Tips / How To - Page 5
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Ready to get started on YouTube? Or wish your YouTube Channel were performing better? I’m here to help! YouTube is effectively the second largest search engine in the world (behind only Google). With video becoming more and more important (we even launched Buffer for video last week!), now is the perfect time to start optimizing your YouTube Channel and begin reaping the benefits of a strong video strategy, including connecting with new potential customers, getting a better search presence and
People are brilliant and amazing. I’ll often run across an incredibly cool social media strategy or format or tool or link and think to myself, “Whoa, how’d they do that?” There are things like shortened custom URLs, evergreen queues, personalized recommendations, and more. And I’m so inspired by the cleverness and resourcefulness—not to mention the great value and utility—of these methods. So I’ve gone about trying to figure them all out. Check out my DIY tips below for putting together eac
Social media is constantly evolving. As soon as you feel like you’ve got Facebook and Twitter figured out, suddenly there’s Vine and Snapchat and a whole bunch of exciting new stuff to learn. It keeps things interesting, and keeps social media managers on our toes. Lately it seems like more and more social media managers are enthusiastic about Instagram and the opportunities there to engage with fans and share great photos and videos. And the opportunities are big! With more than 300 million
What makes a great social media manager? More specifically, what habits make an effective social media manager? What do the best social media managers practice every day that makes them amazing at what they do? There seems to be a lot of good advice out there about the best social media tactics used by marketers—tactics that might work great right away but are often not sustainable. I was keen to find the best habits. And to understand what traits would help a person become more effective as
This post originally published on March 17, 2014. We’ve updated it here with the latest information, images, and resources. Before I joined Buffer, I barely had a Twitter account. It existed by its lonesome for a few years as a placeholder for the day when my work allowed me to tweet freely. That day came when I had the privilege to join up with the Buffer team, and I dove right in, applying all the Twitter knowledge I had stowed away. And still, even with a running start, I had so much to lea
Whenever we have the chance to chat with folks about social media stats and marketing strategies, we are amazed at the many unique ways you all go about charting a path to social media success. Every industry and niche—every social profile, even—is unique. Non-profits are a great example of a segment of social media with its own unique elements and expectations. The non-profit structure—donation-backed, humanitarian-focused, member-based—presents an opportunity for some really neat ways of put
When I joined Hubstaff a few months ago to spearhead the growth of the company, I noticed we weren’t utilizing the full potential of Buffer. In order to increase our social media growth and take full advantage of this tool, we developed a few strategies that resulted in overwhelming success. The engagement teams at Hubstaff began to use Buffer to share engaging content at optimal times and frequencies based on real data. Our results? After implementing these strategies, we gained 350% more blo
As we’ve started to dig in on the best way to connect with our audience on Pinterest, we came across an interesting question: How can we best create visual content for Pinners to Pin? We’re not in one of the top niches for Pinning: food and drink, crafts, home decor. How can we make sure that every blog post we write is as Pinnable as possible? It’s been a fun experiment to see what’s worked. I’ll be happy to share with you some of the best practices we dug up with our research and how any br
Being great on social media isn’t always intuitive. Sometimes the best way to learn is to get inspired by the what others are doing. Late last year, Kapost compiled a list of 2014’s top brands in content. Much of what has made many of these brands successful is their social media strategies. Let’s learn from six of them here. Whether they’re inspiring their audience through a shared philosophy or learning with their fans and followers by sharing data and studies, these brands—both small and la
Big or small, influencer or newcomer, everyone looking to get more followers and more likes on social media—more engagement, period—seeks out strategies that work. And what works with a platform of 11 million followers tends to work for platforms with 100, too. Social media is a moving ocean of posts, images, tools, ideas, and content that flows at a fast pace. You can find success by building your own social media strategy and keeping it fluid by checking and rechecking what’s working. I’ve
If you feel challenged by Facebook marketing these days, you should know you’re not alone. In an increasingly crowded news feed, Facebook’s algorithm updates can make it tough for brands to get much notice. In fact, brands are now responding to plunging organic reach on Facebook by posting more content to Instagram than they are to Facebook, according to a report by research firm L2. But don’t despair; there’s plenty of life left in Facebook yet. We’ve been scouring the web to find out what’s
Digital marketers—like you!—are all stars. You have your hands full with all the many ways to reach your audience. At any given time, you may need to be fluent in email, content and social media because your audience is cross-platform. Few people make buying decisions anymore based on information from a single medium. So when marketers focus all their energy on one channel, they could be missing out on other opportunities and the natural rhythms of the buying cycle. So how can you keep on top
