In just three simple steps, you can boost a post on Facebook and Instagram.

1. Choose a post
2. Select an audience
3. Set your budget

That’s how easy it is.

As organic reach on social media continues to fall, businesses have started to invest more in social media advertising. For some businesses, that’s creating ads. For smaller businesses, the easier approach is often to boost Facebook posts or promote Instagram posts. Here’s why this works so well:

By putting some money behind our organic posts, we can get more results from the same amount of work.

(And if you aren't advertising yet, boosting your Facebook and Instagram posts is a quick way to get started with advertising on those platforms—before you move into more sophisticated advertising.)

But simply throwing $5 here and $10 there isn’t enough. You need to have a strategy behind your boosted posts, and you also need a way to measure your results to ensure you get the most return on your investment.

That’s why today we’re introducing boosted post insights to Buffer.

(If you are paying for the analytics solution in Buffer, you should have this in your account already!)

How to get the best results from boosting posts

Before we get to analyzing your results, here’s a tip for choosing the best posts to boost:

Choose the posts with the highest engagement rate.

Boosting your posts is essentially paying Facebook and Instagram to show your posts to more people, according to what you have specified as the audience.

So you would want to pick the posts that will most likely generate the most engagement (or clicks depending on your goals). Posts with the highest engagement rate are proven posts. They have generated the most engagement, given the number of times people have seen it.

By boosting a post with a high engagement rate, here’s a higher chance that people who see it off the back of your ad spend will also engage with it.

Here’s a quick way to find your most engaging posts in Buffer to boost:

1. Head over to your analytics by clicking on “Analyze” at the top navigation in your Buffer account

2. Navigate to the “Posts” tab of your desired Facebook Page or Instagram account

3. Sort your posts in the “Post insights” table by “Eng. Rate”

The top few posts on the list will be great candidates for boosting. You should, however, bear in mind what you want to achieve with the boosted post and consider whether the organic post suits that purpose. For example, it will be timelier to boost a post that is meant for a marketing campaign during the campaign than after the campaign.

How to optimize your ad spend

You don’t want to just dump your money on boosted posts and forget about it. You should pay attention to the results of your boosted posts and compare the organic and paid results of your boosted posts to see how your investment has fared.

Why? By understanding the difference in your organic and paid results, you can adjust your ad spend according to the results you want to achieve. For instance, as your organic reach grows, you might want to cut back on boosting posts to a baseline so that most of your reach is from organic posts rather than boosted posts. That’s because building a brand solely through paid advertising isn’t sustainable.

With boosted post insights, there are now a few new ways to monitor your results in Buffer. Let’s run through them!

1. Overview performance

The simplest way is to see how boosting your posts has impacted your overall results. When you visit the Overview tab of a Facebook Page or Instagram account with boosted posts, you can immediately see a breakdown of organic vs paid for key metrics such as impressions and reach.

You can hover over the bar to see the exact breakdown between organic and paid.

2. Metrics growth

The next way is to track how your key metrics, such as impressions, have grown over time, especially with your boosted posts.

Are your impressions growing because of more organic impressions or paid impressions? Does that align with your strategy?

3. Post insights

The final way, and the most actionable approach, is to compare the organic and paid results of each boosted post in the “Post insights” table.

You can also click on the image to see more details of the post.

Here are a few questions you can think about while you look at these data:

• How are the paid results relative to the amount spent boosting the posts?
• Are there any boosted posts with exceptional paid results? Was it the media or the copy that might have caused more people to engage with the post? Or was it the audience setting for the boost? (You might also want to consider boosting such posts again if they are still relevant.)
• Am I getting the results I want? Should I spend more money boosting posts next month?

If you create monthly or weekly reports, you might also want to include these data. You can simply add them to a new or existing report by clicking on the “plus” button in the upper-right corner of the table or chart.

Make better decisions

There are so many different things to do as a small business. You should be able to have your data at your fingertips so that you can make swift, high-quality decisions. By comparing your organic and paid results in Buffer, you can make better decisions on investing your advertising budget and get more results.

If you value the money you spend boosting your Facebook and Instagram posts, you might enjoy our latest improvement. Try Buffer for free for 14 days and let us know what you think.

To learn more, feel free to check out our help article or join us for our upcoming webinar.

Frequently asked questions

Are ads created through Facebook Ads Manager included?

Not at the moment. After you let Buffer access your ad data, you will only see data for your boosted Facebook and Instagram posts in Buffer. If you would like to see data for your ads created through Facebook Ads Manager in Buffer, let us know!

How often are the data in Buffer updated?

The data for your Facebook Pages and Instagram accounts are updated about every six hours. We are working to improve this so that you get the most updated data whenever you visit Buffer. Also, the data you see in Buffer excludes today’s data.

I'm paying for Buffer. Why do I not see this in my Buffer account?

There are two possible reasons. First, you might not be subscribed to our analytics solution. To get boosted post insights and other analytics and reporting features, you'll need to add this to your Buffer subscription.

Second, if you are already paying for our analytics solution, you might need to grant Buffer permission to access your ad data. You can do so under settings.

For more specific questions about the feature, see our help article.

Note: This is the quarterly update sent to Buffer shareholders, with a bit of added information for context. We share these updates transparently as a part of our ‘default to transparency’ value. See all of our revenue on our public revenue dashboard and see all of our reports and updates here.

It's been quite the year and it's hard to believe that the first half of 2020 is already behind us.

I'm happy to share that we've come out of our projected revenue downturn in Q2 with good MRR growth in July and renewed optimism.

We're feeling motivated about what we'll accomplish these next few months as we continue to focus on product strategy and adding significant value for customers as top priorities. Read the latest from our CEO Joel to hear about the evolution of product over the past 10 years and where we're going from here. This includes our active search for a VP of Product and our plan to launch Engage, a social engagement product for small businesses that evolved from our experiences growing and sunsetting Reply.

Let's take a look at the financial result highlights for Q2 and how we've been supporting our customers, communities and team.

Financial results from Q2, 2020 and July, 2020

Q2, 2020

• Total net income: $832,000
• EBITDA margin: 16.2%
• MRR: $1,704,768 (down from $1,830,267 MRR at end of Q1)

July

• MRR: $1,728,259
• ARR: $20,739,108

Our bank balance at end of July was $7.2M, with a net cash balance (after paying off our line of credit) of $5.9M. We generally aim to keep three to six months of operating expenses on hand. This position has been instrumental in navigating the uncertainties of 2020 from a proactive position.

We look at revenue per employee from the lens of growth by taking ARR divided by total number of employees and contractors. We generally aim for $200k (or higher) in ARR per teammate.

Supporting our customers, communities, and team

We expected this revenue downturn in Q2, a majority of which is a result of extending payment relief to customers whose businesses have been adversely impacted by the pandemic. We've helped over 1,200 customers and extended a total of $191,000 in payment relief.

In May, we experimented with a 4-day work week in response to the added stress and pressures individuals have experienced due to the pandemic. After a successful first month, we decided to pilot this model through the rest of this year.

In June, we committed to anti-racism work in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement. We've donated a total of $100,000 to organizations that our Black teammates selected: The Marsha P. Johnson Institute, The Marshall Project, and Brave Space Alliance, while also doubling the charitable contributions made by our teammates. To date, we've made $120,000 in donations to more than 40 different organizations working towards anti-racism.

Looking ahead

In June and July, we've seen an increase in new business, expansion revenue, and reactivation revenue along with lower levels of customer churn. We are happy to see that Q2 growth decline shift towards a positive level of MRR growth for July and we’re seeing the same trend for August.

For the rest of Q3, we're expecting the small growth rebound to continue while we also make an impact on customer retention and value by focusing on product strategy. Metrics and numbers are moving in a conservative, yet positive direction.

It all started with a mission. Julian Hearn wanted to create a business he was proud of — a business that was about more than profit; that did the right thing for the planet, for its staff, and its customers.

That mission led to the launch of Huel.

Huel offers nutritionally complete food, delivered to your door. Its flagship powder product is made from plant-based sustainable ingredients like oats, flaxseed, and coconut, and offers consumers a convenient and affordable alternative to traditional meals and snacks.

Since its launch in 2015, Huel has sold over 100 million meals and built up a passionate audience of over 400,000 followers across social media channels.

How Buffer helps Huel to connect with customers across platforms

Finding the right software is a challenge for marketers. It’s especially difficult in the social media space. Platforms like Instagram and Facebook are constantly evolving, and as a result, the needs of marketers are always changing.

“It’s difficult to find something that does it all,” explains Tim Urch, Social Media Manager at Huel.

But working with Buffer has enabled Huel to connect with its audience — and grow its presence — across platforms. “I’ve used Buffer since I started at Huel in 2016,” Urch explained, and Buffer has helped Huel to navigate the waves of organic reach and maximize every opportunity to reach its most passionate advocates in their social feeds.

“Because the reach of organic content on social media is limited, getting those messages in front of as many people as you can is essential,” according to Urch. To achieve this he uses a multi-platform approach. This ensures Huel is connecting with and building lasting relationships with its key target customer groups where they naturally choose to engage with content.

I’ve found that the type of follower across social media platforms is different. People have their go-to social media, so if we have a key message we want to get out, it’s important to share it cross platform

Huel uses Buffer to manage its global social media presence made up of 10 profiles across Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

“It’s great for managing our social publishing schedule. We can easily tailor our messages to each social platform and review everything in one place.” says Urch

Keeping feeds filled with valuable content

When it comes to keeping Huel’s social media feed filled, Urch focuses on creating content that has a purpose beyond simply generating ‘Likes’. “[We] create content that first and foremost is useful or adds value for our audience,” he explains.

“Whenever we think about content we’ve got to consider how it can be useful to our Hueligans [an affectionate term for Huel customers], why would someone want to subscribe to our content and have it appear in their newsfeed?”

For Huel, that content might be tips for product success, nutrition advice from its world class nutrition team, business advice from its founder, or simply fun, relatable content which makes the audience feel part of its unique tribe.

But there’s a balance that Urch aims for. “As a brand we also need to talk about our products, a bit,” he explains.

Creating a sweet spot between what we want to say and what our audience wants to hear is tough - when those two things are the same, we’ve struck gold

Generating original content ideas

Anyone who has worked in social media will understand the challenge of keeping your content calendar brimming with ideas. It’s no small task, especially when you’re managing multiple profiles across platforms.

But over time, the Huel team has built up strong instincts about what will work on its social channels, and when planning content, Huel aims to challenge the norms.

“A lot of our most successful content has been instinctive, stuff that just came to me or someone in the team,” says Urch. “It might feel a bit left of field, a bit wacky, like a meme or a bold statement that might ruffle some feathers.”

It takes time to build this type of understanding with your audience where you know something will just click — remember Urch has been with the brand for over four years — and as a brand learns more about its audience, its team can begin to lean on intuition a little more. “Something I’ve learned is to trust those gut feelings,” he says. “Part of Huel’s DNA is about thinking a little different.”

Managing social media as part of a team

Content ideas are just one side of the coin for brands. The other is collaboration.

Content ideas can come from anywhere. Everyone uses social media and therefore, unlike in other more technical disciplines, everyone knows what could work

So as a Social Media Manager, Urch believes an important skill is to let go of the reins and utilise the team around you. “We have a team of marketing rock stars,” he says. “We brainstorm ideas together all the time, but what about the rest of the business?”

To aid collaboration across the team, Urch recently was set up a Slack channel called #social-hit-squad. In this channel a group of about 15 teammates from all areas of the business come together to share ideas and inspiration. But Urch also uses it as a testing ground for his own strategies and content. “We share ideas and I temperature check my own ideas with them too. This has meant our content is more reactive, varied and successful.”

