Blog - Page 77
A collection of 2,474 blog posts
There are a lot of ways to have a great day at Buffer. Between our value of positivity, our awesome team, our be-your-own-boss decision maker structure and our pro-naps policy, it’s downright tough to have anything but a good day. And exactly what that day looks like is totally up to each of us. One of the biggest freedoms of our team is that we’re fully distributed around the world, so we each make our own schedule in the place that makes us happiest. That means there’s no wrong way to wor
Why do you read the updates you read? Why do you browse the products you browse? There are hidden motivations behind a lot of the actions we take online, especially so with social media. The influence of friends and family has a big impact on what we click, view, share, and like. Researchers have discovered some specifics behind why friends impact us the way they do. These insights cover the way we interact and reciprocate, the time we spend online, and the buying decisions we make. It’s fasc
You might have noticed that we’re big fans of tools at Buffer. We’ve written about tools for mobile marketing. Tools for Facebook. Tools for SEO. Of course, we make tools for social media management, so there’s a chance we could be a bit biased. But we see online tools and apps as a key part of our philosophy of working smarter, not harder. It’s also a lot of fun to find a great new tool! So when the tool-finding team at Product Hunt asked us at Buffer to curate a list of our top tools for re
“You choose to be at the single place on earth where you are the happiest and most productive, and you are not afraid to find out where that is.” This beautiful sentiment comes from the Buffer culture slidedeck , the document that defines the values behind everything we do at Buffer. One of the 10 Buffer values is to “Live smarter, not harder,” and this involves finding that single place on earth where you can be your best. A few months a
Up until recently at Buffer, we had a big problem: we were drowning in data. Buffer is a data-driven company. So many of the decisions we make hinge on data that we collect and analyze. We track and measure analytics data for all kinds of things – user behavior, how our A/B experiments are running, as well as system-generated data such as API logs. As outlined in this post by Sunil, we have built a pretty robust platform for tracking and measuring data, all powered by Amazon’s SQS and MongoDB.
Social media management can be a full-time job, and even for those who do social along with any number of other tasks, social media marketing can still take 10 or more hours every week. So what would you do if you only had 30 minutes to spend on social media? How would you prioritize your tasks so you make the absolute most of your valuable time? I tend to find pockets of time throughout the day where I wish I could be as productive as possible in windows here and there. When a 30-minute wind
You post to your Facebook page , hoping you’ve hit upon something that works. How great would it be know that the post you just published had the best chance of maximizing clicks, likes, and comments. Facebook posts especially—given the dramatic dip in reach —can feel like a mystery. How do you create the perfect Facebook post? Does the perfect Facebook post even exist? I went looking for answe
If you look at our culture deck on Slideshare , you’ll quickly find that our first and likely most pronounced value is “Always choose positivity and happiness.” We have this as a very central theme in the way we work, live and how we hire here at Buffer. It’s one of the things that gives me the most fulfillment of working towards. It’s also one of the hardest and most aspirational values to live up to.
I love Twitter. It’s one of my favorite places on the Internet, and one of the few sites I visit more than once per day. There’s so much to see and do that even when I’m not actively tweeting, it’s safe to say I’m reading, clicking links, and favoriting things to look at again later. Up until a few months ago, however, you wouldn’t have known I cared for Twitter at all. Before I joined WebpageFX, I didn’t have much of a “public” personality to speak of online, and instead preferred to hide be
Update: We closed a first syndicate on AngelList today, October 27th. We have opened a new one with VegasTechFund now here. Update 2: All our public AngelList syndicates have been oversubscribed and are now closed. The full $3.5m is now committed. What’s left is for us to finish the due diligence process with our lead investor (Collaborative Fund) in order to hopefully close out the funding, then have the money wired. We’ll update you once this is all done. Than
You get a ton done when you’re at your computer, speeding away on the day’s social media strategy. Might there be a way to wring some productivity when you’re away from your desk? Mobile apps and tools can make it so a marketer’s entire day is filled with opportunities to connect, engage, and share. You can get more done while commuting, lounging, waiting, and any time when you’re not tethered to a desktop or laptop. Which apps are best for social media marketers? I gave a huge number of the
Author of Hooked: Building-Habit Forming Products, Nir Eyal, stopped by Bufferchat to discuss how the Hook framework applied to marketing and social media. For the full Storify summary of the Twitter chat, click here. Keep up with the latest news and upcoming #Bufferchat by joining our Google+ Community. What are the components of the Hook model? From Nir: * “A “hook” has 4 parts: trigger, action, reward and investment” * “…through successive cycles through these hooks, users form habits
