Blog - Page 71
A collection of 2,507 blog posts
How many photos of you are on your phone right now? These days, humans take almost 1 trillion photos a year. (To put that into context, that’s more photos every few minutes than in the entire 19th century.) And lots of these photos are selfies—self-portraits, usually taken with a smartphone. As of this writing, nearly 300 million Instagram photos had been tagged with the selfie label. We love getting into the “whys” of social media psychology, so in this post I set out to discover why we love
Whenever we have the chance to chat with folks about social media stats and marketing strategies, we are amazed at the many unique ways you all go about charting a path to social media success. Every industry and niche—every social profile, even—is unique. Non-profits are a great example of a segment of social media with its own unique elements and expectations. The non-profit structure—donation-backed, humanitarian-focused, member-based—presents an opportunity for some really neat ways of put
In May, we continued our strong revenue growth, and we’re also growing the team faster than ever before. Here are the latest insights and numbers about Buffer: Current Buffer metrics * 2,432,382 total registered users (+3.4%) * 203,449 monthly active users (+1.7%) * 49,202 average daily active users (-1.1%) * $532,350 monthly recurring revenue (+4.6%) * $6.39m annual recurring revenue (+4.6%) * $2,267,067 cash in bank * 34 team members across the world * 25 cities, 10 countries, 4 co
I love to see new stats and research about how to best share to social media. If it’s research-backed or numbers-driven, sign me up. These actionable tips are what drive a lot of our experiments at Buffer as we’re keen to see if the best advice from these studies meshes with our experience, too. And there’s a lot of new info to go off of. I’ve collected 10 of the latest surprising, revealing studies on social media here in this post, with takeaways and insight into social media timing, Instag
Starting early this week you may have noticed some changes around how posting to Facebook works through Buffer. We could’ve been a whole lot more mindful around this and are so sorry for the confusion we’ve caused. Today I wanted to briefly give an update around these changes and create a place where we can keep you posted with any updates. A little background Earlier this week we were notified by the folks over at Facebook that a few flows within Buffer around how we suggest post content wer
It’s been an amazing month at Buffer working on some fun social media strategies and thinking ahead to some big new ideas. What’s a good Medium strategy? How can we gain more followers on Instagram? What might a Buffer podcast look like? I’d love to share with you what’s been on our plates recently, along with all the social media stats from our Buffer accounts. It’d be great to hear your thoughts also on the content we can write that would be most helpful for you! Inside Buffer’s social m
We have Google Analytics installed on all the Buffer blogs (Social, Open, Overflow, and certainly also Happiness in the future). I imagine you might have it installed, too. And though I could be in a much better habit of checking GA often, I am grateful to know that all the stats are there for me, whenever I choose to look. The next question, then: Where should I be looking for helpful social media stats in GA? There’s just so much to look at, with so many new and unusual titles. I’ve done my
If you find yourself intimidated by the concept of creating video content, you’re not alone. Every minute of the day, YouTube users alone upload 72 hours of new video content, not to mention uploads to Facebook, Vimeo, Daily Motion or Wistia. With all that noise, making your video stand out, increasing engagement and finding ways to add value is a mammoth task; which makes doing it right even sweeter. Fortunately, there are tons of great blueprints for creating valuable, meaningful video cont
In December, my friend and co-worker Brian casually mentioned to me that he would love to explore Asia. I love Asia. I lived in Japan as a kid for 3.5 years, and I lived in Hong Kong for 6 months in 2012. It was a no-brainer for me to jump on the opportunity and travel around Asia with Brian. I had been in San Francisco about a year and was craving exploring again, having done a lot of travel in the 4.5 years since starting Buffer (which even contributed to us becoming a distributed team). I
Imagine having a quick and fast way to get up to speed with social media or to get your work done in less time (and with more confidence). When I’m in a pinch or into something new, one of the first places I turn is toward a template. I’ve built a stash of headline formulas, social media updates, and more to help organize my mind when it comes to working fast and learning something new. Templates can be a lifesaver and a time-saver. Once you’ve got your templates, we’d love to help schedule
One of Buffer’s values is working smarter, not harder, and the #bufferchat community gathered to offer tips and ideas on living smarter. How do you manage your energy throughout the day? What are your go-to productivity tips? Are there certain times of the day you produce your best work? Our community shared their thoughts with us! Catch the full recap here. What does “working smarter, not harder” mean to you? * “”Work smarter, not harder” for me means maximizing efficiency. W/ high levels
The Internet seems full with useful, entertaining, and educational places to spend time, not to mention important places for brands and businesses to connect with their audience. One site that keeps coming up for us is Quora, the community-fueled question-and-answer site. We’ve mentioned it in a handful of articles on topics like idea curation and content sources. And it’s had us wondering: What all can a marketer do with Quora? I was excited to research this and find out all that’s availabl
