Blog - Page 74

A collection of 2,517 blog posts

Tips / How ToMar 30, 2015
‘What Should I Post on Facebook?’ 12 Facebook Tactics Working Right Now

If you feel challenged by Facebook marketing these days, you should know you’re not alone. In an increasingly crowded news feed, Facebook’s algorithm updates can make it tough for brands to get much notice. In fact, brands are now responding to plunging organic reach on Facebook by posting more content to Instagram than they are to Facebook, according to a report by research firm L2. But don’t despair; there’s plenty of life left in Facebook yet. We’ve been scouring the web to find out what’s

OpenMar 26, 2015
Helping Your Whole Team Share Your Content on Social Media: Buffer for Teams

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. The short history of how social media developed is still nothing short of incredible. When Facebook started in 2004, strictly for colleges, and Twitter in 2006, mostly for techies in the Bay Area, it was all about individuals connecting with each other. About a decade later, a lot of that has shifted. Wh

ResearchMar 25, 2015
The Research & Science Behind Finding Your Best Profile Picture

One of the first things I do when I join a new social network is to upload a profile picture. But which profile picture should I choose? Is there a best one? Profile pictures have always been a bit of a gray area for me inasmuch as I post a picture I think looks good without knowing its actual effect on my audience . Is there such thing as a perfect, best profil

Content MarketingMar 24, 2015
37+ Tips and Resources For Building a Fine-Tuned Content Marketing Machine From The Ground Up

Back when I started my career in SEO, content marketing didn’t exist—at least not in the way it exists now. We used strategies to boost traction and traffic to websites through the creation of great content—it was content marketing before the term even existed. And it worked. I’ve carried the lessons with me ever since. And I’d love to share them all with you—everything I’ve used to successfully help hundreds of companies benefit from content marketing over the past five years. Here are 37+ t

OpenMar 23, 2015
Top Tips, Tools and Tricks for Remote Work

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 This is an out of date post that we’ve kept around for transparency purposes.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. Rodolphe Dutel, Buffer team member and founder of Remotive, recently joined us to discuss remote working. Rodolphe has spent many months traveling and working from all corners of the globe and has even sailed across the Atlantic Ocean. He brought many of his lessons learned, tools of the trade and general advice to #bufferchat! Catch all the great twee

Online MarketingMar 19, 2015
The Big List of Zapier Hacks for Marketers: 46 Recipes For Social Media, Productivity and More

Social media automation, when done with care and the right strategy, is awesome. It can amplify your great content while freeing up your time to create more of it! We’ve talked before on the blog about automating some processes through services like If This Then That and Alfred, and in this post I wanted to share some of our favorite uses of another fantastic automation tool: Zapier. Zapier integrates with more than 400 different web apps, which means most marketers are bound to be able to fin

I’m Getting 5% of My $96K Salary Paid in Bitcoin: Here’s How and Why

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. I discovered bitcoin in early 2011. At first it was something that felt like play money and almost surreal. I didn’t fully understand all the details back then, but a decentralized, peer-to-peer digital currency was just too crazy and I became intrigued. Over the years I started diving deeper and deeper into bitcoin. Along the way, the true power of

AnalyticsMar 18, 2015
How to Create a Social Media Report and Explain It to Your Boss or Client

You’re rocking social media. You’re finding great content to share, you’re writing the best headlines, you’re engaging and automating and seeing your brand soar. How will you let your boss or client know all the great stuff you’re up to? Is there an easy way to see for yourself how things are going? Creating a social media report can be key to explaining your progress on social media. You can choose the stats that matter and deliver it in an easy-to-understand way; there’re tons of personal

Tips / How ToMar 17, 2015
6 Creative Ways to Integrate Social Media and Email Marketing

