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This post originally published on April 8, 2014. We’ve updated it here with new info, screenshots, and a special episode of the Buffer podcast – The Science of Social Media. Have you ever found yourself explaining how to use hashtags to someone whose only connection with the word is as a telephone button? Internet language has evolved considerably over the past few years as social media has taken off. Hashtags are a huge part of this evolution. What once was a telephone button is now a social
Before we launched our Buffer podcast , so much of our time and energy (99.9% of it, I’d wager!) was spent getting the sounds and feel just right. We did all the podcast things we were supposed to do in order to make a really great podcast — the interviews, the mixing, the uploading — and now that the time had come to press publish … … we needed a plan to promote
YouTube, the Google-owned video network, boasts over a billion users — almost one-third of all people on the Internet — and every day people watch hundreds of millions of hours on YouTube and generate billions of views. On mobile alone, YouTube reaches more 18-34 and 18-49 year-olds than any cable network in the U.S. What’s amazing, though, is that only 9% of small businesses [http://www.emark
Humans are, by nature, very visual beings. In the brain itself, there are hundreds of millions of neurons devoted to visual processing, nearly 30 percent of the entire cortex , as compared with 8 percent for touch and just 3 percent for hearing. Each of the two optic nerves, which carry signals from the retina to the brain, consists of a million fibers, compared to the auditory nerve carrying a mere 30,000. That’s all to say that soci
From productivity and social media strategy to self-care and reflecting — even gifs! — we’ve had a blast getting to join with our community every week for the past two years in #bufferchat. More than one hundred chats later, #bufferchat has turned two! ? What began as a curious community experiment has grown into a pillar of our community efforts. We are so grateful to have an amazing community who keeps coming back each week, offers a breadth of knowledge and drives us to be a better company
Did you know: Over 6 billion emojis are shared every day ! Clearly, using emojis within messages, tweets, and all kinds of communication has become very popular over recent years, particularly on mobile devices where emoji buttons and keyboards have become quite ubiquitous. But what if you’re working from a desktop and hoping to add an emoji or two to a message? We’ve got a little-known emoji tip just for you —
Follower count is often considered one of the vainest of vanity metrics. I can relate. I’ve had my fair share of ego tied to that golden number on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn—one day I’ll point out my follower growth to a friend and the next I’ll feel all insecure about the number not being big enough. Still, despite the vanity, there is value in follower count. While it seems like a smug number to chase, followers have a proportional impact on how far and wide your message sprea
I was a bit nervous before writing this post because there are so many possible golden rules for social media managers. I wondered, how could I ever hone in on the most important ones? From golden rules like setting proper social media goals to truly understanding consumer behavior and implementing that into your marketing strategy, this post co
There are few greater joys in a marketer’s life than experimenting with a new technique—and having it work like a charm. You feel like a cross between a scientist, an artist, and a magician, am I right? After doing a little celebrating, you officially add the tactic to your repertoire, update your dashboards, and then probably start searching for the next thing to try. And because you’re always looking forward, you might not notice that technique that worked so well when you first used it?
Back in 1894 to 1929, before sound could be synchronized with video, silent movies were in their heyday. In silent films, the dialogue is transmitted through muted gestures, mime and title cards which contain a written indication of the plot or key dialogue. And if you scroll through your Facebook News Feed, you may notice that in some ways, we’re moving back to those days. Here’s a clip from a recent Tech Insider video: And a clip from Gary Vaynerchuk: You’ll notice that both these clip
As marketers, writers and crafters, we spend hours on bringing our content ideas to life and after all that effort, want our content to be seen. Writing powerful social media copy to grab people’s eyes and win their hearts is a challenge, though. And often, when our content isn’t breaking through the noise we can fix it with a few slight edits and tweaks. Editing content and copy is a key part of the creative process but is often overlooked. In this post, I’d love to share 11 editing tips and
You’ve crafted the perfect blog post: Well-researched, SEO optimized, contains the ideal keyword ratio with trustworthy outbound and internal links, and it even has a nifty infographic that you spent hours to create. All you have to do is queue it up in Buffer and watch it take off, right? I’ve been there, and I wish it were true! Social media managers and marketers know that sometimes even the most epic material requires love and hard work when it comes to promoting content across social med
