Blog - Page 95
A collection of 2,465 blog posts
I’m a big fan of afternoon naps. In fact, I was super excited when joining Buffer to hear about how the team is pro-napping. It’s not everyday you come across a company that’s open to letting employees take a snooze whenever they want one. Naps aren’t for everyone, though. I’ve heard lots of people say naps don’t make them feel better, so I wanted to explore how naps affect your brain and whether they really are good for you or not. How sleep affects us Better sleeping is known to provide lo
One of the things we focus on most at Buffer is the best time to post to Twitter and Facebook. This is because we want to help you get more engagement with your audience, which is beneficial for everyone. While the best time to post is definitely important, there are some other things to keep in mind. I had a look at what kind of updates work best for Facebook pages to increase interaction and found 7 interesting statistics that you’ll probably find useful if you’re trying to make your page mor
We all love to take advice from people who’ve previously been through the same situations as us or who are further along a similar path to us. For entrepreneurs this is particularly useful, since it’s such a difficult, unknown path to tread sometimes. Funnily enough, some of the advice I’ve come across through reading interviews and articles from famous entrepreneurs is often counterintuitive to what I would expect them to say. I thought it would be interesting to gather some of this advice int
One thing that we’re obsessed with here at Buffer is obviously the best times to share on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. It just so happens that with social networks, the timing of when your posts go out plays a vital role in your success. Since we’ve got our heads in this all day, every day, I wondered if timing plays a big role in other things we do every day. So I looked into how our body responds to timing and how we can utilize that knowledge. It turns out that we actually have a very so
You’ll wake up for about 25,000 mornings in your adult life, give or take a few. According to a report from the World Health Organization, the average life expectancy in the United States is 79 years old. Most people in wealthy nations are hovering around the 80–year mark. Women in Japan are the highest, with an average life expectancy of 86 years. If we use these average life expectancy numbers and assume that your adult life starts at 18 years old, then you’ve got about 68 years as an adult.
Social Media is changing faster than ever, as if that wasn’t something everyone already knew! If you’re managing social media for your business, it might be useful to know about some of the most surprising social media statistics this year. Here are ten that might make you rethink the way you’re approaching social media. 1. The fastest growing demographic on Twitter is the 55–64 year age bracket. * This demographic has grown 79% since 2012. * The 45–54 year age bracket is the fastest growi
Over the last few months, we launched a ton of new integrations for you to use Buffer with other tools, such as Feedly, Followerwonk and lots of others. One of the most important ways to use Buffer was still something that was very hard to do: Directly schedule Tweets and retweets via Buffer inside a Twitter client. So we are super excited to announce that with today, we have partnered with Echofon, one of the most established Twitter clients for Android and iPhone to help you Buffer your tw
I used to think sensory deprivation was just a crazy torture method that no one in their right mind would opt-in for, until I stumbled upon some information recently about sensory deprivation floatation tanks. These are water tanks big enough for one person, often set up at spas, where you can pay to float in salty water for hours, receiving almost no sensory information at all. Sure, it seems crazy, but there are actually some alluring benefits, particularly when it’s done for short periods:
Can I be blunt on this subject? If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that. – Stephen King Even if you’re not a ‘writer’ per se, writing can be highly beneficial. It can be helpful for a number of things: * help you to work through feelings * stay positive * express your thoughts more clearly * market your product. Generally, there are two things that writers recommend to others who want to improve: more writing, and reading. More writi
There is a common mistake that often happens to smart people — in many cases, without you ever realizing it. The mistake has to do with the difference between being in motion and taking action. They sound similar, but they’re not the same. Here’s the deal… Motion vs Action Motion is when you’re busy doing something, but that task will never produce an outcome by itself. Action, on the other hand, is the type of behavior that will get you a result. Here are some examples… * If I outline 20
Can you remember a period in your life when, if you look back on it now, time seemed to stretch on forever? When a week seemed like four, or an hour seemed like it went on for days? What were you doing during that period? Chances are, you were probably doing something (or a whole bunch of somethings) that was brand new to you and demanded your attention. The funny thing is, by focusing on what you were doing, you actually slowed down time (or how your brain perceived that time, anyway). Neuros
It is Thursday afternoon. Hump day. You are being humped. The one thing you wished to accomplish today remains unaccomplished, sitting there as a painful reminder of your failure, goading you to check Tumblr just one more time. You lack motivation, clearly. This is not a problem you would have with, say, video games. And there’s your answer! Turning repetitive tasks into games is the secret sauce to getting things done. You’re not alone in thinking so. Gamification, the collision of gaming cu