Digital marketers—like you!—are all stars. You have your hands full with all the many ways to reach your audience. At any given time, you may need to be fluent in email, content and social media because your audience is cross-platform. Few people make buying decisions anymore based on information from a single medium. So when marketers focus all their energy on one channel, they could be missing out on other opportunities and the natural rhythms of the buying cycle. So how can you keep on top

ResourcesMar 16, 2015
How to Create Shareworthy Twitter Images: 10 Ways to Maximize Engagement on Your Tweets

For gaining more engagement, clicks, retweets, and replies, Twitter images work. Our own research has helped us see the value of Twitter images as being eminently click-worthy and shareworthy. There are a whole host of different ways to add these engaging images to your tweets. I’d love to round up a list of 10 favorite ways that we’ve tried with Twitter visuals (plus hear any ideas you’ve got as well!) The Data Behind Shareworthy Twitter Images Our early research into Twitter visuals for th

BufferchatMar 14, 2015
How to Build a Community: The Research Tips, Platforms and Resources Community Managers Need to Know

Community expert Caty Kobe from FeverBee recently joined us at #Bufferchat to talk about community management. Caty—along with our amazing Bufferchat community—shared great advice, blog and book recommendations. Read on for the highlights, or catch the full recap here! What advice do you have for someone building an online community? From Caty: * If you’re building a brand community, please do your homework first! * Take the time to research your customers & target community members. Lear

OpenMar 13, 2015
Why We Removed the Word ‘Hacker’ From Buffer Job Descriptions

***Quick update: We’re building a more inclusive Buffer! We’d love your feedback on our new Diversity Dashboard.*** Not too very long ago, developers at Buffer were called “hackers.” We had front-end hackers, back-end hackers, Android hackers, iOS hackers, traction hackers. We started using the word “hacker”in Buffer’s early days because—at the time—it felt like the most inclusive way to describe the work developers were doing. I asked our CTO Sunil to describe what the word meant to him: “I

BufferchatMar 13, 2015
Building Your Online Tribe: Jeff Goins Shares His Top Tips and Tools

Author and speaker Jeff Goins recently joined #bufferchat to share some awesome expert tips on building your online tribe. Read on for the highlights, or catch the full Storify recap here! What does it mean to build a tribe online? From Jeff: * Building an online tribe means finding your true fans, the people who will help your work spread. * Something I’ve learned about building a tribe is that it’s not who you know, it’s who you help. More great advice: * “Finding people with whom yo

AnalyticsMar 12, 2015
61 Key Social Media Metrics, Defined

Of all the hundreds of social media acronyms and abbreviations out there, I think “KPI” has confounded me the most. I think it’s because the phrase “key performance indicator” always sounds like something you need to be wearing a suit in front of a Powerpoint presentation in order to say. But when you get down to it, it’s really quite simple. KPI is just a way of saying “This is the stuff that’s important enough to me to focus on and measure.” Basically, social media KPIs, or social media met

OpenMar 11, 2015
Buffer in February: Fifth Team Retreat, New Mini-Product and Buffer.com

February at Buffer saw our biggest team retreat yet, the launch of a new mini-product and some big news about buffer.com. Here is the latest: The latest Buffer metrics * 2,171,877 total registered users (+3.9%) * 189,216 monthly active users (+3.0%) * 47,937 average daily active users (+7.0%) * $462,236 monthly recurring revenue (+4.8%) * $5.55m annual revenue run-rate (+4.8%) * $1,827,750 cash in bank * 29 team members across the world * 22 cities, 11 countries, 6 continents It’s aw

OpenMar 10, 2015
Eric Khun Has Joined the Buffer Team!

