Tips / How To - Page 3
A collection of posts on Tips / How To
Keeping up with new changes on the various social media platforms is essential to staying ahead on social media. Did you know for example that Facebook now allows you to upload GIFs ? Or that Facebook has also changed the News Feed to encourage high-quality links to be shared ? If a piece of social media news is big enough (such as the lau
This might sound contradicting — and it’s scary for us to admit. But, despite building a product that helps people succeed on social media, we have committed a good number of social media mistakes ourselves. Mistakes that have cost us reach and engagement, maybe even fans and customers. Now that we have learned from many of those mistakes, I would love to share our top 10 and how you can avoid committing them yourself. Let’s get started… Learn from These 10 Social Media Mistakes We’ve Made
When you hear the term ‘stock photo’, what’s the first thing that comes to mind? My hunch is it’s probably a photo of a group of friends awkwardly laughing, business people staring at charts on a wall, or something along those lines. Probably not the best connotations, right? Used correctly, though, free stock photos can really bring your ads, blog posts, and content to life. And at Buffer, we use stock photos daily. Here’s why: * Stock photos are cost effective (mostly free ?) * If you
This post was originally published in 2016 and has been updated with the latest tips and tricks to grow your following on every social media network. It also includes the latest podcast episode from The Science of Social Media! You’re taking the dive into a new social network, or you’re itching to grow your existing profile. You’ve got a social media strategy in place and a plan in mind. You’re raring to go. What would be one of the most encouraging signs when you’re first starting off? We’d i
I used to think the few seconds I save by using keyboard shortcuts are not useful. I mean, what can I do with those few seconds? A lot, it seems… A few seconds here and there can add up. And according to Brainscape , you can save up to eight workdays per year! Just by using shortcuts—enough time for a long vacation. Being a social media marketer , you spend a lot
Over 8 billion videos or 100 million hours of videos are watched on Facebook every day. These stats were reported early last year so imagine how much larger the numbers are today as Facebook continued to grow and double down on videos. Now seems to be the perfect time to take a closer look at Facebook video and how to use videos to engage more fans on the platform. Wit
Running social media campaigns can be quite different from managing your social media profiles on an ongoing basis. Unlike your ongoing social media marketing, campaigns tend to be for a specific purpose and only last for a certain time period. The strategy you’d take for running a social media campaign might be different from your usual social media marketing strategy. So how do you run a successful social media campaign? Through case studies of successful social media campaigns by companies
Writing a great social media manager job description is not an easy task. The job description is one of the first few things potential applicants read and a well-written job description can increase the chances of you hiring the best social media manager for your company. We’re thrilled that you’re looking to hire a new social media manager and would love to help you as much as we can! Here’s everything you need to know about writing a great social media manager job description (and more).
Science plays a key role in marketing, especially the science of psychology. We have written about the 15 psychological principles in marketing and studied seven social media psychological research. This time, we’d love to dive deeper into one of the most powerful and prominent psychological phenomena… Social proof. The use of social proof can be found in many areas of both offline and online marketing. In this post, we’ll focus on the use of social proof on social media to boost your marketi
The Instagram algorithm, just like the Facebook News Feed algorithm, is so mysterious yet ingenious and brilliant in showing the best content to the most people. If you are creating great content, more followers — and non-followers — are going to see it. But how does the Instagram algorithm work? In this post, we’ll break it all down for you. We’ll go through the factors that could influence the ranking of your content on your followers’ feed and explain why the Instagram algorithm is
Since Instagram started sorting posts on users’ feed with an algorithm , many marketers have noticed a decline in their organic reach and engagement. But that doesn’t have to be the case for you. In fact, it could be possible for you to reach more of your followers now than without the new Instagram algorithm. In this post, we’ll share 10 straightforward ways you can use to increase your organic reach on Instagram today. Buffer for Instagram now c
Facebook is still the leading platform for marketers. From our State of Social Media 2016 report , we found that 93 percent of marketers are actively using Facebook for their business. As social media marketers, we spend a lot of time on Facebook, managing our Pages , engaging our fans , finding good content [https://buffer.com/l