From ‘check out’ to checkout

While striking the balance between keeping fans entertained and selling products is a challenge, Huel use Shop Grid to help their Instagram audience navigate their way from their Instagram page to their online store.

“If our Instagram content triggers something in our audience that makes them want to learn more, or buy one of our products, then we want to help facilitate that. Shop Grid is a really simple way for our customers to tap through from a post to our website. It’s qualified traffic with purchase intent,” explains Tim.

Managing a multi-channel strategy in the fast-moving world of social media is a huge challenge for any team. Buffer is proud to play a part in supporting Huel as it builds its brand and audience across social media channels. We hope you can find some inspiration from their approach!

Making and communicating decisions across an organization can be a challenge anytime. Making decisions during a pandemic is a whole new level of challenge.

When the impact of COVID-19 started to grow, we at Buffer, like many others, needed to move as quickly as possible, gather a lot of information, and make big decisions that would ultimately impact our team, our customers, and our business.

This presented a unique challenge. A lot of the decisions spanned the entire company and needed to be discussed at the leadership level, but we didn't need every member of our leadership team to be involved in every decision.

We decided to combine two frameworks that have worked for us in the past – task forces and the Decision Maker model – to create a setup that would allow us to respond quickly and efficiently. Here's more about how we used task forces to respond to COVID-19 within our team, and how we plan to continue to use them as necessary.

Buffer’s unique history with task forces

We first introduced the concept of task forces within Buffer at the same time that we began experimenting with how we structured our team. In 2015, we wrote this in one of our investor updates:

Perhaps one of the biggest changes that we have made in the last month is moving away from having long-term, static teams within the company. Instead we have shorter-term, more fluid task forces which are formed for a specific purpose and then disband once that task is completed.

At the time, task forces were fluid and democratic. Anyone could propose one, and teammates chose the task forces they joined. Instead of teams working together forever,  groups worked together until they completed the project and then disbanded.

It was an interesting model and fun experiment, but ultimately this version of task forces didn't feel as efficient as having longer-term teams work together consistently. When teams work together long-term, they develop their own habits, shorthand, and friendships that facilitate efficient work. So we moved away from the task forces model.

The Decision Maker model

Based on the book The Decision Maker by Dennis Bakke, the decision-maker framework helps teams get more decisions right through leaning on the collective knowledge, experience, and wisdom of a variety of teammates.

In a decision-maker culture:

• The leader chooses someone to make a key decision
• The decision-maker seeks advice (often, including from the leader) to gather information
• The final decision is made not by the leader, but by the chosen decision-maker.

In practice, the decision-maker model looks like:

1. Being explicit by asking "Who is the decision-maker?" or declaring "I'm owning this" with projects or responsibilities; or
2. Explicitly designating a decision-maker within an area or on cross-functional projects.

We’ve used the decision-maker model both formally and informally at Buffer over the years and have been happy with the results. This model helps us clarify and communicate about how decisions happen.

Grappling with COVID-19 through task forces

When COVID-19 began impacting our team and company, a lot of the work related to reacting to the pandemic initially fell to our People team. The first big question was whether we would move forward with our annual company retreat.

We ended up postponing our scheduled retreat four months before we were expected to hold it, which was a big decision that involved multiple conversations between our people team, our CEO, and the rest of our leadership team.

As the COVID-19 impact continued to grow, we realized we would have many more moments where we needed to move quickly and make big decisions. Some of our customers weren’t going to be able to pay their bills, and teammates would understandably feel distracted and anxious.

This was the moment when we decided to reinstate the task forces model. We're a nine-person leadership team, and it didn't make sense to have the whole leadership team and the entire People team in every conversation. We decided to form temporary task forces which looked like this:

Business and finance task force

This task force watched accounting and finance metrics to make sure that there were no surprises, and weighed in on every significant decision that could impact Buffer financially.

Members:

• Senior Director of Finance, Caryn Hubbard
• CTO, Dan Farrelly
• CEO, Joel Gascoigne

Customer task force

This task force focused on supporting our customers through the pandemic.

Members:

• VP of Customer Advocacy, Åsa Nyström
• VP of Marketing, Kevan Lee
• Interim VP of Product, Tyler Wanlass
• CEO, Joel Gascoigne

Teammates task force

This task force centered around how best to support our Buffer teammates.

Members:

• VP of Engineering, Katie Womersley
• Director of People, Courtney Seiter
• Chief of Special Projects, Carolyn Kopprasch
• CEO, Joel Gascoigne

Our CEO was a member of all three task forces, which was helpful for unblocking the task forces and making quick decisions – though adding that many additional meetings a week to his calendar wasn’t like a sustainable model for the long term!

The whole leadership team also held twice weekly stand-ups. These provided a space for each task force to report its work to the rest of the team and an opportunity to collaborate or discuss.

The results of our first task forces

The results of this framework were largely positive, with a few successes we’re particularly proud of:

• The customer task force released our customer relief fund when many customers weren’t able to pay their bills.
• The teammate task force kicked off the 4-day work week experiment; and
• The business task force developed a new dashboard of leading and lagging indicators to keep an eye on all things finance.

These task forces ran from mid-March to mid-June, after which we decided to pause the twice weekly stand-ups while we discuss next steps. As the pandemic response has evolved, we no longer need to react quite as quickly, and we're currently disbanding or adapting each of the task forces.

What we’ll do differently next time

The task force framework and decision-maker model allowed us to spin up teams quickly to respond to rapidly-changing world events. It’s a model we’d like to keep using as needed.

We plan on using this specific task force model in the future for any major crisis, event, or other moment that deeply impacts our customers, the team, and/or the business.

Next time, we might also not necessarily keep our task forces exclusive to leadership; crisis response often requires collaboration across the whole team!


Overall, this is a relatively simple and easy-to-replicate model that has helped us move through an unprecedented time. If you want to read more about our COVID-19 response, all of the team communication that we sent is listed here.

We've been building Buffer for coming up to ten years now. We’re currently a 90-person fully remote team with over 70,000 paying customers and $20M in annual revenue. We’re proud to be a leader in the space of social media management, and to operate long-term as an independent and profitable business.

As a company, we’ve rallied around serving small businesses. We’re also passionate about challenging suboptimal approaches to how work happens and how employees are treated. Our current 4-day workweek experiment is an example of that.

An important philosophy of our journey has been having the freedom to build our product and workplace the way we'd like to. In 2018, we took an important action to maintain this freedom by spending $3.3 million buying out our main VC investors.

After a great decade with many accomplishments and interesting challenges, we’re looking for an experienced and driven product executive to partner with me as CEO to shape the future of Buffer.

Apply for the VP of Product role →

Before I get into why we’re hiring a VP of Product, I want to share a history of product at Buffer, how our team is set up, and our most recent revenue metrics as these are all aspects of Buffer that I know a product leader will have questions around.

A history of product at Buffer

I launched the first (truly an MVP) version of Buffer in late 2010. In the beginning, Buffer started as a solution to my own problem around consistently sharing content on social media. I then put the idea through a customer discovery and validation process to ensure it was a problem others had, too. We launched with a freemium model and were fortunate to welcome the first paying customer on day three. We then added some focused marketing, and over the course of the first year gained thousands of active users of the product. Initially a lot of our product direction came from those customers, listening to their problems and devising unique solutions.

In 2012, it was time to focus slightly more. We narrowed in on bloggers, individuals, and small business owners. We set down our first true product vision, which was to be the sharing standard for the web. We made big progress on this vision, becoming the first social media management solution to create a sharing button and completing integrations with countless news reading apps.

During this time, our acquisition and growth strategy was our freemium model. Ultimately we started to realize that this strategy would only truly work if we became a mainstream product used by millions. As we integrated more widely, the signups we gained from those partnerships led to much lower freemium conversion rates. As a result, by 2014, our growth started to plateau and we felt we reached the upper limits of how successful Buffer could become with this approach.

Since our product was most valued by and most active among small business customers, we leaned into that and launched Buffer for Business with new pricing plans tiered up to $500/mo. We succeeded in finding a new wave of growth, and the journey cemented our intuition that Buffer wouldn’t find success as a consumer product. This brought a level of focus that was refreshing, and pushed us to add more power to the product. We aimed to do this while still maintaining the simplicity our customers had grown to love Buffer for.

In 2015, we explored  a team structure with no managers, and this played directly into our approach to product. With more autonomy on our team, we let our product strategy take a truly organic direction.  During our period of no managers, we launched several new products. This included a “Buffer labs” exploration where we produced Pablo, our image creation product, as well as Daily, a swipe left or right approach to adding suggested content to your social media queue. Finally, the Pablo team shifted to launch Rocket, our first foray into the ads space. Daily and Rocket were ultimately sunset, and we learned a lot from each of them.

In early 2016, we acquired Respondly, a social customer service and engagement product which we relaunched as Buffer Reply. This was our most significant bet and investment to date and took us into the customer service industry for the first time. Customer service had always been a large focus for us as a company, and we were excited to be able to offer a product to help others in this space, too. At the time, the networks were making a big bet on social media becoming a significant channel for customer service. Customer service ultimately did not grow along the path we predicted, and the need for a fully fledged product here was mostly limited to Enterprise scale, which was too mismatched with our existing customer-base and knowledge in the team. We grew Reply from $4k to $70k in MRR, and chose to sunset the product earlier this year.

In the process of becoming a two product organization, we saw an opportunity to separate out social analytics from our main product focused on social media publishing and content planning. We leaned into this multi-product strategy and built our third product, Analyze. This separation gave us a better focus on the separate customer jobs and we have been able to grow this into a very successful product. Analyze currently generates over $1.5m in ARR.

By the second half of 2018, we had grown to $18m in ARR and over 75,000 paying customers. Still being a small team, we started to feel stretched thin, and we increasingly found product prioritization and pace to be challenges. I partnered with our head of research to run a process to determine a singular type of customer for us to focus our efforts around. We arrived at Direct to Consumer (DTC) brands as a type of customer who has built their business on top of social media and has innovated the most with social media marketing and customer engagement. This newly defined Target Customer for Buffer brought us a lot of focus, but at times felt like an over correction and came at a cost to product improvements for our existing customers, who are small businesses of all types.

Something that became clear over a few years, and during our customer research process to arrive at DTC brands as a customer persona to focus on, was that the the world of social media had become increasing visual. To address this shift, we spent most of 2018 and 2019 building out new functionality focused on Instagram. In addition to this work to expand our product offerings, we underwent a significant rebuild project for our main product, Publish. Rebuilds are never fun, but with this now complete we are able to move significantly faster and deliver a much improved user experience.

That brings us to 2020. Our current focus is to become a brand-building platform for small businesses, with DTC brands as one of our primary customer personas. This year, it became clear that the multi-product approach was creating friction for customers, so we are working to adjust our pricing and overall experience towards a single solution. We’re in the midst of launching Engage, a social engagement product for small businesses that came out of our experiences growing Reply. Engage will be bundled as part of existing pricing tiers, at various levels of functionality.

I’m looking forward to this next chapter of Buffer, and to a future where we can become a comprehensive toolkit for small businesses to build their brand, grow, and create great relationships with their customers. We see a path to 100,000 paying customers and beyond, with many opportunities to solve more problems for that audience.

How our product team is set up

We’re primarily structured around the customer jobs we are focused on: Publish, Analyze and Engage. We also have two “shared services” teams focused on authentication, billing and onboarding (Core) and our iOS and Android apps (Mobile). Most teams have a Product Manager, Product Designer and somewhere between two and seven engineers depending on the needs of that product area.

The VP of Product we bring on board will manage Product and Design, and initially have six direct reports (four PMs, Head of Design and Partnerships Manager).

