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A collection of 2,604 blog posts
For as long as we’ve run Buffer, we’ve had to send new team members some form of employment agreement. We’re currently in the middle of raising $3.5m in new funding and, as part of the due diligence in this funding round, we’ve been revisited these agreements. We’ve never felt completely comfortable about the agreements we send out, and it can often be a shock and in stark contrast to the style of the rest of our hiring process, where we try to take extra steps to show that we truly care about
Most social media experts will say that the core to Twitter greatness is: 1. Providing real value and engaging with others 2. Acting the way you would act in a real life situation 3. Never spamming 4. Building meaningful relationships These foundational concepts are hugely helpful in making Twitter really work for you. And when you’re ready to build on these foundations and scale your Twitter engagement and reach, there are some useful next-level tactics that work great, too. I’ve had a ch
We’ve talked lots on the blog about how we communicate and the tools we use to get work done as a remote team, but I thought it might be fun to give you a bit of a different view into the life of a Buffer team member. In this post, I’d like to tell you about the ways we communicate that aren’t so much about work. From GIFs in Hipchat to theme days on Sqwiggle to supportive notes on iDoneThis and even our UP apps, Buffer has a great variety of “virtual watercoolers” that keep us connected in wor
How does your audience decide what it wants to click, share, favorite, and purchase? Understanding a bit of behavioral psychology can go a long ways toward a better understanding of your audience and why they do the things they do on social media and on your website. There’s tons here for marketers to discover, and the psychology of human interaction can lead to some quick wins in the way you compose your social media updates and communicate online. I’ve collected 15 of my favorite psychologic
October and September (I’m lumping them together because I did not manage to get a Crafters report done for the month of September, so sorry!) were huge months for Buffer’s small team of Crafters. So big, in fact, that much of the “way we do things” has changed immensely over the past 60 days. It’s been incredibly exciting, and I’d love to tell you all about it. But first, let’s take a quick look at the numbers! Buffer Social analytics Traffic stats Our overall numbers have stabilized from
Twitter tips is one of our favorite topics on the blog. We love learning how to get more followers, earn more clicks, and share better content. Twitter represents a huge—and free!—opportunity for marketers to distribute content, engage with others in their industry, and promote their brand online. And we’re keen to find the absolute best way to get the most value out of Twitter. We’ve written before about Twitter tips for beginners, time-saving hacks, and advanced techniques, and for the firs
Speaker, podcaster and career coach DJ Waldow recently joined us for #bufferchat to discuss living your passion. See the full Storify recap here. What does it mean to live your passion? From DJ: * “Living your passion: Do What You Love | Love What You Do – This@ugmonk t says it all: http://instagram.com/p/rKOeUPx8k5/“ * “If you are LIVING YOUR PASSION (or know someone who is) I’d love to have you on my podcast http://socialbutterflyguy.com/passion “ Other great insights: * “Living you
I’m constantly amazed and inspired by the way that others go about experimenting, testing, and trying out new methods to get more value out of their social media marketing. Constant testing is something we love to do at Buffer. So I’m always keen to hear about new tests to try. There’s no shortage of intriguing new social media strategies. I’m excited to share 10 of the latest ones I’ve been interested to try here at Buffer. Do you think these might work for you and your social media marketin
At Buffer and many other customer-centric startups, the product, marketing, and engineering teams all listen to customer questions and answer them directly. I’ve often been floored by how much of their personal time our customers will take to help us think through challenges, suggest improvements, and share ideas. Our Uservoice page is regularly updated with votes and comments. It’s incredibly fun to watch. How all our Buffer team members work with customers has changed through the years as th
In October, Buffer announced a new funding round, launched the new Buffer for iOS 8 and iPad, and laid the groundwork to hire for many new positions! Here are our latest numbers as of the end of October: * New users: 76,973 (Total: 1,861,443 from 1,784,516: +4.3%) * Daily active users: 43,231 (up from 41,647: +3.8%) * Monthly active users: 174,121 (up from 166,511: +4.6%) * Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR): $390,752 (ARR: $4,689,024: +6.9%) * Cash in bank: $1,004,862 (last month: $846,145)
When you’re creating useful, actionable, epic content, everyone deserves to see it. So how do you get your hard work and effort seen by the largest audience possible? We’ve considered that question often at Buffer, as we try to maximize our content so it reaches the people who need it. There are certain strategies you can put into place for spreading your content far and wide, and there are a good number of tools that can help these strategies run super smooth. Here are the tools we use (and
Author Ann Handley joined #Bufferchat to discuss ways to take your writing to the next level. Check out her latest book, “Everybody Writes” for great advice on writing and content marketing. Check out the full recap on Storify here! Is writing a habit or an art? From Ann: * “Writing is habit before an art. It’s hard to create something that’s artful without first building the muscle.” * ” ‘As the martial arts: A black belt means you’ve mastered the basics and are ready to master the art.’
Imagine taking a week off at the beach while your social media profiles hummed along without missing a beat. One of the greatest social media superpowers you hold—as an individual, a brand, or an agency—is the ability to control time. With the right tool, you can post into the future so that the next two days, two weeks, or even two months are taken care of, no matter where you happen to be. Social media automation makes it possible to save time, stay flexible, and plan your online marketing s
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 answers and came across a heap of best practices and examples of what goes into a perfect Facebook post. Ch
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