Legendary marketer, Seth Godin, describes marketing as “the art of telling a story that resonates with your audience and then spreads.” If you look at some of the biggest brands around, you might notice that they are often amazing storytellers. * Apple tells stories of people challenging the norms * Nike tells stories of people doing the impossible * Airbnb tells stories of travelers living in homes around the world and belonging any
Even though Instagram takeovers seem trendy now, they first started to gain popularity back in 2012 with brands like General Electric, Burberry and Food Republic inviting Instagrammers to take over their feeds for a day. What started out as a fun way for brands and Instagrammers to collaborate, has now transitioned into one of the valuable aspects of any Instagram marketing strategy . If yo
Did you know you can now create your own Snapchat Geofilters? It’s only been a few months since Snapchat debuted this feature , and there are already some amazing results flowing in for businesses and brands of all sizes (we’ll share a few quick case studies in this post). Right now, Snapchat Geofilters can offer an enormous competitive advantage because 1) not a lot of brands are using them and 2) Snapchat users love to share f
With over 600 million users across the globe, Instagram is quickly becoming a focal point for businesses of all sizes who use social media. 600 million! That’s a huge number. And the impressive stats don’t stop there… Instagram is the fastest growing social media platform and around half of its user base (more than 300 million people) use it every day. Brands on Instagram are also seeing huge amounts of engagement on Instagram. According to Forrester Research, per-follower interaction rate i
This week in #bufferchat, we dove into the technical side of how to make great videos for social media. In the 2nd chat time, we were joined by Jenny Mudarri from Wistia as our special guest. We all discussed tips for shooting video on mobile devices, video editing , ensuring high-quality video while filming live [https://buffer.com/resource
Having a team of people helping with your social media strategy can be a crucial asset in achieving your social media goals. Not only can it help you tap into multiple points of view and perspectives to bring a fresh take to your social media content – having a team of people contributing content to your social accounts can help you save a ton of time with content curation. Oh, and having a second set of eyes for proofreading always help too ? So how do you go about working with a team to exec
We often talk about the importance of social media managers and the amazing people who handle social media as a team of one. But often, for agencies, larger enterprises, and even some small businesses, social media is handled by teams of people covering a broad range of skills. So how do you go about building an awesome social media team? There are so many things to consider: What skills do you need in your team? How should you structure the team? How do you hire new team members? We’d love t
Spectacles are the first hardware product from the company formally known as Snapchat. The camera-equipped glasses were announced in September 2016, at the same time as Snapchat became Snap Inc. and rebranded itself as “a camera company.” From the moment they were announced, Snap had the marketing industry, and more importantly, their key 16-24-year-old demographic, clamoring to get their hands on Spectacles. But, in what turned out to be one of the most creative marketing campaigns of 2016, Sp
Do you have big goals you’d like to achieve in 2017? We do, too. In fact, this is our vision for Q1: Establish Buffer as the premier social media tool for businesses and teams via a focus on branding, content, and community. That sounds pretty broad, right? And how can social media help us to achieve that vision? The answer is goal-setting. The great thing about social media is that you can achieve so many different types of incredible results. From acquiring new customers to using social
The thing we love most at Buffer is to help you succeed at social media. And a key part of social media success is knowing which goals and targets to set for your team. Without goals, it’s hard to know exactly how well your social media strategy is performing and where you need to iterate to continue moving forwards. Today I’d love to share with you a bunch of super-actionable social media goals you can use to help your team achieve great things. In total, we’ll walk through 9 very different,
Setting social media goals is hard. “How cool would it be to drive 300 sign-ups a month from Facebook Ads?” This is how I tend to go about setting social media goals. I pull an aspirational number out of the air and go for it. Would it be cool to have a regular, predictable stream of new users coming to Buffer via Facebook Ads? Absolutely! Is this the right way to set goals? Coming up with social media goals for our marketing team here at Buffer has often been a bit haphazard for me. Imagin
Have you ever stumbled across a company’s Instagram account and wondered how they have so many followers or where they got all of those amazing images from? If you’re anything like me, that’s a reoccurring thought! For social media marketers managing Instagram and other social accounts this is something we all certainly strive for – Gorgeous images, a huge following, and incredible engagement from our audience. With that in mind, I began studying hundreds of Instagram accounts, researching wa