Social media management can be extremely time-consuming. But there are also so many ways to boost your social media marketing and improve your social media profiles in just a few minutes. In this post, I’d love to share 15 ways you can improve you social media marketing in under an hour. Some of these tips are super-quick optimizations and others focus on experimentation and trying new things. (I’d love to hear which ones you’re interested in trying out!) Let’s get started! 1. Optimize your
A great social media marketer today and an awesome advertiser in the 1960s have much in common. David Ogilvy, the father of advertising, was famous for spending an inordinate amount of time on headlines. Why? Because that’s the line that people read the most, so it mattered a lot. Ogilvy was a master at stuff like this — prioritizing what was really important. If he lived through the age of social media, I’m fairly certain Ogilvy would say something like: On the average, many more people eng
When 50 fashion influencers on Instagram posted a picture of themselves in the same Lord & Taylor dress, it sent out signals that this dress was a must have fashion piece. The following weekend the dress was completely sold out. This Lord & Taylor campaign is a perfect example of the power of influencer marketing. 65% of brands now run influencer campaigns and according to an infographic by The Shelf, 92% of consumers trust recommendations from other people—even if they don’t know them person
Today, there are 2.307 billion active social media users around the world. That’s nearly one-third of our planet’s total population of 7.125 billion! As social media marketing professionals, we’re lucky to reach even .000001% of that population with any one of our posts. This can feel a bit underwhelming for businesses and marketers looking to demonstrate the true value and ROI of social media. Everywhere we look it appears that brands and companies have it all figured out on social media. Wit
Facebook has opened up Instant Articles to publishers of all sizes. In this post, we’ll guide you through the ins and outs of Facebook’s publishing platform and how to get started. The announcement that Instant Articles were being opened up to all publishers came in February 2016, and they were officially opened for all on April 12, at Facebook’s F8 conference. A Facebook-native publishing platform has been rumored since the social network changed its News Feed algorithm to favor “quality conte
Just like you, I read all of those blog posts about how to get more Twitter followers . And while these articles all contain great, actionable advice, I definitely acquired a lot of my Twitter followers by accident. Seriously. I’d love to share with you how I accidentally started acquiring Twitter followers, and how you can adapt these methods to start getting followers on purpose. Looking for more Twitter followers? Buffe
Pinterest has released a new set of advertising tools for small and medium sized businesses. These tools give businesses new ways to promote their content and advertise on Pinterest. Around three-fourths of the content on Pinterest comes from businesses already and opening up their ads product to all SMBs feels like a great way to enable businesses to get the right content in front of the right people. Pinterest users regularly save their favorite Pins (including adverts!) to their own boards,
Facebook has opened up Instant Articles to publishers —of any size, anywhere in the world. This post guides you through how to connect your WordPress blog and Facebook Instant Articles. To make publishing to Facebook easier for the 25% of the web that uses WordPress , Facebook has teamed up with Automattic, parent company of WordPress, to build a free plugin for Instant Articles. This plugin enables anyone with a WordPress bl
Social media has evolved to become inherently visual, with text, video, and photos dominating on almost every platform. Sharing a great looking photo on Instagram is quick and easy, as is sharing a video to Facebook, but until now, creating and sharing audio content has been very difficult. Anchor is looking to change that. Anchor is a free iOS app that makes it easy to broadcast short audio clips in seconds. Listeners can talk back, sparking instant group conversations.
Over 1.5 billion people regularly use Facebook. And as the social network has grown, the rate at which Facebook shares news, and releases new features and products has accelerated. It can be a little hard to keep up sometimes. With this in mind, I’d love to share 11 Facebook tips, tricks, and facts with you. This post will give you plenty of great stuff to help you get the most out of and better understand Facebook. From why you get shown certain ads and which types of posts get the most eng
Instagram has now released one of its most requested features. The ever-popular photo sharing app announced that following the release of version 7.15 for iOS and Android users will have the ability to switch between multiple accounts. This news is sure to make power users and social media managers jump with joy as managing multiple accounts for brands (or your pets) has been a time-consuming task up until now. Here’s a super-quick guide on how to add and manage multiple accounts on Instagram
“Could you pop into a quick morning standup, Ash?” “I’ll be there in a minute,” I’d reply. “I’m just finishing up a Facebook post.” As a community manager, most of my mornings would start along these lines. One of the toughest, and most time-consuming, tasks in community and social media management is finding a stream of high-quality, engaging content to share with your audience every day. A social media calendar is an excellent way to keep on top of this. But staring at a blank calendar can