Our current financial metrics

We’ve been profitable since 2016 and in 2018 we chose to leverage that profitability to buy out a portion of our investors in order to retain control over Buffer’s path. We reached $10 million in ARR in May 2016, and $20 million ARR in March 2019.

Here are our most recent revenue and product metrics from June 2020:

MRR: $1,704,768
ARR: $20,457,216
Customers: 69,596
ARPU: $24.50
Customer Churn: 4.76%Net
MRR Churn: 3.95%
LTV: $515

Revenue: $1,679,591
Operating Income: $235,375
EBITDA margin: 14.01%

We have a dedicated revenue dashboard (a work in progress!) where you can see revenue over time. Here’s what that looks like:

The COVID-19 impact

Many businesses have been impacted by COVID-19, including us. Buffer is in a strong financial position, we’ve thankfully had no impact on jobs and have remained solidly profitable. The shareholder update we sent in April shares a complete picture of our approach in the midst of the pandemic.

One thing I talked about in that update is that sometimes the best thing we can do for our small business customers isn’t immediately profitable for Buffer – including our COVID-19 support programs for customers with financial challenges. I have no doubt that we’re doing the right thing by focusing on people first. One of my business philosophies is that if we take care of our teammates and our customers as best we possibly can now, we will succeed in the long term.

This graph of our MRR in 2020 shows the impact we’ve seen on revenue:

Though we have experienced some anticipated decline, we are happy to see that it has started to climb again and as I mentioned, Buffer has pulled through in a strong financial position. We’ve spent the last few years building up to our current financial security, which means we can weather extreme levels of uncertainty. We’re fortunate and grateful to be in this position, and are proud of our financial diligence.

We’re hiring a VP of Product

At this point in the journey of Buffer, I’m excited to bring on board a VP of Product.

Before I share more of the reasons we came to this decision, I want to share a key area of weakness up front. While we've made great strides over the past few years, and we have a majority female leadership team, our current leadership team lacks diversity.

There's no doubt that as a result we lack key perspectives and have unconscious biases as a company. It’s a priority for us to change this dynamic and include within our leadership team backgrounds that have been typically underrepresented in tech. This will serve our customers and our team more fully than we have been able to so far.

Since we don’t grow our leadership team often, this is a rare opportunity for us. In addition to looking for a talented product leader, we also want this teammate to bring a new perspective to our leadership team and culture. Making sure we speak to a slate of diverse candidates is critical as we look for our VP of Product.

Below are a few reasons I came to the decision to look for a product leader:

Being a product-minded CEO can become a weakness

As a product-minded CEO, my journey has followed from my innate energy and passion for product development. An engineer by background, I shifted to product development early in our journey, and found a lot of enjoyment in crafting the experience for customers, which I believe has played a large role in where we are today.

Unfortunately, what can happen with a product-CEO, is that product can go from being the strongest area of the company to one of the weakest. At a certain point, product must scale up and become operationalized, and those strengths must become part of how the overall team functions. I believe in recent years we’ve seen some deterioration of product where other areas such as engineering have grown stronger, due to my desire to hold on and shape product more than is appropriate for the size have grown to.

I’ve recognized that I need to take a different approach to fulfill the vision and goals I have, in order to keep the product as a core strength of ours. It needs to happen through someone else, rather than through me alone.

I’m looking to bring more balance to all areas of Buffer

I believe for a company to thrive, all areas in a company need to work in harmony and that my role as CEO is set down vision and support all areas.

Over the past few years, I’ve been very focused on product, which has caused an imbalance in how much I’ve been involved in other areas of the company. This is to the detriment of our customers, team, and all stakeholders.

By inviting this functional leader to our leadership team, it will mean I can be more equally balanced across all areas of Buffer. We will be able to push forward, and I can work more closely with leaders to set vision and strategy, across all areas in tandem.

Therefore, bringing on an experienced VP of Product will help us level up as a product organization. We will be able to introduce more streamlined processes, and by having a person dedicated to this area solely, we will improve the way product interacts with other related and interdependent areas, such as engineering, marketing, and advocacy.

We’re looking for outside perspective

For this role, I am making the choice to bring in someone from the outside instead of considering someone growing from within the company. This is new for us, and I’m excited for the opportunity for growth we have with a fresh perspective on the executive team.

In our journey so far, we have overwhelmingly had leaders grow from individual contributor roles into senior leaders. I believe that it’s beneficial to have a majority of leaders grow from within the company as there is a clear alignment of our values, empathy towards team members, and a sense of loyalty towards our mission.

With that said, having 100% of leaders grow from within creates a lack of diversity in our mindset and approach. Without outside experience, we will have knowledge gaps as a leadership team, and can become set in our ways. The VP of Product role is an excellent opportunity for us to find someone with some extensive outside experience.

A key thing we will be focused on in our hiring process is that a person’s external experience is compatible and additive to Buffer’s approach and values.

More about this role

For this role, I’m seeking a partner in product strategy and execution. Since product is at the heart of Buffer, this is one of the most important roles and one which will make decisions impacting all other areas.

We’re looking for a product leader with deep product management and design fundamentals and expertise, as well as strong people management experience and stakeholder collaboration. I’m aiming to find someone that can both tap into the insights that I have to offer and stand strong and push back when they believe I shouldn’t be involved.

It will be helpful for a potential VP of Product to have experience in a smaller company environment, and ideally has led a product team through significant growth, for example growing a SaaS product from $10m to $50m or more.

The other key difference with Buffer is that we’re focused on SMB, with a large number of paying customers and free users, and we have no sales team. This changes the type of work involved at the product leadership level, and this will be something the right person is energized by.

The new VP of Product will have the opportunity to craft a unique strategy to help us serve customers, differentiate Buffer, and see great growth over the next 5 to 10 years.

Joining Buffer at the leadership level is a rare opportunity. We’re a highly customer-focused team and are squarely on a path of long-term sustainability. This is an opportunity for a great product leader to play a key role in creating much more value for customers and building something special that endures.

I’m looking forward to meeting people who are up for this challenge.

Apply for the VP of Product role →

Please reach out through this job posting to apply and someone from our hiring team will be in touch with next steps.

If you want to recommend someone who you think would be great for this role, please fill out this form.

More about Buffer’s journey

If you’d like to learn more about Buffer’s journey over the years, here are a few podcast episodes where I’ve talked about starting Buffer, fundraising, transparency, and profitability.

• SaaStock: Building a remote, profitable, transparent and sustainable company with Joel Gascoigne, CEO of Buffer
• 20VC: Buffer’s Joel Gascoigne on The Moment The Founder Is No Longer The Boss, The Questions Founders Must Ask Their VCs and Why We Need A Spectrum of Different Financing Mechanisms Other Than VC
• Product Hunt: Distributed teams, extreme transparency and buying out your investors

Remarkable brands are more than a logo.

They are a collection of images and feelings and connections. (Often experienced through social media.)

Take Nike for instance. When you think of Nike, you likely see movement, you feel momentum. You associate Nike with getting things done. This feeling is reinforced by all their imagery and of course by the iconic swoosh logo.

With Skittles, you likely see rainbows, bright colors, and excitement. These are hallmarks of their commercials and their ads.

We associate brands with images and feelings because - as neuroscience researchers have found - our brains love to stitch thoughts together. One thought always brings other thoughts, especially if those thoughts are recalled at the same time over and over. That’s why seeing a brand in a certain context, again and again, trains our minds to think of that brand whenever we randomly see those things in real life.

Our perception of any brand is constantly being reinforced by the images we see ... which is why visual marketing is one of the most powerful marketing tools out there.

And it's why Unsplash is fast becoming a go-to place for brands to be.

In this article, we'll dive into the Unsplash strategies working today and how you can make the most of this "blue ocean" channel. Keep reading to find out how to build and shift brand perception using visual marketing and Unsplash.

Let's dive in.

The Real Power of Visual Marketing

There have been numerous studies showing the power of visual marketing for building brand recognition and awareness. We know that content with images is generally more engaging, gets shared more on social media and attracts more attention.

The visual component of most marketing strategies is usually aimed at commanding attention, stimulating curiosity, and prompting immediate action.

Yet, this visual marketing strategy that focuses on immediate gains is very limited. The real power of visual marketing is in creating branded associations and controlling customers’ perceptions of the brand.

As we know, human beings are highly visual, as multiple studies confirm. Consider these two numbers showing how much our brain relies on visualizations:

• 90% of the information that is transmitted to the brain is visual
• The brain was found to process images 60,000 times faster than any type other information

When we think, most of us picture things. We remember colors, shapes, and symbols. This is where the real power of visual marketing lies – building connections between what you think and feel and what you experience with a brand on social, web, etc.

How brands are using Unsplash as a new visual marketing channel

Unsplash is one of the best places to find free images ... and one of the largest: it is used more than Getty, Shutterstock, and Adobe Stock combined.

Social media and marketing teams around the world use Unsplash for beautiful, free imagery.

But brands are finding a home – and real traction – through Unsplash also.

This has happened through organic posting and through paid advertising with Unsplash for Brands. Let's talk about more about how organic and paid work with Unsplash.

Organic posting on Unsplash

As you might have seen, many brands are uploading their own curated photos to Unsplash, contributing great, free photography to the Unsplash system.

These photos, for instance, are by Sticker Mule.

It's completely free to upload these photos. The greatest part is that you're giving back to the community and delivering value to photo-seekers. For your brand, you're also reaping huuuuge benefits.

This photo from Sticker Mule ...

It's been viewed more than 13 million times!

Overall, the Sticker Mule account has 74 million views on just 15 total photos.

Sticker Mule is just one of many examples of brands doing unique, creative work on Unsplash and seeing huge results.

The furniture company Inside Weather has a very on-brand collection of images, featuring furniture pics that line up beautifully with the brand style on their website.

Brands like Sticker Mule and Inside Weather have a concise collection of photos to choose from (25 or fewer). And then there are brands like Morning Brew (a business newsletter) and The New York Public Library that have hundreds of photos on Unsplash.

For additional inspiration, here's a list of some brands and institutions doing great things on Unsplash:

• S'well
• STIL
• Supply
• Goby
• Candid
• Visit Greenland
• Lumin
• Curology
• Hubble
• Tim Tebow Foundation
• Soundtrap by Spotify
• Library of Congress
• United Nations

Paid advertising on Unsplash

Unlike numerous other advertising solutions out there, Unsplash offers a non-interruptive, unintrusive experience: Customers who are seeing branded images don’t have to interrupt their current browsing journeys, while publishers don’t have to compromise on their content quality.

Unsplash Advertising works in three steps:

• Upload and publish your branded images to Unsplash
• Align photos with important and relevant search terms
• Syndicate the images to publishers and creators who use Unsplash to find creative photos that can be used for free in their content and social media channels

Sponsored images appear in the top-left of the homepage and search results. The photographer's name and avatar show up by default (rather than showing up when you hover over the picture). When you do hover, a small "sponsored" label appears on the image.

Does Unsplash advertising work?

Unsplash advertising program is currently by invite only (you can apply here) but earlier case studies have shown tremendous success, so there’s definitely a huge potential here:

Aggregate results across these early advertiser case studies show Unsplash to be more effective at elevating how people feel about a brand – more effective than even digital, TV, and Instagram campaigns.

Create Visual Content that Captures Your Brand Goals without Being Promotional

This is a fundamental step to creating an effective visual marketing:

• Your images need to feature your product the way you want it to be perceived
• At the same time, make sure your images are non-promotional and creative enough for publishers and social media users to want to use them on their sites and social media feeds

In other words, when crafting your visual marketing strategy, ask yourself the following questions:

• Do my images capture my brand’s goals?
• Are they good enough for people to want to use them?

The key focus here is in building organic imagery around the brand through providing branded visual content that is worth using.

