Blog - Page 74
A collection of 2,474 blog posts
Note: We’re lucky to have the chance to experiment quite often with the way we work. Because of this, some experiments come and go. The post you’re about to read is one of these experiments; we learned a ton and are now exploring new approaches! I remember the first time I heard about companies operating with no managers. During a conversation about it with Joel, we were both absolutely baffled. There was no way, we thought, that Buffer could ever work in that way. How can any work get d
If someone were to ask you about your happiest moment yesterday, would you have an answer? How about your happiest moment of 3 months ago? I’ve got an answer for at least 100 of my recent days – and a new perspective on gratitude, thanks to the 100 Happy Days project. The challenge couldn’t be simpler: Take a photo of just one thing that makes you happy each day for 100 days. I knew a bit of what was in store for me once I began chronicling my moments of happy because I first came to know th
Starting a new social media presence from scratch can feel like a big challenge. As I launch my own side project right now, I’m poring over my Buffer analytics as I start at the very beginning to build a following everywhere. Things look very different in these early days as compared to what it must feel like for big, established names who have thousands or millions of fans. Here on the Buffer blog, we’ve written about some great strategies to get your first 1,000 followers that I’ve been foll
The bookshelf in my office holds a single shelf of paperback books that are very special to me. Amidst the nearby clutter of boxes and miscellany (I find the bookshelf is seldom used for books anymore) sits a row of my favorite writing books and reference guides, stacked chronologically from the time I bought them, each one brought down once a year or so for a fun refresher. Some folks read the same novel multiple times for fun. I tend to read the same writing books [https://blog.bufferapp.com
Over the course of the last few years, I’ve come across a huge number of articles that list “The Best Marketing Blogs of 201X” or “Social Media Blogs You Cannot Miss Out On!” I find that a variety of the blogs that I would really like to see on these lists often get overlooked. Often, a fair amount of the mainstream blogs and their content is meant for those starting out in the marketing industry. That’s not a bad thing. These are important lessons, and there are plenty of soc
A while back, I met with a great founder who’s really hustling. We spent some time discussing his idea and I shared some of my experiences with Buffer. When we’d almost finished our 30-minute meeting, he had one last question: “Plan vs build. Where do you stand?” I thought it was a fantastic question. Clearly it’s not a binary choice, yet I think it’s also good to ponder which of the two you should focus on. What does it mean to plan? I believe planning is an essential part of making p
It started out innocently enough. A busy week of errands and a particularly fun weekend filled with dancing, and there it was: A 7 day “streak” of hitting my goal of taking 10,000 steps per day, according to my Jawbone Up. (The Buffer team + family members all get a Jawbone Up as a gift, and we share our steps and sleep stats with each other. I love this because I think it is an amazing way to be super transparent and share our self-improvement efforts with each other. These are two of Buffer’s
At any given moment, any one of Buffer’s staff of nearly 30 could be on our social media accounts chatting with customers, answering questions or scheduling posts for the days or weeks ahead. Thanks to Buffer’s social media management tools and the many other awesome tools that help us out, social media is a team effort here. Maybe it’s the same where you are? We’ve talked about how one person can handle multiple social media accounts on the blog, and now it’s time for the other side of the co
As a teenager I had a period of many years where I stopped reading books completely. I even remember a time where I couldn’t imagine reading books at all. After I graduated and started to be interested in business and startups, I realized the immense power and knowledge contained within books, and I started reading more and more. Today, I can’t imagine even a couple of days passing by without some time spent reading. As an introvert, I’m a reflective person. Sometimes that can be a challenge, s
Whether you’re starting a social media marketing plan from scratch or redefining an existing social media strategy, we’ve found that taking a moment to reflect on some key questions can be a really valuable exercise. These Big Important questions—capital “B,” capital “I”—can help point you down the best path with your social media efforts and ensure that the time you spend is aimed at the right places and toward your top goals. I’ve listed here 25 of the questions that I’ve found most helpful
About 2-3 years ago, I decided I wanted to start to declutter my life gradually. I went from one backpack and a carry-on bag to just one backpack. I count the following things as my belongings at this point: * 6 T-shirts * 2 sweaters, 2 hoodies * 1 coat * 2 pairs of dress-pant sweat-pants * 6 pairs of socks and boxer shorts * 1 backpack * An iPhone, a Kindle, 1 notepad and a MacBook Air (+ keyboard and mouse) * Gym shoes and gym shorts * Various toiletries like toothbrush, contact lens
You may have heard it said that understanding your audience on social media is one of the keys to success with social media marketing. (We may have even said it ourselves a time or two!) Makes a lot of sense. The more you know about your audience, the better you’ll be able to deliver the kind of helpful content and updates they’re interested in. So what might be the simplest, most efficient ways of understanding an audience? This is the part where I often get stuck: Implementing the good advi
