Blog - Page 99
A collection of 2,567 blog posts
Since joining Buffer last September, it’s been so amazing to see how much we’ve grown in just under a year. This is the first time any of us on the team has built something that’s achieved this level of scale and in doing so, we’ve learned so much. I want to share a general overview of Buffer’s scale, and the technology stack that we’ve built to fulfill it. Some Quick Stats about Buffer’s Scale * 2 backend engineers, Colin and Sunil [https://twitter.com/s
Making decisions is something we do every day, so I wanted to find out more about how this process works and what affects the choices we make. It turns out, there are some really interesting ways our decisions are affected that I never would have guessed. Luckily, we can take action to improve most of these. What happens in your brain when you make decisions Obviously lots of things take place inside your brain as you make a decision. What I found really interesting were the various things that
I’ve heard blogging referred to a couple of times recently as a mixture between an art and a science. If this is true (and I think it is), there’s no ‘right way’ to approach blogging if you want to be successful. There are plenty of people who’ve done a great job of it though, and I thought it would be useful to learn from them. These 16 bloggers shared one important tip each for blogging beginners. No doubt, even if you’re not a beginner these tips will probably prove to be useful. 1. Get ide
Bigger doesn’t mean better when it comes to work. Jeff Bezos, the CEO of Amazon famously coined this with the 2 Pizza rule: One former executive recalled that, at an offsite retreat where some managers suggested that employees should start communicating more with each other, Mr. Bezos stood up and declared, “No, communication is terrible!” He wanted a decentralized, even disorganized company where independent ideas would prevail over groupthink. According to Bezos, the ideal is the “two pizza
Jerry Seinfeld is one of the most successful comedians of all‐time. He is regarded as one of the “Top 100 Comedians of All–Time” by Comedy Central. He was also the co–creator and co–writer of Seinfeld, the long–running sitcom which has received numerous awards and was claimed to have the “Top TV Episode of All–Time” as rated by TV Guide. According to Forbes magazine, Seinfeld reached his peak in earnings when he made $267 million dollars in 1998. (Yes, that was in one year. No, that’s not a ty
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
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 craz
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 i
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 a
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