To create high-quality branded photography, brands can choose to

• Upload their own pictures
• Work with creative photographers from the Unsplash community

A Few Examples of Unsplash-Hosted Campaigns

Boxed Water was interested in promoting the awareness of plastic bottle alternatives. It is know that plastic is the major pollutant of the environment, Boxed Water has focused on how sustainable their product is, as opposed to commonly used plastic bottles.

In order to build the perception of that contrast, most of their branded photography is outdoors featuring people in a perfect harmony with nature:

Another Unsplash advertiser - Google Chromebook - was willing to become known as a creativity- and travel-friendly solution that is being used by younger generations, so they worked with Unsplash photographers to create pictures reflecting that perception:

Another example is Square employing visual marketing to shift the audience perception from a very narrow concept of a mobile credit card reader to a broader one of a full-stack financial and merchant service provider.

The goal behind their campaign was to broaden the perception of the brand and capture the attention of small business owners who were not aware of the various business management and growth tools Square had.

Unsplash photographers were tasked to create pictures which would associate Square with business, entrepreneurs, payments, and stores:

Notice how subtle the brand’s presence is in all the pictures, yet how hard it is to miss.

Tips for Creating Powerful Branded Photography on Unsplash

Unsplash has a detailed guide on how to create photography that gets noticed and used through the Unsplash platform, and all of those tips apply for brands, too:

• Avoid being promotional or self-centered (don’t just post product pictures or selfies)
• Pictures should be of high resolution with the minimum size requirement of 5 megapixels and 2500 by 2000 pixels (for a landscape picture)
• Photos should be clear, creative, and original
• Don’t use watermarks. Your brand identity needs to be a natural and subtle part of the context of the photo, not overlaid on it.

Tip #1: Post your photos around upcoming dates

When creating your branded photography, it is always a good idea to think of upcoming holidays, seasons, or notable dates. Timing your content strategy right is always effective (here’s a quick guide on doing that right).

Note: When planning a seasonal campaign on Unsplash, time everything carefully to upload photos at least one month prior to the holiday or the start of the season, as this when content creators start planning their articles too.

Tip #2: Align photos with important and relevant search terms

While the quality of the actual photography is fundamental to success, you also want those pictures to be discoverable.

Don’t forget that the real beauty of using the Unsplash platform is that it is used by content creators and social media influencers, and you want your branded photos to be found by them.

Unlike other visual advertising solutions (Instagram, for example), with Unsplash you won’t have to set your audience targeting: Your visual content and relevance settings define its visibility in a most organic way.

In other words, this step is where you are able to define who is able to discover your branded images and how wide your audience is going to be.

Tip #3: Use a lot of tags to get your pictures discovered by users & publishers

Unsplash does use automated tagging to help photos  be discovered but you need to also manually tag your images to ensure multi-purpose discoverability of your branded photos.

Here are some tips for properly tagging your branded photos:

• List the objects within your photo (for example, “snow”, “water”, etc.)
• Add symbolic and metaphorical tags that reflect what the photo is evoking. These should describe the mood and the atmosphere behind the picture (for example, “motivation”, “nature”, “solitude”)
• Include tags for content creators to be able to find and use your pictures within their articles (for example, “work at home”, “hobby”, “marketing”, “sustainability”, etc.)
• When possible, list trending hashtags. Unsplash helpfully offers a “trending search” section that shows which words have been typed into the Unsplash search box recently. It is also a good idea to keep an eye on that section and add tags to older photos when they are relevant to a current hot trend.

Here's what was trending in July:

To add tags to your photos:

• Upload your picture and publish it
• Go to your profile and hover over the picture
• Select “Edit” and click to the “Tags” tab
• Add your tags one by one:

When I am stuck and cannot come up with more tags, I use semantic analysis to identify related concepts, brands and places. Here are semantically-related results for [skyscraper], for example:

Additionally, here’s the list of popular topics and keywords that are searched on Unsplash, so pick those that make the most sense:

Tip #4: Don’t forget to add captions

While tags drive visibility inside the Unsplash platform, captions will help expand your content reach even further.

Unsplash images are very well indexed in Google, and rank well in Google Images which is an important visual discoverability tool used by many content creators.

Thanks to its domain authority and high-quality of photographic content, Unsplash ranks incredibly well in Google, so hosting your branded visual content on the platform will also improve your brand’s organic visibility in both Google Images and generic Google search:

Unsplash uses machine learning and image recognition technologies to handle much of its content search engine friendliness. For example, when you upload a photo of a seagull to the platform, it will automatically be named “Free Bird Image”.

So whether you apply any additional efforts or not, once you upload your branded photos to Unsplash, they will start ranking in Google quite well.

Yet, adding more text around the picture will be helpful in generating even more organic presence for your branded pictures. That being said, always add a descriptive 1-3-sentence caption to increase its odds of getting found in both Unsplash and Google.

Tip #5: Add the location information

Finally, if your picture features a certain location, do add it. Location settings make your photos discoverable for location-based search queries. For example, when someone is searching for “NYC”, your picture labeled there will show up in search results.

Tip #6: Syndicate the branded images to publishers

Once your branded pictures are uploaded and tagged, they will now be findable through Unsplash search results, just as regular pictures would, but labeled as “sponsored”:

Unsplash has a huge community of photographers and content creators utilizing the platform to find free images for their articles, videos, and infographics.

But the platform reach doesn’t stop there. By offering the free API for developers to use, Unsplash allows its users’ photos to be integrated into a variety of content management platforms and graphic design solutions, including:

• Numerous design platforms including Sketch and Adobe Spark
• Major website builders including Squarespace
• Various Wordpress plugins including CSS Hero and Instant Images
• Lots of website templates and popular Wordpress themes, including Illdy and Imahe
• Various presentation and productivity apps including Trello and Google Slides

Imagine your visual message to be integrated into all or any of those platforms.

The potential reach includes some best-known publications and media outlets including Buzzfeed and Medium, to name the few.

This means your branded creative photography will be unstoppable bringing your products in front of audiences across the web. Here are just a few headlines organically placing Unsplash advertisers in a highly relevant context on incredibly popular publications:

(Notice the relevant context here: It is all about starting a new business angle that puts the brand’s product in front of the target audience, i.e. those that are looking to start a new business.)

Conclusion

Visual marketing plays a major role in influencing and swaying customers’ perceptions of the brand, and I find it pretty exciting that we finally get a visual marketing solution allowing brands to impact buyers’ buying decisions without forcing their branded imaginary on either customers or publishers.

It’s one of those innovations that promotes creativity and offers something for everyone. As Luke Chesser, Cofounder of Unsplash, put it:

Brands get impact, contributors get paid opportunities, and creators get more images to create openly with. It’s a win-win-win.

Launched in April 2020, Jot Coffee, a newly launched DTC (direct-to-consumer) coffee brand, has quickly picked up steam as the new at-home coffee brand that delivers an exceptionally delicious experience, both in-person and digitally. But how did they manage to generate so much interest and excitement for their launch?

Read on for a behind-the-scenes look at how Jot built excitement for its launch on Instagram and how to create a community from day one. You'll hear directly from Jackie Modena, Director of Community at Jot, and you'll learn:

• Where to find inspiration for creating on-brand social media content
• How to plan for a successful new brand or product launch on Instagram
• How to generate pre-launch interest, UGC (user-generated content), and followers
• How to engage with your brand's community in a timely manner
• How to stay up to date on social media trends and updates

This post is part of the #BufferBrandSpotlight, a Buffer Social Media series that shines a spotlight on the people that are helping build remarkable brands through social media, community building, content creation, and brand storytelling.

This series was born on Instagram Stories, which means you also have the ability to watch the original interview in our Highlights found on our @buffer Instagram profile.

Who are you?

Hi, I’m Jackie Modena! I’m with Jot, a newly launched DTC company that makes a first-of-its-kind 20x concentrated Ultra Coffee from fair trade, organic beans. All it takes is one tablespoon of our Ultra Coffee to create delicious, café-quality drinks at home, like iced lattes, americanos, and cappuccinos. We have a small but mighty (and highly caffeinated) team based out of Boulder, CO.

I’m Jot’s Director of Community, where I oversee the strategic direction of our social media, develop content, engage with and grow our community, manage influencer partnerships, and work closely with PR, performance marketing and customer service.

I’ve previously held in-house marketing and social media roles at other national CPG companies like Ripple Foods and ICONIC Protein, and prior to that, worked for a boutique PR agency that specialized in servicing natural & organic CPG food, beverage and lifestyle brands.

Where do you find inspiration for Jot’s social media content?

When we first started out with our social channels, we developed a set of creative guidelines to help inform the types of content, visual direction and aesthetic that we wanted to create.

We were also fortunate to launch with some amazing GIF, video and still content from an early creative shoot organized by our branding agency, Red Antler. Those assets really helped to set the foundation for the tone and visual direction of our social media. From there, it was easy to find content partners and curated content that fit our aesthetic. For inspiration, I follow relevant Instagram hashtags that either tie directly to our brand or to an aesthetic (ex. #coffeephotography, #coffeevibes, #morninglight, #lightsandshadows, etc.), look to other brand accounts (both competitors and other categories), and follow my favorite creator accounts for inspiration.

How does managing Jot’s social media account look like on a day-to-day basis?

I try to consolidate things as much as possible, so that I’m not bouncing around from platform to platform all day. That’s what makes Buffer such a great tool—I’m able to manage our Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn all in one place.

While we typically have ‘themes’ or overarching content initiatives that we plan six months to a year in advance, I only look to schedule content a few weeks out—and even then, I consider it a rough plan. Things can change so quickly, and it’s important to be able to pivot quickly and adapt to the landscape.

While we typically have ‘themes’ or overarching content initiatives that we plan six months to a year in advance, I only look to schedule content a few weeks out

From there, as it relates to Instagram, my day-to-day looks like the following:

1. I’m checking in on UGC via our tagged posts and hashtags, and engaging with members of community who share their Ultra Coffee photos and recipes. We try to encourage customers to use #jotcoffee and #justonetablespoon, and we’re currently running a #summerofjot campaign.
2. I’m checking in on stories and DMs throughout the day, to engage with our customers, re-share stories to our own story, and field any customer service-related questions that might come in.
3. I like to keep an eye on the engagement on Facebook and Instagram ads, both to moderate any comments that violate our community guidelines and to answer questions from consumers who might be curious about our product.

How do you plan for a successful new brand or product launch?

As a marketer, brand and product launches are some of my favorite initiatives to plan, strategize and execute.

With Jot, when it came to Instagram specifically, we were careful to start curating our feed with on-brand, aesthetic content (and I think this can be a great time to utilize more ambitious grid-style posts that span 3-, 6- or 9-feed posts in size) leading up to our launch, without showing the actual product.

While we planned to have a presence on all the major social media platforms, we knew that Instagram was going to be a main priority for us and where we’d be dedicating a majority of our resources when it came to content, influencer and community.

To help generate pre-launch interest, followers and UGC, we launched a friends & family program in the weeks before our official launch, and encouraged participants to share their Ultra Coffee experience with us. This allowed us to start gathering early customer feedback and troubleshooting possible customer service and community questions.

To help generate pre-launch interest, followers and UGC, we launched a friends & family program in the weeks before our official launch, and encouraged participants to share their Ultra Coffee experience with us.

We also received a lot of great unboxing and other UGC content for social, which we started gathering and saving to ensure we’d have enough content on our launch day to really make a splash. Again, a tool like Buffer can be really helpful in this regard, because you can start to build up your content database and schedule out your launch day posts and stories (knowing how hectic launch days usually are, this can be a huge time-saver!).