Just today, I found out what SOV means. Researching this post, in fact, was the first time I discovered the definition (SOV = “Share of Voice,” by the way!). I had seen it on social media articles and updates and never knew what it meant. Do you have similar acronyms or abbreviations you’ve wondered about? Our social media shorthand is amazingly extensive. We have acronyms and abbreviations for not only the marketing terms that we use but also the way that we chat back and forth with one anot
There are many features of the world that I simply cannot wrap my head around, and one of these has always been time zones. Teammates I work with every day who live in Singapore and Australia are a whole day ahead of me in the USA. Wild! In addition to confounding my brain, time zones also provide some fun and interesting challenges when it comes to how we all work together at Buffer as a fully remote, distributed team. For instance, here’s a glimpse at what our team looked like a while back,
This post originally published on February 13, 2012. We’ve updated it here with the latest, newest information and screenshots. How do you get someone to click on your links on Twitter? This seems like one of the most pressing questions I see coming up day in day out. And rightly so. Figuring out how to attract more people that like what you are posting is one of the most important aspects of being successful on Twitter. While a higher click-through rate is certainly not the only thing to be
The other day, I was at the gym with my co-founder Joel and we started a short discussion about other products as part of Buffer’s product offering we might enjoy building one day. We went through various problems we’d enjoy solving, like online payments, social media monitoring and so forth. At one point, we got into some light brainstorming of one of the areas and the name of a related, prominent startup in the space came up. I said “I know the founder.” That line had nothing to do with the
Do you remember seeing your first emoticon? The first documented use of “:-)” dates back to 1982, when Scott Fahlman proposed that it be used as a “joke marker” on a message board for Carnegie Mellon University computer scientists. Here’s his Internet-changing message: “I propose that the following character sequence for joke markers: “:-)” Read it sideways.” Today, emoticons need a bit less explanation. As social media has grown (and character counts have shrunk), these pictorial representa
I’m excited to write the very first Buffer update of 2015, which is also going to our new Series A investors following our transparent funding round. Welcome to our new investors, and thank you so much once again for joining us on this journey! The latest Buffer metrics: * 2,002,495 total registered users (+3.5%) * 168,455 monthly active users (-1.4%) * 40,430 average daily active users (-0.40%) * $421,787 monthly recurring revenue (+3.0%) * $5.06m annual revenue run-rate (+3.0%) * $2,0
To kick off the first #Bufferchat of 2015, the Buffer team joined in as guests for a chat focused on goal setting and tracking tips and tools. With personal improvement as one of our 10 company values, it is a topic near and dear to our hearts. Check out the full Storify recap here. What are your goals for 2015? * Sunil: “Personal goal for 2015: Would love to bring back meditation as a habit again. Last year was on and off for me. Also hoping to eat healthier, w/ more protein and reducing t
If you’ve ever suffered from writer’s block, procrastinated when you supposed to be writing, or criticized your writing too harshly, this post is for you! Blogger and app developer John Saddington of @DeskPM recently joined us for Bufferchat to discuss writing tools, habits books and more. Catch the full Bufferchat recap on Storify here! What writing tools are essential to your routine? From John: * The first, I use a # of web tools. MediaTemple for hosting a lot of my personal blogs. And
Many of the social media tips we share—the ways to create a marketing plan from scratch, how to get more followers, how to get more clicks—often focus on the small business side of social media marketing. Now imagine achieving social media success when the brand you’re trying to promote is you. Personal branding on social media is a topic we’d love to dive into a bit deeper, starting with this overview of tips and strategies. I’m grateful to have found a number of useful tips on how building a
Towards the end of 2014, Buffer co-founder Leo Widrich came back to his family home in Austria for a visit and was able to join the coworking community space sektor5 for a fireside chat about Buffer’s culture, values, transparency and lots more. The audience at this event asked tons of smart questions, so we thought it would be fun to share the answers with you here. What’s Buffer? Where are you right now? Leo: We are a social media management tool. We help people to publish, schedule and an
This post originally published on May 15, 2013. We’ve updated it here with the latest, newest information, screenshots, and videos. The retweet function has been a favorite way of ours to give appreciation and acknowledgment to the tweets we love. And we’ve often wondered: What happens when we love a lot of tweets? Or when we find an awesome tweet at an odd hour? Being able to schedule your retweets gives you an awesome opportunity to show your support and engagement for other people’s tweets—
What are your digital marketing goals for the months ahead? If you’re looking to increase your content’s social shares (as so many of us are), we’ve got some amazing new research to share on how to create an ideal outreach strategy for your industry. BuzzStream and Fractl have collaborated to give you a jumpstart on optimizing your outreach for social traction. We analyzed 220 high- and low-engagement websites from 11 major verticals that produce content. The result? A roadmap for planning fo
