Blog - Page 72
A collection of 2,517 blog posts
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
In the book, Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell provides a unique blueprint to understanding the success of such monolithic figures as the Beatles and Bill Gates. In one section, Gladwell illustrates the life of a Jewish immigrant family who came to New York after fleeing the Nazis in Europe. Despite such difficult circumstances, they found tremendous hope and meaning in starting a garment business together: “When Borgenicht came home at night to his children, he may have been tired, but he was his ow
There are a stunning amount of social networks out there, offering some inventive, engaging ways for people to connect and share with one another. Which ones should you be on? Beyond the big six networks—Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Instagram, and Pinterest—there are dozens more that are quickly rising in usage or are super valuable for particular audiences and niches. It’s a ton to keep track of. It can be a mystery to know where to spend your time. I pulled up some numbers on these
We’ve been excited recently to learn more and more about the best way to approach Pinterest marketing. And we’ve been inspired by tons of great Pinners who have shared their learnings already. Jeff Sieh is one whom we greatly admire for his Pinterest presence. A social media consultant and speaker, Jeff has built a strong community on Pinterest and shared his best Pinterest tips and strategies with us at #bufferchat. Highlights from the #bufferchat with Jeff Sieh are below, and you can catch t
April was a fun month for the Buffer team, with Buffer for Pinterest being a key big task and milestone for us as a company. Here are the latest numbers: Buffer metrics in April 2,351,405 total registered users (+3.6%) 200,125 monthly active users (-3.3%) 49,728 average daily active users (-1.6%) $509,161 monthly recurring revenue (+4.0%) $6.11M annual recurring revenue (+4.0%) $2,165,528 cash in bank 32 team members across the world 23 cities, 9 countries, 4 continents The big news in terms
As we’ve started to dig in on the best way to connect with our audience on Pinterest, we came across an interesting question: How can we best create visual content for Pinners to Pin? We’re not in one of the top niches for Pinning: food and drink, crafts, home decor. How can we make sure that every blog post we write is as Pinnable as possible? It’s been a fun experiment to see what’s worked. I’ll be happy to share with you some of the best practices we dug up with our research and how any br
Like millions before me I read How to Win Friends and Influence People and was blown away by the power of this book. I can’t believe that I hadn’t read it until recently and feel like I have wasted some precious opportunities to optimize certain situations in life. Some of the stories in the book were so incredible that they seemed almost too good to be true. I finished the book with two questions: * Will this work for me? * How can I optimize my life while also optimizing the lives of those
If you sell something online or if you run a business with an online presence—even if you’re just having a good time growing your personal brand—you’ll have the honor and the privilege of chatting directly with customers. 24 hours a day. 7 days a week. This always-on mentality is an amazing privilege, and at the same time it can provide some challenges for small businesses. How can you best respond when conversations are happening constantly? And what if they’re not all positive? How do you ma
What do you do when you start a blog? Most people jump right in. They choose a theme, browse around for awesome plugins, set up Mailchimp and do all this other… stuff, before they sit down and think it through. I’ve learned that when you do this, it’s easy to end up with a really pretty blog….with very few readers. When I joined Canva a couple months ago,instead of writing a word or improving the blog’s design, I spent the first month simply building a strategy. Today I want to tell you abou
When I joined Buffer a few months ago, I figured my best chance to add value to the team would be to use my background in statistics, data and growth. But I recently had the opportunity to drop what I was working on and spend one of the final weeks of my Buffer boot camp solely on customer support for an entire week. It wasn’t a mandatory assignment; more a proposed journey to a different side of the company that could give me a new perspective of Buffer as a product and organization. Because
Just the other day, peeking into the social media schedule here at Buffer, I noticed that it was full of wonderfully-worded, completely click-worthy, queued posts—posts that I spent zero time writing or adding. Such is the beauty of collaborating together on social media sharing. Taking a team approach to filling a queue or managing a social channel is a splendid way of saving time on social media. You don’t have to do it all yourself. Others have amazing ideas and content to share. And of
Sometimes looking through your social media statistics can reveal some fun surprises. This was the case for us this month at Buffer. I looked a little closer into the stats from all of our tweets, including all the amazing replies by our support heroes. There’s some amazing hidden virality to these tweets! And there’s a great opportunity here to delight your customers and further your brand’s reach at the same time. Continue reading to see how this played out for us recently, along with all o
Whether you’re a community manager, a social media marketer, a PR pro or a digital strategist, chances are good you could use a sounding board once in a while. Joining a group of likeminded professionals is a great way to bounce around ideas, ask and answer questions and share industry news and tips. Luckily, there are lots of communities out there where both new and seasoned pros can go to talk shop and get help—whether your preferred network is Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or Google+! Here’s
A few days ago, I was in bed, getting ready to fall asleep. Often when I’m lying in bed, I listen to a talk by Thich Nhat Hanh on SoundCloud. I find his voice and insights very soothing and it helps me calm my thoughts down and go to sleep gently. That night again, I was listening to one of his talks called “The 4 Qualities of Happiness.” It started off with a great intro and ideas around how to live a happy life by grounding yourself and how to do it. It talked about what true freedom means,
From the fun and silly (#FiveWordsToRuinADate, anyone?) to hard-hitting international news headlines, trending topics on social media have the power to keep us both aware and entertained. Marketers have long recognized the potential of these highly-trafficked, highly-searched (at least for a short while) terms as a way to get in front of a big and often new audience. It can be a risky gamble to go big on these fleeting opportunities, but the rewards of the right post at the right time can be e
