Resources - Page 22
A collection of posts on Resources
People are brilliant and amazing. I’ll often run across an incredibly cool social media strategy or format or tool or link and think to myself, “Whoa, how’d they do that?” There are things like shortened custom URLs, evergreen queues, personalized recommendations, and more. And I’m so inspired by the cleverness and resourcefulness—not to mention the great value and utility—of these methods. So I’ve gone about trying to figure them all out. Check out my DIY tips below for putting together eac
Social media is constantly evolving. As soon as you feel like you’ve got Facebook and Twitter figured out, suddenly there’s Vine and Snapchat and a whole bunch of exciting new stuff to learn. It keeps things interesting, and keeps social media managers on our toes. Lately it seems like more and more social media managers are enthusiastic about Instagram and the opportunities there to engage with fans and share great photos and videos. And the opportunities are big! With more than 300 million
Social media has entered the video era. In 2015 we’ve seen the addition of video on Twitter and a giant push by Facebook to make video a major component of the News Feed . Check out some staggering social media video stats: * The number of videos in Facebook feeds has grown by 360% [http://media.fb.com/2015/01/07/what
One of the implicit values in our Buffer marketing is to challenge assumptions. And one of the biggest assumptions I have about our content is that we should be publishing original articles to the blog multiple times each week. Well … what might happen if we didn’t? To find out, we stopped publishing new content for 30 days, focusing instead on repurposing and refreshing our content from the archives. I’d love to share with you every single thing we tried and all that we learned, both what wo
On April 8, 2011, Blake Mycoskie, the founder of TOMS shoes, did something radical: He asked everyone to go barefoot for a day. One Day Without Shoes is now a yearly campaign dedicated to educating the world of how many children in developing countries grow up barefoot and without shoes, putting them at risk of infections and diseases. TOMS already donates one pair of shoes to a child in need for every pair of shoes it sells. This year, the company took it one step further. For every photo of
What makes a great social media manager? More specifically, what habits make an effective social media manager? What do the best social media managers practice every day that makes them amazing at what they do? There seems to be a lot of good advice out there about the best social media tactics used by marketers—tactics that might work great right away but are often not sustainable. I was keen to find the best habits. And to understand what traits would help a person become more effective as
Say you want to get started on a new marketing strategy—collecting customer research, or creating cool images, or measuring ROI. Where do you go first to find the tools that’ll make your job as smooth as can be? I often turn to listicles and roundups that bundle together a big handful of helpful tools. And this is maybe why I love Product Hunt’s collections so much. Their collections are user-generated tools lists that are easy to browse and simple to find just the tools that I need. I’m happ
We’re incredibly grateful to have the chance to learn from others and experiment for ourselves with what works best on social media. And we’re so very happy to share our best strategies with you! To collect all these favorite tips in one place, we’ve compiled our top 25 social media strategies into a free ebook that you can download below. We’ve included strategies for Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, and more—all of which you can implement today, in just a few minutes and just a few clicks. Get
We are all about working smarter here at Buffer. Our focus on improvement and efficiency has led us to blog smarter, share smarter, and approach problems and activities with a fresh perspective of getting more done as quickly and simply as possible. To that end, we love automation. We get a kick out of tools and apps that do some of the work for us, leaving us more time to invest elsewhere. IFTTT is one of our favorite tools (and one that I’d imagine you might love as well). We use IFTTT in a
This post originally published on March 17, 2014. We’ve updated it here with the latest information, images, and resources. Before I joined Buffer, I barely had a Twitter account. It existed by its lonesome for a few years as a placeholder for the day when my work allowed me to tweet freely. That day came when I had the privilege to join up with the Buffer team, and I dove right in, applying all the Twitter knowledge I had stowed away. And still, even with a running start, I had so much to lea
Slide decks exist somewhere near the intersection of visual content and written content, a hybrid form of information and consumption perfect for bite-sized bits of learning. If you’ve not got time to read through a 2,000-word article, you might have a moment to flip through a SlideShare. We’ve been excited to experiment with the process of building slide decks around the Buffer content we have here on the blog, and in the course of doing so, we discovered a trove of wonderfully succinct and v
I’m a bit embarrassed to share my early Pinterest Pins. But here they are anyway. A pin loaded with hashtags, a really odd-sized image, an image with a one-word description, a Pin with no description at all. I’ve made a lot of mistakes with Pinterest, both in the Pins I’ve created and in the strategies and plans I’ve set forth. And I’ve come to discover that Pinterest is wholly unique from Twitter and Facebook, and that I’ve had things quite wrong from the start. All these mistakes have bee