In terms of other product launches I’ve worked on in the past for more established companies with an existing community, I think it’s fun to build anticipation with teaser posts leading up to the official launch. It gets the community engaged and involved and almost makes the launch into a game (you could even tie in a giveaway if someone guesses the correct new flavor/product).

What marketing/social media advice do you have for brands that are pre-launch?

I’d establish yourself on all the main social channels (and try to keep a consistent handle across all platforms) but figure out which channels are going to be your main focus.

For us as a DTC consumer product, it made sense that Instagram, and to an extent Facebook, would be an important part of our marketing strategy, so it was really essential that we nailed it on those platforms. We have more flexibility when it comes to posting cadence and strategy for our other platforms like LinkedIn, Pinterest, Twitter and TikTok, which allows us to be a little more experimental in our content.

When you’re a small startup, you’re only going to have so many resources—time, budget, manpower—to devote to your social channels, so invest wisely in your primary channels while maintaining relevant content on your secondary channels.

What’s your number one tip for engaging with your brand’s community?

Time is of the essence, so check in with your platforms of highest engagement frequently. If your priority platform is Instagram and that’s where you’re seeing the most engagement, you don’t need to necessarily be glued to Instagram all day but consider designating a few 15-minute chunks of time throughout the day as Instagram check-in time and even blocking your calendar as such.

Time is of the essence, so check in with your platforms of highest engagement frequently.

I do think it’s important to try and engage in a timely manner, whether it’s through DMs, a comment on a piece of UGC, or a comment on a post, because your followers are more likely to still be active on the platform and see your engagement.

I’ve also seen instances where follower conversations or questions can snowball in an unintended direction, or misinformation can be spread, if the brand doesn’t engage quickly enough with the community, so try to monitor and stay on top of conversations as they happen rather than being days behind and trying to do damage control later.

How do you stay up to date on social media trends?

I find that many of the social media scheduling and influencer platforms I utilize have fantastic blogs and email newsletters (including Buffer!) so make sure you’re signed up to receive their communications—they often have all the latest news & updates on the major social media platforms and trends in the space.

I have a few newsletters I’m subscribed to as well—The Hustle, Lean Luxe, and Morning Brew’s new marketing-centric newsletter, for a quick take on trends in retail, marketing and DTC businesses.

Finally, I’d recommend seeking out a few networking groups specific to your position or industry. I really like the Create & Cultivate and Women in Influencer Marketing Facebook groups—they’re a great way to share resources, ask questions, discuss ideas/approaches and meet others in the industry. Since conferences and trade shows are off the table at the moment, these kinds of groups can be a great stand-in for in-person networking opportunities and can lead to collaborating, brainstorming and sharing.

How do you take your Ultra Coffee?

My favorite everyday way to take my Ultra Coffee is in an iced latte—it’s as simple as 8 oz milk (I prefer Oatly Barista Style), ice, and a tablespoon of Ultra Coffee.

When I want to switch things up, I go for one of our new #summerofjot recipes: one tablespoon of Ultra Coffee, 6 oz water, one tablespoon fresh squeezed lemon juice, 1.5 tbsp maple, and ice – for a refreshing and unique Cold Brew Lemonade.

We hope this interview with Jackie helps you get started with or double down on your social media efforts. You can follow her journey on Instagram here!

Have any questions for Jackie? Feel free to reply with your questions to the Twitter post below and Jackie, or someone from the Buffer team, will get to them as soon as possible.

When I joined Buffer and opened my new Buffer email account for the first time, the email count read 200.  I was momentarily stunned.
That was way more emails than I'd ever had in one place before.

Usually, when you set up an email account at a new workplace, your inbox is empty at first – people don't yet have your email address and you aren't on a bunch of email lists. I was planning on those few days or weeks of email bliss, where your inbox is nearly always zero.

I had known about Buffer's value of transparency at work and about our practice of email transparency, but what I hadn't realized was that sometimes the benefit of transparency can become a burden. That's what was happening with transparent email.

Here's why transparent email stopped working for us, and what we switched to instead.

Why transparent email wasn’t working for us anymore

Six years ago now, we shared a blog post detailing the exact workflows we used for transparent email. At the time, we wrote:

Our value of transparency extends all the way to the inbox. Every email is public within the team. Every bit of communication gets shared. Everyone knows everything. There are no secrets.

The idea is a sound one, and transparent email did solve a challenge for us. A lot of communication was happening via email, and we wanted everyone to be able to see emails transparently. Having specific email lists that we cc’ed or bcc’ed (click on that link above for more on that system) was a much more efficient way to work than to add each teammate individually.

So what stopped working?

We grew to a larger team size

The purpose of transparent email was to see conversations happening across any team and have all of the context you needed. It worked well for us when Buffer was a team of fewer than 30 people, but around and past that time, it started to get a little bit out of control. By the time we reached a team of over 80, transparent email was no longer easy to keep up with purely because of the volume.

If you look at it from a relationships standpoint, the formula for possible relationships means that at 80 people there were 3,160 possible relationships. Of course, every individual wasn’t always speaking with every other person at the company, but still, that’s a huge number of possible relationships to be communicating via email.

It put the burden of staying informed on the individual

Receiving several hundred emails in a week was a huge burden for teammates. They needed to leverage email to stay informed, maintain a system, and figuring out which conversations were relevant, and we placed that burden on individual teammates, rather than making a change at an organizational level. Teammates became responsible for keeping track of all internal conversations, while at the same time email was still a place for external conversations to come in as well and it was a lot to juggle.

On top of that, the feeling that I had opening my Buffer email for the first time happened to a lot of new teammates, and that wasn't a great experience.

Filters didn’t always work

The best solution to that level of email was to create lots of filters to sort and organize all internal conversations based on the internal email address that was being cc’ed.

Having so many filters set up sometimes meant that people would miss out on emails that mentioned them, which isn’t a great result, but we spent a lot of time and energy trying to make these filters work with transparent email.

We created several detailed internal best practices documents filled with different systems for setting up filters and managing email. Our CEO, Joel Gascoigne, even outlined a project for an internal email tool, he wrote:

Email at Buffer is a little like the Wild West. With transparent email, the number of emails we individually receive as a 30 person team could be 5 or 10x the amount someone in a normal 30 person team would receive.

So we built an internal tool for email called Buffmail.

The result of all of this work was more work. Teammates needed to spend more time setting up filters and tweaking them when new teams were created or projects were kicked off. In the end, the issue wasn’t that we weren’t doing transparent email properly, it was that we had outgrown this system and needed to look for a new one.

Our new system for transparent internal communication

In the words of our Director of People, Courtney Seiter, we needed a tool to help us have “calm, deliberate and timezone-inclusive conversation and decision-making at Buffer.”

In addition to decision making, we wanted a space for work-related announcements and discussion in the form of longer, asynchronous conversations.

Our solution: Threads

We’ve mentioned Threads before as it’s a staple in our asynchronous communication. Threads makes it easy to have text-based conversations across the company and clearly mark decisions when they are made. It also works well with Slack; new Threads can be cross-posted to a linked Slack channel, which is a nice benefit.

Why Threads works for us

Threads is a much less overwhelming way for 90 people to communicate. It’s easy to skim a Space (that’s the Threads name for a specific area) to see if there’s any conversation you want to drop into, and there’s also a helpful button to mark something as follow up.

It’s also less likely that someone will miss a Thread that mentions them because of Threads’ notification system. Threads helps take the burden of staying informed off of the individual. If someone needs to be looped in, it’s easy to tag them, and if someone wants to skim a space, they can do so without getting alerted to every conversation.

How we set Threads up

In Threads, there are different "Spaces," and anyone in that Space will see all of the Threads (discussions) created there.

We've set up Threads to have Spaces that everyone should be a part of, and other, optional Spaces depending on a teammate's team and location.
Here's how we've set up our Spaces:

Team Spaces

Any space that starts with "Buffer-" is intended for all teammates to permanently join with notifications on. For us, these spaces are:

• Announcements: For team-wide announcements
• Inclusion: To discuss diversity, equity, and inclusion
• Joel's Memos: For thoughts from our CEO
• Recognition & Praise: For celebrating and recognizing teammates
• Retreat: For retreat info
• Time-off: For vacation plans and time off
• Town-Hall: An asynchronous space for town-hall questions for our CEO and leadership team
• Updates: For area updates

Area Spaces

Each Area has its own Space with the naming convention Area-AreaName, e.g. Area-Marketing. These Spaces are intended only for those who work daily in that area to join. Teammates can view any Area Space anytime but we ask that they view only and not join any area they don't work in directly. We do periodic cleanups to help stick to this guideline.

Project Spaces

We have a small number of Project Spaces with the naming convention: Proj-ProjectName, e.g. Proj-Pricing. These are for projects that touch many different teams and have a finite end date.

Geographic Spaces

We have several geography-related Spaces, e.g. Geo-UK and Geo-Canada, for discussion about the Buffer teammate experience specific to those countries.

Help Spaces

We have two help Spaces, Help-People and Help-Tools. Help-People is for questions or help around things like benefits, moving, and other life changes. Help-Tools is for when a teammate needs help with any of the tools we use at Buffer.

When we make new Spaces

To avoid having too many Spaces, we currently default to trying to write a Thread in the best-fitting Space before creating a new Space. If after that is given a try it still feels like this topic needs a new Space, then we’ll create it.

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We’ve been using Threads for over a year now and are still feeling like it was very much the right decision and choice to move away from transparent email. If you liked this blog post, check out this post where we talk about asynchronous communication and why it’s so important for remote work.

In May, our entire team experimented with a 4-day workweek. The intention of this experiment was to help us all manage the stress and changes to routine caused by living through a global pandemic.

We initially rolled out the 4-day work week experiment for only one month, with the main goal of reducing teammates’ stress. Happily, both survey results and anecdotal stories tell us that this was a success.

After examining survey data and anecdotal feedback and chatting with the team, we’ve decided to conduct a long-term pilot of the 4-day workweek through the end of the year. Here’s more on how we came to that decision and our next steps.

The results from our 4-day workweek experiment

Our main goal with this experiment was to help the team manage stress and changes to their routine caused by COVID-19. To measure whether this effort was successful, we polled the team at the beginning and end of the month and asked about their autonomy, stress level, and overall work happiness.

Here are the results from our team surveys showing differences between early May and late May:

• We saw higher autonomy: 4.3 → 4.5
• We saw lower stress levels: 3.3 → 2.7
• We saw higher work happiness: 3.9 → 4.2

*These numbers are all out of 5.

These results are only part of the picture. We also asked teammates for written feedback and anecdotal stories about their experience. We received lots of both that supported these results. One teammate shared that they felt this experiment was helping them feel focused:

This last month has been incredible when it comes to finding more time to look after myself. I feel a lot more productive when it comes to the work I do and the creeping feeling of burnout towards the end of the week has gone completely. If anything I find myself more focused than I’ve ever been.

And another shared feelings of motivation and more collaboration:

General sense is that everyone has been feeling more motivated, energised and excited about the work we’re doing. We’ve also had more “ad-hoc improvements” with folx jumping in to add more monitoring, refactoring and improving our services. There was also more cross-team collaboration and more async activity on Threads and Slack.

It wasn’t completely smooth for all teammates, of course. We also heard a few challenges:

Since the biggest confusion to me was trying to remember/juggle who was off when, it would be great if we could decide on a particular day that we all take off.

Another challenge was around holidays (more on that below):

Due to a lot of public holidays during May, it meant that week to week it would often change as to who was taking what day off.  Folx appreciated having some flexibility in what day to take off, but it did result in a lot of deviations from the planned Wednesday off.

Because the 4-day workweek experiment was designed to give temporary relief to teammates during an especially hard time, we did not set goals around productivity or results during the one-month trial. In fact, we expected a tangible drop in productivity due to reduced hours.