This is the holy grail for every marketer, entrepreneur and any other professional on the internet: To go viral. At least, when I first started out writing articles and producing content, I could think of nothing else other than trying to figure how to get this post spread like mad on Facebook, Twitter and all the other important places. What I quickly found out is that it takes a little more than posting cute cat photos, although I keep questioning myself on that. A few months back, we did som
Ever since we started Buffer a little over 2 years ago, people have been asking us about one question very specifically: How can I write great headlines for social networks and my blog? The topic is a very tricky one, as the accuracy for what works best is hard to nail down. Whilst we have some specific techniques that we are using for our own postings and article headlines every day, I thought looking at the most cutting edge research is definitely required. So I thought of combining all the
One of the most unchanged elements of our life today is our optimal work time or how long we should work – generally, every person I’ve spoken to quotes me something close to 8 hours a day. And data seems to confirm that: The average American works 8.8 hours every day. At least, those are the official statistics from the Bureau of Labor Statistics: And yet, for most of us it is obvious that knowing how long the average person works every day has little to do with how efficient or productive th
Ever since I’ve started blogging about topics on social media and especially Twitter, one of the questions that I have by far heard the most often is the following: “When is the best time to Tweet for me to reach more followers?” A lot of this requires a lot of data-analysis and whilst a ton of tools exist out there, they aren’t always terribly accurate. That’s why we’ve come up with this: We couldn’t be any more excited to have teamed up with the folks from Followerwonk [https://follower
Growing up, we all heard the expression “practice makes perfect” from our high school coach/music teacher. Then Malcolm Gladwell went on to popularize the research that expertise developed over “10,000 hours” of deliberate practice. But how does that really work? In this post, I’ll share what science knows about learning and how special type of brain tissue called myelin, plays a key role in helping us acquire and master skills. Get more clicks on Twitter by scheduling your posts for the ide
This article appeared in full form on OnStartups and you can read the post “The Pitch Deck We Used To Raise $500,000 For Our Startup ” there. When Joel and I first arrived in San Francisco around 2 years ago, we had absolutely no idea about fundraising. Even the term “pitch deck” was something copmletely new to us. One lessons, that we quickly learned, however, was that it’s a big no-no to
We all like novelty in one way or another. In fact, our brains are made to be attracted to novelty. And it turns out that it could actually improve our memory and learning capacity. Having just moved to a new country, I’m currently surrounded by novel sights, sounds and experiences. It’s an overload of new for my brain. However, after only being here a week, I’m surprised how ordinary my house and my street seem. After walking the same route to the train station three or four times, it quickly
You don’t have to be ‘the boss’ to take on a leadership role. I learned that quite quickly while working with my startup—in many instances, if you have the most experience within a certain skill, you’ll have to become the ‘leader’ during some key moments and guide the rest of the team. What I happen to find fascinating is that numerous psychology studies tend to make a connection between this ability to lead when necessary and the achievement of professional success—especially for men. The c
Let’s say it’s your birthday. First, happy birthday! We got you a cake. We’ll come back to the cake in a moment. Second, we have a question for you on your special day. Your friends want to give you the celebration you deserve, but they’re stumped. They can’t decide whether to a) let you plan your perfect evening, from the first stop through the main event, or b) plan the perfect evening for you, leaving you with just one responsibility: to enjoy. Which would you pick? For myself and a surp
At Buffer, we’ve been experimenting quite a bit with the support/engineer relationship. A high bar for support is one of the key pillars of Buffer. We have three full-time ‘happiness heroes’ for a team of 10 and answer 60% of emails and tweets within the first hour. Where we get slowed down are with the more technical issues that are reported, which require deeper investigation. For a few months we had established ‘the 5 veggies rule’ where it was highly encouraged that each developer did five
Out of all internet users 67% are using social networks. And which kind of demographic uses which social network has been forever interesting for marketers. Some of the latest insights from Pew Research centers reveals the latest stats. Twitter is still used more than Pinterest, Instagram and Tumblr. Also, African-Americans and Hispanics are more likely to use Twitter than Whites, according to the study. Most of the findings are in line with what you might expect and some are truly surprising.
This is a guestpost by Mikael Cho , the co-founder of ooomf . More about Mikael at the bottom of the article. Palms sweaty. Heart racing. You know the feeling. Whether it’s five people or fifty, public speaking is a gut-wrenching experience for most of us. Before co-founding my startup, I had a huge fear of speaking in public. Any time I had to present something in front of more than a handful of people, my stomach would turn to knots and my thro
