against the grain. I found m
You’ve read all the articles and social media blogs, and you’ve heard that you should be on Twitter, you need to be on Facebook, and you’re losing out if you’re not on Pinterest. Is that truly the case? Turns out, most social media experts believe in prudence: that you might miss out on connecting with your true audience if you’re spreading yourself too thin on too many social networks. But who is your true audience? How do you get to know them? Where are they hanging out? How can you find
Rachel Daley from MadeFreshly joined #bufferchat to chat about Instagram marketing! Catch our weekly Twitter chat, #bufferchat, every week on Wednesdays, 9 am PT/Noon ET/4 pm GMT, for valuable industry insights and networking with nearly 400 other smart marketers and community managers. When did you discover the power of Instagram for business? From MadeFreshly: * We were trying to grow our other platforms and it was SO HARD. But we got more engagement on IG, so
How can you create content with the most efficiency and ease? Are you challenging yourself to come up with new ideas and new ways of imparting information about your business? Are you experimenting with the different forms of content that your customers may like to read? We’d love to help you get there. The 2015 edition of the annual B2C Content Marketing Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends—North America report put together by the Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs found that while 69%
What does it mean to have a “startup mindset”? We’ve always tried to offer as much insight as we can into how we hire at Buffer. With Buffer’s core value of transparency, it feels like the right thing to do. In the past, we’ve often shared this diagram with teammates working in hiring and with potential candidates, showing the four main components that we’ve grown to believe make for a great fit at our startup. Lately we’ve been giving the “strong startup mindset biased toward action” quadran
My first day at Google in 2011 felt a bit like joining Hogwarts: you’re excited and not entirely sure what you’ll be doing! I was happy to do anything and learn in the process! For the next two years, I was lucky enough to train Google employees on Gmail and to pitch Gmail to companies of all sizes. Although I’m no longer affiliated with Google—I now work here at Buffer and on Remotive.io —I still use these 7 Gmail tips that have a daily impact on my work to this day. Ta
Before he became the co-founder of Pinterest, Ben Silbermann moved to California and started working for Google in customer support before eventually starting a business. He says, of his then move from Des Moines, Iowa, to the Valley: Being close to people that inspire you is a very good first step. Fittingly, that’s exactly what his company, Pinterest, now makes possible: Allowing people to get close to the brands,
What makes you stop scrolling through an article, open up a social media app and hit the share button? Is it logic, emotion , or something else? Turns out, there’s more to social sharing than just measuring metrics: Psychology . The strange nature of our brains is the reason we hotly debate the color of a dress
We’re always working to make Buffer better—whether it’s through big new features like Buffer for Video or smaller changes to existing features. Our customer development process is so important no matter the size of the change. In this post, I would love to share an improvement that we made to the Feeds feature in Buffer and how it happened based directly on feedback from you, our awesome customers. Digging into our Feeds feature We recently made an exciting move towards more structure at Buf
How are things going for you on social media? I remember sometimes being a bit fuzzy with my answer to that question. I’ll have been really enjoying sharing and engaging with people, forgetting completely about the awesome stats and analysis at my fingertips. And knowing these social media stats can be incredibly valuable—for connecting deeper with my audience, for curating [https://buffer.g
Ready to get started on YouTube? Or wish your YouTube Channel were performing better? I’m here to help! YouTube is effectively the second largest search engine in the world (behind only Google). With video becoming more and more important (we even launched Buffer for video last week!), now is the perfect time to start optimizing your YouTube Channel and begin reaping the benefits of a strong video strategy, including connecting with new potential customers, getting a better search presence and
Many successful marketing campaigns involve groups. Some companies have their own LinkedIn or Google+ groups, while others stick to participating in relevant groups and chats. Whichever strategy your company takes, being involved in groups is a great way to find community, engage current audience members and prospective customers, build your brand, add value to your customer’s lives, and keep track of the industry’s climate. And now, there’s a new alternative when it comes to social media grou
Sales Prodigy joined #Bufferchat to share their experience in social selling. Why is community important for social selling? How would you get started in social selling? Catch our weekly Twitter chat, #bufferchat, every week on Wednesdays, 9 am PT/Noon ET/4 pm GMT, for valuable industry insights and networking with nearly 400 other smart marketers and community managers. How do you define social selling? From Sal
At the start of July, we had our 6th team retreat! Despite the substantial cost of this and growing the team faster than ever, we are still profitable and the bank balance has gone up since last month. We are very happy with this slack we have and the health of the business, and at the same time we would like to grow the team faster and continue filling validated roles. I’m excited to share the latest update of everything going on at Buffer: Key metrics * 2,592,194 total registered users (
People are brilliant and amazing. I’ll often run across an incredibly cool social media strategy or format or tool or link and think to myself, “Whoa, how’d they do that?” There are things like shortened custom URLs, evergreen queues, personalized recommendations, and more. And I’m so inspired by the cleverness and resourcefulness—not to mention the great value and utility—of these methods. So I’ve gone about trying to figure them all out. Check out my DIY tips below for putting together eac
Sometimes people ask us: “Do you think there are any downsides of being so transparent in the way that Buffer is?” Usually, I can only think of the amazing things that have happened to us through being transparent and open. Recently, however, there was one learning that taught us that transparency isn’t a blanket solution for absolutely everything. For a few months we experimented with completely transparent feedback—even for those things that might be potentially difficult to hear or say, as
Social media is constantly evolving. As soon as you feel like you’ve got Facebook and Twitter figured out, suddenly there’s Vine and Snapchat and a whole bunch of exciting new stuff to learn. It keeps things interesting, and keeps social media managers on our toes. Lately it seems like more and more social media managers are enthusiastic about Instagram and the opportunities there to engage with fans and share great photos and videos. And the opportunities are big! With more than 300 million
Social media has entered the video era. In 2015 we’ve seen the addition of video on Twitter and a giant push by Facebook to make video a major component of the News Feed . Check out some staggering social media video stats: * The number of videos in Facebook feeds has grown by 360% [http://media.fb.com/2015/01/07/what