I’ve resisted social media advertising for a long time, believing that there are a host of free tools and free strategies that can help your business grow on social media organically. What I’ve come to find out (and I’d imagine many of you have discovered this already) is this: If you’re spending money to advertise online, social media ads may very well earn you the biggest returns. (In some cases, it’s the cheapest way to reach people.) There are so many inspiring digital marketers who are
Hey there, podcast fans! We recently launched a new podcast of our very own, Buffer CultureLab! We’d love for you to check it out and share any thoughts, feedback or ideas with us! You can listen on iTunes here or Google Play here. ? OK, now back to the post! “Slack is starting a podcast for some reason.” That was the headline of a recent Fortune.com article. Author Tom Huddleston, Jr. wondered why Slack, “a hot Silicon Valley company with a fast-growing valuation,” would “make the most of i
You’ve likely got a great way to search the web for the best free stock photos. And once you know where to look, how do you decide which photos to choose? Should you go with abstract or specific? What is the best color profile? What is the best orientation? There are so many great sources for free photos. I find myself asking these questions most every time I pick a photo—how to identify the right stock photo for a project. There’s a good bit of research and advice out there on how to make
Hey there, podcast fans! We recently launched a new podcast of our very own, Buffer CultureLab! We’d love for you to check it out and share any thoughts, feedback or ideas with us! You can listen on iTunes here or Google Play here. ? OK, now back to the post! As someone who’s motivated by self-improvement and achieving more, I’m constantly trying to learn as much as I can. Books are naturally one of my main go-to sources of knowledge. But there’s also a wealth of information to be consumed i
So much of marketing, it seems, is geared toward growth and traction, particularly when it comes to startups and technology. We are pressed on all sides by tracking metrics, pivoting, learning, and growing—a sort of exponential growth mindset that envelops, well, everything: content, social, email, community. If you haven’t measured it, then it doesn’t count. If you can’t measure it, you’re better off without it. We’re surrounded by this movement at Buffer, kind of like a stone is surrounded by
How many photos of you are on your phone right now? These days, humans take almost 1 trillion photos a year. (To put that into context, that’s more photos every few minutes than in the entire 19th century.) And lots of these photos are selfies—self-portraits, usually taken with a smartphone. As of this writing, nearly 300 million Instagram photos had been tagged with the selfie label. We love getting into the “whys” of social media psychology, so in this post I set out to discover why we love
Whenever we have the chance to chat with folks about social media stats and marketing strategies, we are amazed at the many unique ways you all go about charting a path to social media success. Every industry and niche—every social profile, even—is unique. Non-profits are a great example of a segment of social media with its own unique elements and expectations. The non-profit structure—donation-backed, humanitarian-focused, member-based—presents an opportunity for some really neat ways of put
I love to see new stats and research about how to best share to social media. If it’s research-backed or numbers-driven, sign me up. These actionable tips are what drive a lot of our experiments at Buffer as we’re keen to see if the best advice from these studies meshes with our experience, too. And there’s a lot of new info to go off of. I’ve collected 10 of the latest surprising, revealing studies on social media here in this post, with takeaways and insight into social media timing, Instag
It’s been an amazing month at Buffer working on some fun social media strategies and thinking ahead to some big new ideas. What’s a good Medium strategy? How can we gain more followers on Instagram? What might a Buffer podcast look like? I’d love to share with you what’s been on our plates recently, along with all the social media stats from our Buffer accounts. It’d be great to hear your thoughts also on the content we can write that would be most helpful for you! Inside Buffer’s social m
We have Google Analytics installed on all the Buffer blogs (Social, Open, Overflow, and certainly also Happiness in the future). I imagine you might have it installed, too. And though I could be in a much better habit of checking GA often, I am grateful to know that all the stats are there for me, whenever I choose to look. The next question, then: Where should I be looking for helpful social media stats in GA? There’s just so much to look at, with so many new and unusual titles. I’ve done my
If you find yourself intimidated by the concept of creating video content, you’re not alone. Every minute of the day, YouTube users alone upload 72 hours of new video content, not to mention uploads to Facebook, Vimeo, Daily Motion or Wistia. With all that noise, making your video stand out, increasing engagement and finding ways to add value is a mammoth task; which makes doing it right even sweeter. Fortunately, there are tons of great blueprints for creating valuable, meaningful video cont
Imagine having a quick and fast way to get up to speed with social media or to get your work done in less time (and with more confidence). When I’m in a pinch or into something new, one of the first places I turn is toward a template. I’ve built a stash of headline formulas, social media updates, and more to help organize my mind when it comes to working fast and learning something new. Templates can be a lifesaver and a time-saver. Once you’ve got your templates, we’d love to help schedule