I have a confession to make: I’m a grown woman who peppers pretty much every text and social media post I send with smileys, hearts, stars and various other decorations. Emojis have taken over my communication—and I’m far from alone. According to Swyft Media, 74 percent of people in the U.S. regularly use stickers, emoticons or emojis in their online communication, sending an average of 96 emojis or stickers per day. All this adds up to a total of 6 billion emoticons or stickers flying around
It seems like there’s more great stuff to read today than ever before. And still, finding the good stuff that’s just right for you or your brand can take a lot of time, according to this survey by Vertical Response: When you’re sifting through the whole internet, it can help to have a guide. What if could open your inbox every day to find new, relevant, curated articles that you’d be thrilled to share to social media? We’ve written before about the rise of high-quality niche newsletters, a fo
Brian Fanzo is a speaker, podcaster and expert in all things social. He’s been a long-time supporter of #bufferchat and joined us as a special guest to share his thoughts on the rising trend of video and it’s role in social engagement. Catch the full recap here and view a replay of his Meerkat recording here! Why is video’s role in social engagement increasing? From Brian: * “It’s all about the noise… Finding ways to standout is key… Video allows RAW, Authentic, Real-Time engagement!” Mor
At the start of 2014, I decided I need to make some changes in my life. I was working in an office in one of the coolest startups in Cape Town. I had worked in an office pretty much all of my career. I was also commuting to work and back, taking about an hour and a half of my day. Commuting has always been part of work for me too. I have a beautiful family; my wife who works from home and away on weekends shooting as a wedding photographer, my four-year-old son and my baby daughter, who had ju
The surge of videos on social media and content marketing channels has come quickly. In the past year alone, Facebook has averaged more than 1 billion video views each day. Video has become go-to visual content for a huge number businesses and brands. And I’d love to share how you can do video, too, no matter your resources or skills. I researched all the best and easiest video editing tools that are ideal for novice video producers with limited budgets and busy schedules. I tried each one ou
What does it mean to bring your whole self to work? As part of Buffer’s evolution into self-management, we’ve been exploring this question a lot. We’ve long considered the Buffer team a family all its own. Because we’re a small, distributed team, we form a close bond through shared experiences and values, digital tools and our regular company retreats. But the entirety of the Buffer family goes beyond the team members we see on Sqwiggle every day—it also includes spouses, partners, parents, c
One of the worst feelings in the world of inbound marketing and enrollment is to write an incredible blog post, publish it, share it, and then … crickets. I actually just shuddered a little bit thinking about it. (Because I have been there way, way too many times!) It’s a lot better when the opposite happens: when you experience the thrill of seeing an expert in your space share and promote your content for you. This post will give you a practical, actionable approach to writing and designing
We’re quite keen to always be learning new things at Buffer—new social media strategies , new languages, new skills and experiments . And we love learning together —with each other and with you. One area that we’ve been fortunate to gain some knowledge and experience is with social media sharing [https://buff
Having the ability to work from anywhere in the world has led to lots of travel adventures for members of the Buffer team. Niel toured Asia while working remotely. Rodolphe sailed across the Atlantic. Joel recently toured 11 cities in 3 months, and Octa is on a month-long cruise (with wifi!) as I write this. And the beauty of a remote team spread around the world where you make your own schedule is that you don’t even have to travel the world to reap the benefits. Remote work can mean spendin
If you’ve been looking to supercharge your social media strategy, you probably know a lot about the benefits of using images. But, how much do you know about actually creating scientifically shareable images? Turns out, there’s tons of actionable, research-backed advice on how to create social media images that get shared—the ideal colors, fonts, text, and more, all leveraging what we know about design, psychology and the Internet to get more shares and engagement. By the end of this article
When we wrote previously about how we hire at Buffer, one key component was that everyone we hire have usage of and experience with the Buffer product. That’s still the case today. In the past we have asked folks to use the product for at least 2-3 months consistently before we would consider them for a role. This feels a bit limiting, and discounts the fresh perspective a newcomer to a product can bring. Today we are a bit more flexible with this requirement, though we would definitely expec
When I joined Hubstaff a few months ago to spearhead the growth of the company, I noticed we weren’t utilizing the full potential of Buffer. In order to increase our social media growth and take full advantage of this tool, we developed a few strategies that resulted in overwhelming success. The engagement teams at Hubstaff began to use Buffer to share engaging content at optimal times and frequencies based on real data. Our results? After implementing these strategies, we gained 350% more blo