So we were happily surprised when many teammates shared that they felt their weekly productivity was not all that different, and that their quality of work was higher due to increased rest and extra focus.

The one unique case here was our Customer Advocacy team. Because their style of work is heavily based on responding to customer queries, they may be an exception to the idea that fewer hours could result in similar productivity. Our VP of Customer Advocacy is leading separate discussions with this team around productivity and wellbeing in a 4-day model to see how they can make this shift work longer-term.

Why we decided on a 6-month pilot

Based on the results of the trial, we decided to start a more thorough pilot of a 4-day work week that focuses not just on teammate well-being but also on Buffer’s long-term success.

As a company we have a history of bold experiments, like being 100% distributed, having transparent salaries, and trying self-management. When testing out these new and bold ideas, we ask ourselves whether we are able to set and reach ambitious goals, deliver a high-quality experience for customers, grow our revenue, and make our mark on the world.

Some of those big experiments, like transparent salaries and remote work, have been a success because the answer to those questions was a resounding yes. For others, like self-management, the answer was no, and so we pivoted away from the experiment.

We’d like to seriously consider moving to a 4-day work week long term, so shifting to a 6-month pilot gives our team enough time to truly adapt to the concept so we can get more data on how this impacts team productivity and well-being in the long-term.

Next steps for this pilot

In order to truly evaluate whether a 4-day work week can be a success long-term, we need to measure productivity as well as individual well-being. Teammate well-being was our end goal for May. Whether that continues, and equally importantly, whether it translates into customer and company results, will be an exciting hypothesis to test.

We’re also keen to iterate on our current format and develop a more consistent approach. For the past six weeks, the 4-day concept has been implemented differently across teams and even individuals. Some teams took Wednesdays off and some took Fridays or Mondays off. This was fine for a short time, but in this longer experiment will likely feel a bit chaotic. We’ll be asking our teammates to help us define what a reduced-hours workweek looks like across a distributed team.

We also still have several elements to figure out.

• In our initial iteration of the experiment, we didn’t account well for holidays. We eventually decided that if a holiday already makes it a 4-day workweek, then the rest of that week can be considered a normal week. We’ve since heard that this could be disruptive for teammates. Some teams had Wednesdays off but if there was a holiday on a Monday they had a Monday off instead. We aren’t sure yet what our solution will be to this long term, and it’s something we’re keen to figure out.
• We also need to figure out how a 4-day workweek can be a success for our Customer Advocacy team. As much of their work revolves around interacting with customers and resolving tickets, taking additional days off has impacted both their productivity and the volume in our customer service inboxes.

We have an all-hands meeting at the end of this month where we’ll host breakout sessions asking teammates to help brainstorm how we can make the 4-day work week successful long-term, with a particular lens for what the Advocacy team is experiencing.

This is just the beginning of a fun new journey for us. We’re excited to share what’s next and what we learn as we test the boundaries of how work happens.

As April comes to a close, and we look ahead to another month where our global team is living in various forms of lockdown and isolation, I decided that for the month of May, Buffer will operate under a 4-day workweek (at full pay) across the whole 89-person team.

We’re in a period of time where there’s a layer of added anxiety and stress in all of our lives. At Buffer, we’ve been encouraging taking time off, and relaxing productivity expectations, in addition to shifting internal deadlines, but we decided it’s time for us to put some real team-wide changes in place to back up these adjustments.

This 4-day workweek period is about well-being, mental health, and placing us as humans and our families first. It’s about being able to pick a good time to go and do the groceries, now that it’s a significantly larger task. It’s about parents having more time with kids now that they’re having to take on their education. This isn’t about us trying to get the same productivity in fewer days.

One of my goals as CEO for this period of time is to put people over profit and to do all I can to get Buffer through this as unscathed as possible. An extension of this, I’ve decided, is ensuring that we accrue the least debt possible during this time so that we can emerge from COVID-19 and have some great months for customers and Buffer. One debt that is likely growing within companies right now, is burnout. This is a key initiative we’re putting in place to reduce that impact.

How we came to this decision

Our People team did a few quick surveys with our team during our April All Hands and the feedback we received validated our theory that that in addition to the general anxiety many of us are facing right now, teammates are struggling with not always feeling comfortable or able to take time off.

Here are the results from our All Hands survey:

And our results from polling parents at Buffer:

One thing that has been top of mind for us is that this month of trying a 4-day workweek isn’t about pushing everyone’s anxiety or distraction into a single day and expecting the other workdays to be “back to normal.” We know many Buffer teammates will still have caregiving and other responsibilities on some or all of the working days, and flexibility is still supported and encouraged. This day off is to augment that flexibility and give everyone a coordinated break where they won’t feel like they’re behind or catching up when they return.

What our 4-day workweek schedule looks like

We asked each area to choose which typical workday will become an “off day” for May, all members of an area will take the same day off, and some areas (like Engineering and Product) coordinated this together. The chosen day remains consistent for the full 4-week period of the new working schedule. We hope that doing this by area helps with the feeling of needing to ‘catch up’ from a day off.

For our Customer Advocacy team, we did things slightly differently to ensure coverage for our customers. Our Advocates have alternating Wednesdays and Fridays off. If they have Wednesday off in Week One, then they’ll have Friday off in Week Two, and vice versa. This was done because having Wednesdays off ensures we are available for early week volume spikes and feels restorative as a midweek option as team members will only have two days back-to-back work on those weeks. We also normally have lower volume on Friday and team members can enjoy a longer weekend on those weeks.

Our Advocacy leads are keeping an eye on any increase in inbox volume to ensure this doesn’t lead to added stress. We’re keen to balance team wellbeing with delivering a great customer support experience.

What happens after May?

We’re getting feedback from the team on the impact of this change using TinyPulse and taking stock of how things feel overall. Depending on the results and outcomes, we could possibly see a 4-day workweek continue for another month or longer, or we could return to a more typical workweek.

We’ll follow up after this month-long period to share more about how the 4-day workweek has gone for us. During this time, we’re not necessarily making permanent policies or setting precedent. Instead, the goal here is to be nimble and adaptive in discovering what is the best setup at Buffer for our customers, teammates, and the company right now.

Many companies have a regular All Hands meeting. Generally, this is a company-wide gathering for all employees (‘all hands on deck’) to hear from the organization’s leaders and discuss the state of the company.

At Buffer, the All Hands meeting is a key element of our communication and culture. As we grow, there’s an increased need to hear regularly from our CEO and leadership team and get on the same page about strategy and direction.

Every month we alternate between a presentation-based All Hands and a concept we call “Town Hall” that’s like an All Hands, but specifically for Q&A. That way we’re communicating as a team at least a once a month.

But as a remote team where everything is happening on a video call, it’s an extra challenge to keep the All Hands streamlined, engaging, and focused.

At Buffer, we refuse to accept that our monthly All Hands meetings have to be typical. Each time we meet, we try to add in a new element or experiment to keep things fun, fresh, and surprising.

Here are a few of the things that have worked (and a few that haven’t!) for us when it comes to the All Hands meeting. We hope they might give you some ideas to make your next All Hands more memorable!

The structure and sections of our All Hands

We generally reserve an hour and a half for our All Hands (and often go a few minutes over!)

When it comes to the speakers and content, there are a handful of cornerstone elements:

• Icebreaker question while we’re gathering: We share a light and fun icebreaker question ahead of time, so teammates can jump in and start chatting, avoiding the “Zoom silence.” We’ve also experimented with having a teammate play music during this gathering time!
• Celebrations: We kick off every All Hands with about 10 minutes of celebration of all we’ve accomplished since the last sync. We also celebrate teammates’ new homes, new pets, engagements, marriages, Bufferversaries and more! Beginning on a positive note sets the tone and builds energy right away.
• CEO update: This is often the most substantial section of the sync, generally at least 15 minutes and often up to 30 or more. It’s the team’s opportunity to hear what’s on the mind of our CEO and where Buffer is headed.
• Area highlights: Every area of Buffer gets 3-5 minutes to share something new or remarkable within their department, or update the full team on their projects or initiatives.
• Breakouts/team-building: We’ll often take at least 5-10 minutes for breakout chats in smaller groups

The order and flow of these sections depends a little on the overall tone we’re trying to achieve (intense updates, or are things light and more celebratory?) and what worked or didn’t work last time.

Behind-the-scenes prep: Coordinating, planning and practicing

A lot of behind-the-scenes work goes into a seamless feeling All Hands event! Here’s our process.

We build a collaborative agenda in Paper

Weeks before each All Hands, we gather ideas and start to build an agenda in Dropbox Paper.

As the showrunner for the All Hands meeting, I create a rough schedule and provide guidelines as to how long each section should be and who “hands the microphone” off to the next person.

Here’s an example from February:

Since we hear from all areas of Buffer during an All Hands meeting, there are a lot of folks involved in making the event smooth and successful. All speakers use this document to plan their portion and to refer to during the event.

We try to send this around to presenters at least two weeks ahead of the All Hands, so they know the general flow and what we need from them. We also ask a different teammate every time to be our host and emcee, so this document becomes a loose “script” for them to use.

We hold a Zoom trial run

Zoom is where we meet for the All Hands – it’s also handy for recording the event for anyone who might have missed it and for later reference.

We’ll also often host a pre-show run-through for anyone who will be screen-sharing or speaking during the All Hands. The event has a lot of moving pieces, so it’s useful to do a short trial run where everyone tests their wifi, screensharing, and any audio or video files they might play.

This practice run also gives presenters an early deadline to have some idea of what they’re going to share, which creates a much smoother experience overall.

We coordinate in real-time via Slack

We also use Slack for coordinating things behind the scenes during the All Hands meeting Our behind-the-scenes Slack channel #all-hands-logistics keeps us on the same page and we can discuss how the All Hands is going in real time, if we need to speed up to keep on schedule and also to celebrate a meeting well done.

Adding extra engagement in All Hands

We want every teammate to leave each All Hands with a heightened sense of purpose and a greater understanding of what’s happening all around Buffer. We also want them to have a bit of fun!

Humans have a finite attention span – that’s why TED Talks are never longer than 18 minutes. So to break up the stream of information coming in during the All Hands, here are some of the extra elements we add for more engagement and dimension.

Think multi-media

Most recently, we challenged our leaders and scheduled presenters to go beyond what could be shared in a written note to the team and to think more multi-media. We ended up with a creative mix of product demos, special projects, and pre-recorded updates from teammates all across Buffer. This gave us fresh new voices and much more engaging content.

Meditate or stretch together

One activity that has become a staple for our All Hands is a small break between heavier sections for meditation or gentle stretching. We’re lucky to have some very talented and generous teammates lead these. Here’s a recent example from Dave:

We keep each break at a brief 3-5 minutes and find it really helpful for replenishing energy and focus.

Learn something new with Lightning Talks

A lightning talk is a very short presentation lasting only a few minutes, and we’ve found they’re a great way to learn from Buffer teammates! We’ve had 3-minute lightning talks on:

• productivity tips
• how to talk to reporters
• discussing the history of a side project
• decision journaling
• copywriting and positioning
• and more!

Some of these relate to work at Buffer, and some didn’t. Either way, they’re a great opportunity for teammates to share interests and practice public speaking.

Fire up the group chat

In a large-group Zoom call, it is generally good practice to mute yourself unless you’re speaking. But we still want to encourage comments, questions, and virtual applause!

So we leave the chat function on throughout the All Hands, and the emojis, questions and encouragements certainly fly!

A bonus feature is that the chat is exported after the meeting and included when the meeting is recorded, so those watching later can still feel the live commentary.

Break out for smaller chat sessions

Since our team is spread across many cities and time zones, we sometimes slot in some time for small-group breakouts to help folks get and stay connected.