CEO of Small Biz Trends, Anita Campbell, joined us for Bufferchat to discuss small businesses and social media. Check out the full recap on Storify here. And keep up on the latest about Bufferchat by going to our Google+ Community. What are some of the biggest challenges trending in small business? From Anita: * “Money is perennial issue for #smallbiz. We bootstrapped all the way — that’s the slow way!” * “Another issue: Need for owners and staff to be more technical. You now have to know
Your sharing schedule is as unique as you. Content finds you when you’re sitting down to work, when you’re flipping through your phone, and when you’re kicked back on the couch. Inspiration comes, regardless of the device you’re holding. How great would it be to schedule and share whenever these moments arrive? We’d love to do our part to help make sharing to social media even easier, from wherever you are. We’re excited to deliver even more of our simple-to-use Buffer app that fits the way yo
Since the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference in June, I have been working hard on our iOS 8 update. And now, the new Buffer for iPhone and iPad is live to all our customers! Not only have we added support for the amazing new features available to us in iOS 8, but we’ve added universal support for iPad for the first time. Download the free app for iPad and iPhone! I thought I would publish a little inside look at the additions to Buffer for iOS for v4.0—including some things you might n
How long should my tweet be? Or my blogpost? Or my headline ? I ask this question a lot. It seems that others do, too. Our first take on coming up with the ideal length of all online content proved quite useful for a lot of people. I’d love to see if I can help make it even more useful. Along with all the best tips on optimal lengths for tweets, blogposts, h
If you’ve read any lists on Twitter tips, whether for beginners or for experts, you’ve likely come across the common advice to use Twitter lists. Twitter lists are useful, helpful, and effective for managing and optimizing your Twitter experience. There’s also a number of unique ways to go about them. I researched the topic and found 23 popular and outside-the-box ideas for what to do with your Twitter list. See what I learned in the post below, and add your favorite uses in the comments. 2
You’ve been sharing to social media for some time now, and you’re synthesizing all the great advice out there about what to post, when to post, and how to measure. Awesome work. You’ve got the content part down pat. Now here’s the next layer: The emotion behind the social media update. What feeling does your update impart? How does someone feel when they read your update? These are big, ethereal questions, and significantly different than discovering great content and finding the best litera
One of the things that has fascinated me most about ancient Greece and Rome has always been the idea of oracles. If you’ve seen the movie 300, you might remember the scene in which Leonidas has to consult the oracle, which will decide whether the Spartans will go to battle or not. You can almost grasp the frustration of the Spartan king. He’s not in control. He has to rely on the priests and only the priests are able to understand the oracle’s advice. He feels powerless, as he has to follow wh
You compete with millions of other blogs on creating and sharing craveable content. You manage multiple social media accounts, seeking that sweet spot of targeted, valuable, engaging updates. You do this all day, day after day. Imagine having some tools on hand that make these daily activities even easier. Tony Restell understands these challenges of social media sharing like few others. As founder of Social-Hire.com, Tony works with multiple recruiting clients at a time on their social medi
You compete with millions of other blogs on creating and sharing craveable content. You manage multiple social accounts, seeking that sweet spot of targeted, valuable, engaging updates. You do this all day, day after day. Imagine having some tools on hand that make these daily activities even easier. Tony Restell understands these challenges of social media sharing like few others. As founder of Social-Hire.com, Tony works with multiple recruiting clients at a time on their social media stra
Happy October! In September, our entire team traveled to New York, NY, to work and play all together for our semi-annual company retreat. (Retreats occur every 5 months, so that they fall on a different month each time. This alleviates one of the challenges of scheduling everyone to travel. This way, if retreat falls over an important personal date or event like a family member birthday, it will change the next year.) Similarly to April, this put a big dent on our customer service numbers. We f
Erik Fisher, an author, podcaster and community manager at Social Media Examiner, stopped by #bufferchat to discuss Facebook marketing tips and engagement! Check out the full Storify recap here! What role does Facebook play in your community strategy? From Erik: * “ Most likely your largest group of followers on one social network: Facebook. You can’t ignore it even if you’re frustrated.” * “ Don’t JUST post great content on Facebook, engage with those who like, share and comment
The very first Buffer blog post—Want to Tweet While You Sleep?—was published in January 2011. Three-and-a-half years and 595 posts later, we’ve covered a lot of ground, learned a huge number of tips and tricks that make social media easier, and written a ton of helpful, actionable content. Many others have just as much—probably even more—awesome content sitting in the archives. If you’re just starting out, you’ll get to this point, too. When your archives are bursting with content, it could ve