I’m so excited to share that Eric Khun has joined the Buffer team! Eric joins us from Beijing, and his focus is on back-end development. Eric was raised in France and fell in love with China when he went to Beijing for a year of school. He’s been there for 3 years now, and has even worked on the PBG game platform, and an Android app called PartyBeijing, which allows foreigners to find top event venues in Beijing and communicate with taxi drivers more easily by offering easy Chinese pronunciat

We acquired Buffer.com: Here is how and why we did it

Disclaimer: It is only through the kind collaboration with the previous owner of buffer.com that we were able to now be the new owners, and a key interest for them was to stay anonymous and not to draw any attention to them in this announcement, which we are very keen to honor. So we have redacted all names and replaced them with “Bob” for the individual and “Company corp.” for the company name. In similar interest to protect their privacy, the previous owner also wasn’t comfortable in sharing

Content MarketingMar 10, 2015
6 Foolproof Methods for Creating the Top Content on Any Topic

We’d all love to show up first in Google for something. There’s likely at least one golden search term or keyword you’re striving for —and we’ve all heard plenty of different get-to-the-front-page-of-Google formulas. It can get a little dizzying keeping all the approaches straight. But it can be done. If you’re willing to invest some time, resources and brainpower, you can create the top content on any topic. To share exactly how, I made an infographic mapping out not one, but six foolproof,

Your 50 Favorite Blogs: The Most-Loved Marketing, Social Media, and Productivity Blogs of Buffer Readers

Having a list of go-to blogs can be a great source of information and inspiration. In our case, the blogs and websites we visit most often provide some amazing articles with in-depth insights, tips, and strategies that help inform our social media sharing. Likewise, the amazing content gives us something to aim for and ideas for what to cover next. We’ve shared a bit about favorite blogs for content marketing and blogs for advanced marketing. Now it’s time to ask you: What are your favorite b

Buffer NewsMar 5, 2015
Engaging Social Media Images in 30 Seconds Flat: Introducing Pablo by Buffer

Imagine having a quick and simple way to instantly increase the engagement on your social media posts. We’ve found that oftentimes images are the hook that draws more clicks, shares, and favorites on social media. And a number of marketing studies report the same: * Blog posts with images receive 94% more views than those without images * Having at least one image in a post leads to more than double the shares on Facebook and Twitter * Using an image on Twitter increases retweets by 28% and

OpenMar 4, 2015
A Simple Guide to Measuring the Product-Market Fit of Your Product or Feature

It’s amazing that there is a huge amount of discussion on the importance of hitting product market fit for what you are building. Interestingly, there isn’t as much about how to measure when you actually have product market fit for what you have built. The reason that’s the case, is because partially it’s a question that you shouldn’t have to ask: “If you have to ask whether you have Product/Market Fit, the answer is simple: you don’t.” – Eric Ries And I can see where Eric is coming from with

AnalyticsMar 4, 2015
Behind-the-Scenes: The Social Media Strategies We Use at Buffer, Plus All Our Latest Stats

Sharing transparently about all aspects of what we do at Buffer—pricing, salaries, fund-raising, earnings, hiring, and more—has been an amazing opportunity to connect with and learn from others. We get such great ideas and encouragement from sharing openly. We’ve shared before about our content marketing goals, numbers, and adventures, and I’d love to continue these stories in regular blog posts here! I’ll be sharing how we’re doing, what we’re up to, what we have planned for the future, and a

The 7 Steps to a ‘Good-to-Great’ Content Marketing Strategy

Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… And Others Don’t is a Jim Collins classic that shares an eye-opening study on how top companies managed to manifest great results and maintain them for more than a decade. After the study was completed, Collins found key business traits and strategies that transformed these companies into successful, elite companies. So how do these traits apply to content marketing? What makes a ‘good-to-great’ content marketing strategy? Here are the seven ste

StartupsMar 2, 2015
Mastering Organic Efficiency: What Startups Can Learn From Nature

In a forest, there is absolutely no waste. Every single element is reused in a continuous cycle. A tree produces leaves. The leaves fall to the ground and become compost. And the forest uses every last ounce of the compost and puts it back into its ecosystem. We have the exact same idea for Buffer’s organizational design as we move towards a self-managing company. Without any processes, save 4 essential ones, there is little to no occurrence of waste. As an example, we recently completed our f