Sometimes the breakout groups will discuss topics relating to updates shared in the All Hands or on a related item happening in the world or company.  Sometimes it’s a bit more free-form!

We find breakouts of 3-5 teammates to be ideal for both extroverts and introverts. We provide conversation-starter questions so each group has a few prompts if conversation doesn’t flow (but generally we find these to be energizing and engaging!)

Using Zoom’s breakout rooms, we can control the number of people per room (which will show how many groups there are total.)

Poll the team

Another fun and interactive way to break up longer sections of speakers or presentations is to do some polls. Zoom makes this really easy, even allowing you to prep your questions ahead of time.

We’ve used polls to get useful feedback, for example on how we can improve our pair call process:

It can be just for fun, too. An activity we call “This or That?” asks teammates a series of questions where they choose between two options — “Apple or PC?” “Coffee or tea?” “Beach or mountains?”

We gave folks 15-20 seconds to answer each one, shared the results and went to the next question. It was enlightening to see that in most cases, our team was pretty evenly split.

Over to You

Have you taken part in an All Hands meeting? Have you planned one before? What have you found that works or doesn’t work to create an engaging event? Share your suggestions in the comments; we’d love to try your ideas!

This quote comes from Andy Grove, Intel’s former CEO, and which I was reminded of in the most recent book I finished reading, Seeing Around Corners by Rita McGrath. The idea is that snow melts first from the edges, at the periphery. This is where the first changes occur and are evident. This “snow melting” idea is powerful and very true within a business context, too.

When market changes are happening, the first people within Buffer to know it are generally those who are at the edges of the organization. Those who are talking directly with customers, most likely within our Advocacy or Marketing teams. Some members of those teams have found that when we eventually get around to making changes, those changes are things they’ve been wishing to see us implement for weeks or months. “Finally!”, they might think.

When I read the chapter with this title in Seeing Around Corners, it set off a light bulb in my mind. I found myself thinking about how many individual contributors within Advocacy, or within Marketing, or other areas such as Engineering, I’ve spoken with recently. The answer? Not many at all.

One of my fondest memories of the past month was a town hall that I did with the members of our team in the APAC region. Our regular Town Hall was in the middle of the night for most of them so we arranged a time where I could chat with that smaller group of Buffer teammates separately at a time that worked for their time zone.

In this casual and smaller group setting, we were able to have an informal chat and after a while, the ideas, questions, and comments really started flowing. I learned a ton and was left feeling energized.

It was in the APAC Town Hall meeting that Mel, a Customer Advocate on our team, asked me whether we had established a clear stance for how much we can help customers throughout COVID-19. This really got me thinking. The next day I spoke with Åsa, our VP of Customer Advocacy, on the topic and we immediately put in place our first couple of customer relief efforts. And those initial steps have now turned into our COVID-19 Customer Relief Program. A lot of this was already starting to happen, but this direct contact with Mel was powerful for me and spurred me to put more of my attention and weight behind the initiatives.

Since being reminded of this concept, and feeling a few first-hand experiences, I’ve started to question the balance of how much time I spend working directly with Buffer’s leadership team, versus how much time I spend interacting with the teammates who interact directly with customers. I’ve also found myself wanting to get back to answering customer emails from time to time.

When I’m shaping our overall strategy, it’s essential that I have regular contact with folks from all different parts of the organization. I’ve realized, therefore, that spending time with people I don’t regularly work with is a vital part of my role, now and always. It’s a way to recognize upcoming inflection points sooner and to act on them earlier. In a sense, by spending time at the edges, I develop an ability to “see the future”.

I’m currently implementing snowmelt meetings with Buffer teammates and am looking forward to speaking with more of the team more regularly over the coming months.

This blog post was originally published on joel.is, read it here.

In 2015, we made Buffer’s most significant acquisition and acquired Respondly, which became Reply, our solution to help businesses deliver fast and responsive customer support on social media.

We originally acquired it intending to diversify Buffer’s core product offerings. While it served that purpose, it has become clear over time that Reply is better suited for larger organizations and is not the best product for Buffer’s core customer base, small businesses.

For that reason, that we are sunsetting Reply as of June 1st, 2020.

Our decision to sunset Reply is enabling us to build out a dedicated social media engagement solution, which will eventually be available to all Buffer customers.

Continue reading for more information on why we made this decision, what we’re building next, and what this means for the future of Buffer.

Why we’re sunsetting Reply

At its core, Reply is a very different product from anything else we offer at Buffer. Reply has always been a customer support tool while Buffer focuses on helping small businesses build their brands and grow their businesses on social media.

When we acquired Reply, we were doing our best to anticipate how the market would shift. Twitter was building out customer service features and there was this idea that customer service could shift onto social media in a big way. We were also uniquely using social media as a customer service platform to grow our own brand and saw an opportunity to enable others to do this.

While Twitter is still used by some brands and consumers for customer service, the idea has remained niche, more an exception than the rule. We don’t believe customer service did shift to social media in the way we had thought, which is one of the reasons we’ve come to this decision.

Another thing we’ve come to realize is that small businesses don’t use social media for customer support in the same way as larger organizations. With scale, comes a whole new set of problems, which aren’t felt by small businesses. We felt these pains ourselves, as we uniquely have high social volume as a small company. The result was that while most Buffer customers overall are small businesses, most of our Reply customers have been larger organizations.

This led to several obstacles when building and growing Reply over the years.

Often the people using Reply were very different from those using our other Buffer solutions. They usually weren’t even in the same department at a given company. This difference meant connecting core product loops, like answering support tickets on social media and creating new social campaigns, even more challenging.

Another obstacle was that the strategy that helped us grow Buffer, and the strengths and skillset of our team, are different than what was needed to grow Reply. We’re a product and marketing-led organization rather than a sales-led one. Our most successful times growing Reply were also the times that our Product Manager on that team was leaning into sales and more direct customer onboarding. We’re a team of 89 people at Buffer, and we don’t have the resources to run two very different strategies.

Our team size also impacted the product experience for our customers. We have been slow to fix issues and add new features, and we saw how this negatively affected our customer’s team’s operations. Reply is that a high-quality customer support tool requires more than our team can provide, and our customers deserve better than that.

Ultimately, continuing to build and support Reply is not the way for us to have the most impact for our customers in the long term. This was a tough decision to make but we feel it’ll be best for both Buffer and our customers down the line. I’m grateful for all of the people within Buffer who had these conversations, as well as the incredible folks who have been Reply customers over the years.

What we’re building next

Reply hasn’t been a good fit for the majority of Buffer customers. To make this more tangible, we had only 500 customers using Reply, while we have over 70,000 paying customers using Buffer. As we look ahead from here, we’re focused on building something that will be both valuable to, and available for, a much larger percentage of our customers.

Through research, we’ve come to the clarity that what our small business customers need is a dedicated social media engagement solution. That’s what our team is now focused on building as we gradually sunset Reply.

This new social media engagement solution will aim to better connect our customers to their communities on social media. We’ll be starting by supporting Instagram and surfacing all Instagram comments in one place, and we’re looking to expand to support more social networks from there.

While Reply was only available to customers who individually signed up for it, this social media engagement solution will become available and accessible to all Buffer customers in the future. We feel we can help a lot more people by making this engagement solution widely available from the outset and this is a strategy we will be expanding across the rest of our offering at Buffer in the future as well.

While this has been a tough call to make, we’re excited to be re-focusing and fully committing to small businesses. We’re looking forward to taking this new approach, adding a huge amount of value, and ensuring the majority of these improvements are accessible by all customers.

If you’ve been a Reply customer I want to thank you for having been on this journey with us.

If you are looking for a tool to replace Reply, we’ve partnered with the social support tools below and they have created offers to make a move more manageable. We’ve been in touch with all Reply customers to pass along these offers.

• Sparkcentral — Sparkcentral enables social engagement teams to deliver frictionless customer service on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and more, making digital engagement with your brand memorable
• Zoho Desk — is an award-winning context-aware customer service software that helps support teams deliver timely help to their customers across channels like email, phone, chat, social media, and more
• Zendesk — Allows your business to have natural conversations with your customers, without letting them feel what’s going on behind the scenes. It’s sophisticated enough to meet complex needs and simple enough to let you get up and running immediately.

If you have media inquiries related to this post, please reach out to Hailley at press@buffer.com.

I wish I could tell you that I have always been an environmental warrior.

But my story is a more common one. I’ve always done my best to care for the environment. I cycle, walk or take public transport as much as I can. I use my refillable water bottle and tote bags to avoid waste.

That’s not too bad, right? So I thought, until I read the 2018 special report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). It is evident that we need bolder, more urgent actions.

“There are no gray areas when it comes to survival. Either we go on as a civilization or we don’t. We have to change.”

– Greta Thunberg on the TED stage

As I began to make more changes in my personal life to reduce my carbon footprint, I became curious to figure out the environmental impact of my work as well. I have worked at Buffer – a fully remote company – for four years. I have always assumed that a remote company must have a lower carbon footprint, but is that true?

Calculating our impact in 4 key areas

In this post, I’ll do my best to calculate our remote company’s carbon footprint versus a co-located company, analyzing categories including daily commute, office space, data storage, work travel, and more.

Daily commute

Environmentally speaking, one of the biggest benefits of remote work is that you don’t need to commute to the office anymore.

The average American commutes to work by car just under one hour each day – roughly 32 miles, which equates to about 3.2 tonnes of CO2 per person every year.

The daily commute to and from work accounts for more than 98% of an employee’s work-related carbon footprint. Having the choice not to commute feels like a great way to cut our carbon footprint.

Based on our State of Remote Work 2020 report, 80% of remote workers use their home as their primary place of work. That means that 80% of remote workers who would have needed to commute can now walk from their bedroom to their desk (or work from their bed, though we don’t recommend it)!

For others who prefer working from coworking spaces or cafés, it’s likely that they would work from closer spots which might be accessible by walking, cycling or public transportation.

Advantage: Remote work

Office space

How about the fact that Buffer doesn’t have a physical office at all? Does that reduce our overall impact on the environment?

Based on the business calculator from Carbon Footprint, office space for 90 people in California, U.S. would generate roughly 234 tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (also known as CO2e, a standard unit for measuring carbon footprints), per year – 2.6 tons per Buffer teammate!

For reference, the annual CO2 emissions for home energy usage per person in an average household (of three people in California) is around 1.39 tons.

For someone who works from home, I expect that my energy usage would be higher than average because I spend more time there. Although I can’t find specific data on how much the increase would be, we could infer that it would be much lower than the 2.6 tons I would otherwise generate by working in an office.

As a side note, the “buildings and buildings construction” sectors combined are responsible for 36% of global final energy consumption and nearly 40% of total direct and indirect CO2 emissions. As more people work in home offices, that should decrease the demand for office buildings to accommodate for the increase of population across the world.

Advantage: Remote work

Data center energy

There are other aspects of running an office that are tougher to calculate, such as the energy consumed by what an organization produces and how. Since Buffer is a software-as-a-service company, our major energy expenditure is storing the large amount of data needed to power our tools.

All the data centers in the US are estimated to consume more than 90 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity annually – roughly 3 percent of America’s total electrical energy use (and growing).

Companies can either house all their functions on their own server that they purchase and have on-site, or move their data to a cloud service. A cloud service is a way to rent server space, rather than own the server, and access it via the internet.

Since they’re not physically located, remote companies are most likely to use the cloud, which is generally more energy efficient and has a smaller carbon footprint than on-premise servers.

With the cloud, companies typically use less than ¼ of the servers than they would on-premises – a major energy reduction!

But not all clouds are created equal – some are greener than others.

Buffer uses AWS, which has set a target for 80% sustainable servers by 2024 and 100% by 2030. (By comparison, Google has already achieved this goal.) We could do more here by asking AWS for more renewable hosting and moving our server environments to sustainable, carbon neutral regions where possible, like those noted here:

It’s difficult to estimate exact numbers for this section, but according to this organization, cloud server using non-green electricity would be 0.5 tons of CO2e / year and server, and an on-premise or data center-server using non-green electricity would be 1 ton of CO2e / year and server.

Advantage: Remote work

Work travel

As a remote company, Buffer has one company-wide retreat plus an additional “onsite” for each area per year. These are irreplaceable moments for remote teams to meet in person and build the connections that no amount of video calls or Slack threads could replace.

With teammates around the world, no matter how much we try to optimize the retreat locations, most teammates need to fly each time we meet. Unfortunately, air travel has a greater environmental impact compared to other modes of transportation.

Using the distance between the home of each Buffer teammate and the last two retreat locations (San Diego and Singapore), I calculated each teammate’s amount of emission using the flight carbon footprint calculator and then doubled it (to represent the two trips per year). Based on this calculation, the average emission per Buffer teammate would be around 4.9 tons CO2 for our travel each year.

This calculation does not include other types of business travels, like conferences and client meetings, based on the assumption that similar non-remote companies also travel as much for those occasions.

This is a big hit when it comes to our company’s carbon footprint. But meeting teammates in person at least once a year is invaluable to remote companies. Hopefully, as virtual reality continues to improve, that could be another fun and environmentally responsible way for remote teams to connect in the future!

Advantage: Co-located work

The grand total: Remote work appears better for the environment

Overall, when we look at the three major categories we can compare with some accuracy using data, it appears that our remote company has a smaller carbon footprint than a co-located company, at 4.9 tons of CO₂e per person per year versus 5.8.Daily commute(tons of CO₂ per person per year)Office space(tons of CO₂e per person per year)Company travels(tons of CO₂e per person per year)Data center energy (tons of CO2 per server per year)Buffer––4.90.5Co-located office3.22.6–1

Remote companies with less air travel would see an even greater difference compared to co-located work!

The benefits flexibility offers can’t be measured

While these numbers are undoubtedly useful, they don’t tell the full story. There are many crucial aspect of remote working that are difficult to measure, but impactful nonetheless.

Since I joined Buffer four years ago, the flexibility of remote work has freed me to make a lot of positive changes in my life, including ones that align with my values to care for the environment.

I have been able to choose an energy supplier that offers 100% renewable energy for my home office, and I can also pick my coworking space based on their commitment to minimize their carbon footprint.

By working from home, I can cook more instead of eating out – this makes it much easier for me to eat vegan meals and choose seasonal, local produce – not to mention ditching the packaging that would come from takeaway food.

Since I am spending much more time at home, it makes sense for me to invest in a flat that is well-insulated and energy efficient. I even have the flexibility to wash clothes at a more optimal time during the day to lower the burden of the grid to ensure more renewable energy is in the mix.

There are many more examples from my teammates who have felt empowered to make more environmental choices due to remote working:

• Nicole: “Working remotely has allowed so much more work flexibility so that we were able to expand our backyard homestead from just a few chickens to so much more; including duck and turkey-raising, gardening, home-brewing kombucha, and fermenting and canning fruits and veggies. We’re a lot more self-sufficient when it comes to food and take fewer trips to the store.”
• Kelly: “Working remotely and not commuting has freed up much more time for cooking meals at home, starting a pollinator garden, and composting. Not commuting also helped me find ways to be less car-dependent and inspired me to sell my car last year!”
• Joe: “I used to drive 60 minutes a day for my previous job. Since working remotely, I’ve been able to greatly reduce my carbon footprint from not having to commute to work”
• Arielle: “I’m able to cook most of my meals at home, and pop over to my local grocer to buy fresh veggies more often. I also have more time to garden and grow my own food!”
• Keisha: “From drastically decreasing my commute to and from work (and out to lunch on several occasions), to the decline in the amount of ‘work clothes’ I’ve purchased, working remotely has improved my life in so many ways!”

The flexibility of remote work empowers individuals to make decisions that are better for their lives and our environment.

Can an individual really make a difference? Yes!

Overall, remote work seems to provide more flexibility and opportunities to reduce our carbon footprint further. That feels incredibly exciting to me.

The climate crisis is an unprecedented challenge for humanity, and its scale can feel overwhelming. But each small change we make is a statement that shows those around us that we care.

One young person can inspire millions. Hundreds of collective shifts could incentivize businesses to adopt more sustainable practices. Thousands of voices can urge governments to commit to a carbon-neutral future.

We cannot underestimate the ripple effect of the individual.

So what can we do as individuals to keep the movement going? Here are some ideas.

Stay informed

Awareness and knowledge are the first steps to positive changes. Fortunately, there is a lot of responsible coverage on climate change coming from major media outlets like The Guardian and The New York Times.

To go deeper, books like There is No Planet B: A Handbook for the Make or Break Years, The Human Planet: How We Created the Anthropocene, and online courses like the Carbon Literacy course can equip us with the facts, language and practical steps to take action.

Reduce what you can measure

As I was researching this post, I realized first-hand how tricky it can be to measure our impact. I came across quite a few great tools for both individuals and companies to calculate their carbon footprints:

• TerraPass (U.S.) offers carbon footprint calculators for individuals, businesses and event organizers. You can also purchase carbon offsets and renewable energy credits directly via them.
• Carbon Footprint (U.K.) also offers carbon footprint calculators and carbon offset options for individuals and businesses. Organizations could also sign up to their carbon tracking program and monitor their environmental impact over an extended period.
• WWF’s environmental footprint calculator is an accessible alternative for individuals as it takes you through a questionnaire about your lifestyle, even if you don’t have the numbers ready, yet.
• Another way to offset your emissions is via Gold Standard Climate+ projects that also supports local communities with sustainable development benefits like safe drinking water, protecting forests, improving health or creating local jobs.

Offset your travel

The most planet-friendly option is to avoid air travel as much as possible, and some great organizations like Climate Perks are working on that.

When air travel is necessary, there are ways to minimize the impact. Flying direct is the most environmentally friendly option, since planes burn the most fuel during takeoff.

Many airlines offer passengers the opportunity to offset their travel emissions via carbon offset programs, which counteract your personal harmful emissions by allowing you to fund projects elsewhere in the world that produce clean energy or reduce carbon emissions in other ways.

On top of these, airlines that fly internationally are starting to voluntarily offset most of the growth in their carbon dioxide emissions under a UN agreement, which is a positive step.

If you have a hefty daily commute in a car, you can consider offsetting that as well!

Share your advocacy

Are you or your company committed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and take actions in line with the global targets? If so, do tell! It’s not about bragging – it’s about raising awareness and tackling this greatest challenge together.

I know that I am not even close to my personal goal yet – 2 tons CO2e per person per year by 2050. Nevertheless, by being transparent about the fact that I’m trying, I hold myself accountable publicly.

I’ve also found a fantastic community of people who are also doing their best – check out the Sustainable Web Manifesto and ClimateAction.tech if you work in tech.

Your voice matters. Join a community or start one. Take a friend or colleague with you while you’re at it.

Don’t forget to take care of yourself

If you’re starting to feel overwhelmed at this point, you are not alone. Many of us experience eco-anxiety, and that could cause the feeling of hopelessness, apathy or even denial.

The climate crisis requires urgent action, yet it is also a marathon rather than a sprint. Having compassion for yourself and others is the key to transform despair into the energy for action. This long-form article by Kaira Jewel Lingo has helped me to befriend my eco-anxiety and find renewed motivations to take meaningful actions.

Over to you!

Every individual and organization is going to have a different starting point when it comes to environmental action, and our journeys will be different.

There are incredible resources out there, like this online repository of the most ethical tech options, a list of guides for setting science-based targets, Greenpeace’s list of everyone’s favorite apps sorted by which are clean (or dirty), and B Lab’s playbook that guides businesses through the process of declaring Climate Emergency.

Are you thinking more about environmental impact lately? Have you measured your carbon footprint or that of your business? What have you done or are you in the process of doing, either as an individual or on an organizational level, to combat the climate crisis? I would love to hear your stories and keep the conversation going!

Ever since a global pandemic exploded the ranks of remote workers in a matter of a few weeks, folks have been turning to longtime remote companies like Buffer for answers.

We wish we had them. Buffer has been fully remote for almost 10 years, but this is not normal remote working.

We know remote, and are eager to help others, but are also adapting to the new reality ourselves. Many teammates are newly balancing work with partners, childcare, homeschooling, taking care of relatives, and more, all while being mostly confined to their homes and out of their normal routine. Not to mention the anxiety of the fast-changing news cycle.

No one knows how to work during a pandemic, and we’re all grappling through it together. So in the spirit of sharing, here are all of the internal messages we’ve shared with our team and shareholders during this time.

March 4: Retreat postponed

• Shared: March 4, 2020
• Posted by: Courtney Seiter, Director of People
• Title: We are postponing our planned June retreat in Athens

Our first mention of the virus to the team was in making a decision about our planned team retreat in Greece. As an international team, we were already beginning to see the effects of COVID-19 in our APAC teammates’ lives. Nevertheless, making this decision so early for travel in June was a tough one with a lot of debate and discussion.

March 12: Team guidelines

• Shared: March 12, 2020
• Posted by: Courtney Seiter, Director of People
• Title: Buffer Guidelines for 2019 Coronavirus (COVID-19)

This document was our first comprehensive communication to the team expressing specifically how our day-to-day life and work might change with the pandemic. It remains our document of record when it comes to COVID-19 policy, though more information has been added over time.

March 18: Economic report

• Shared: March 12, 2020
• Posted by: Caryn Hubbard, Director of Finance
• Title: How we’re positioned to handle this new economic climate

The question on teammates’ minds following our initial guidelines was: How is Buffer financially positioned to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic? This report outlined that Buffer is in a strong financial position to weather the economic impact of an inevitable downturn.

March 26: CEO letter

• Shared: March 26, 2020
• Posted by: Joel Gascoigne, Founder and CEO
• Title: An assortment of thoughts on our approach during COVID-19

A “North Star” letter to the team outlining our responsibility to our customers, Buffer’s ultimate purpose, and our philosophy of people over profit – both right now and in the long term.

March 30: Sick time

• Shared: March 30, 2020
• Posted by: Courtney Seiter, Director of People
• Title: A note on COVID-19 sick time and time off

A more in-depth note on our sick leave and overall time off policy during the COVID-19 pandemic. We continue to encourage even more schedule flexibility than normal, and are actively encouraging teammates to take not only sick time but also vacation and personal time to manage the stress of the worldwide situation.

April 1: Shareholder update

• Shared: April 1, 2020
• Posted by: Joel Gascoigne, Founder and CEO
• Title: Buffer Shareholder Update: COVID-19 Impact and Approach

Buffer’s communication to shareholders concerning the COVID-19 pandemic. This note details not only the actions we’ve taken so far as a team but also the people-first and customer-focused stance that’s guiding us. In many ways, this new reality has deepened and expanded the ideas we have around how we can help small businesses

April 3: Customer Assistance Program

• Shared: April 3, 2020
• Posted by: Joel Gascoigne, Founder and CEO
• Title: Launching the COVID-19 Customer Assistance Program

An update on how Buffer is helping customers get through the COVID-19 pandemic. We announced the launch of the COVID-19 Customer Assistance Program to proactively help those in need, and the earmarking of $500k to help customers in a variety of ways.

We’ll keep this post updated with more communications as the situation continues to unfold. Meanwhile, everyone at Buffer is sending all our love and care to all of you!