At any given moment, any one of Buffer’s staff of nearly 30 could be on our social media accounts chatting with customers, answering questions or scheduling posts for the days or weeks ahead. Thanks to Buffer’s social media management tools and the many other awesome tools that help us out, social media is a team effort here. Maybe it’s the same where you are? We’ve talked about how one person can handle multiple social media accounts on the blog, and now it’s time for the other side of the co
This post originally published on February 13, 2012. We’ve updated it here with the latest, newest information and screenshots. How do you get someone to click on your links on Twitter? This seems like one of the most pressing questions I see coming up day in day out. And rightly so. Figuring out how to attract more people that like what you are posting is one of the most important aspects of being successful on Twitter. While a higher click-through rate is certainly not the only thing to be
Many of the social media tips we share—the ways to create a marketing plan from scratch, how to get more followers, how to get more clicks—often focus on the small business side of social media marketing. Now imagine achieving social media success when the brand you’re trying to promote is you. Personal branding on social media is a topic we’d love to dive into a bit deeper, starting with this overview of tips and strategies. I’m grateful to have found a number of useful tips on how building a
What are your digital marketing goals for the months ahead? If you’re looking to increase your content’s social shares (as so many of us are), we’ve got some amazing new research to share on how to create an ideal outreach strategy for your industry. BuzzStream and Fractl have collaborated to give you a jumpstart on optimizing your outreach for social traction. We analyzed 220 high- and low-engagement websites from 11 major verticals that produce content. The result? A roadmap for planning fo
When I can find the time to do so, I love to plan ahead. I’ll write out tomorrow’s to-do list. I’ll add ideas to our content calendar. And I’ll schedule the next day’s social media updates—or even the next week’s, if I’m feeling ambitious. Maybe some day I’ll get to the point of scheduling a month or even a year ahead! Scheduling part of your social media content in advance is well worth it. And I’ll be happy to share with you some strategies, tips, and tools that can help you get organized a
There are days when I spend loads of enjoyable time writing new blogposts, creating images to share, and checking analytics, and then when I’m just nearly ready to close the laptop and sign off, I remember: I need to schedule social media posts for the next day. Or, I need to follow-up with mentions. Or, I need to curate some content. Or, I need to do one of the myriad tasks of a social media manager, and wouldn’t you know it I’m just about out of time. Saving time on social media is a big goa
Most social media experts will say that the core to Twitter greatness is: 1. Providing real value and engaging with others 2. Acting the way you would act in a real life situation 3. Never spamming 4. Building meaningful relationships These foundational concepts are hugely helpful in making Twitter really work for you. And when you’re ready to build on these foundations and scale your Twitter engagement and reach, there are some useful next-level tactics that work great, too. I’ve had a ch
I love Twitter. It’s one of my favorite places on the Internet, and one of the few sites I visit more than once per day. There’s so much to see and do that even when I’m not actively tweeting, it’s safe to say I’m reading, clicking links, and favoriting things to look at again later. Up until a few months ago, however, you wouldn’t have known I cared for Twitter at all. Before I joined WebpageFX, I didn’t have much of a “public” personality to speak of online, and instead preferred to hide be
If you’ve read any lists on Twitter tips, whether for beginners or for experts, you’ve likely come across the common advice to use Twitter lists. Twitter lists are useful, helpful, and effective for managing and optimizing your Twitter experience. There’s also a number of unique ways to go about them. I researched the topic and found 23 popular and outside-the-box ideas for what to do with your Twitter list. See what I learned in the post below, and add your favorite uses in the comments. 2
When you find yourself using a product or tool on a daily basis, you get to know the tool inside and out, including all the helpful shortcuts and little-known features. We’d love to share our Buffer secrets with you. Here are some of our personal favorite Buffer features that might have flown under your radar. Enjoy! 1. Share to multiple profiles in one click with Groups Imagine you’ve got an update to share with your Twitter, Facebook, and Google+ followers. Imagine you typically share the
Social media advice seems to come in two flavors: what to do and how to do it. Take, for instance, the advice to reshare content from your blog’s archives. This strategy seems to pay big dividends for the accounts who’ve embraced it. They’ve seen more traffic, more reshares, and more engagement even though the content itself isn’t brand new. Sharing old content is awesome social media advice. So how exactly does one go about it? It’s a question I’ve been working to answer for myself as I sha
I’ve got several go-to moves when I’m playing basketball. The crossover. The fadeaway. The tear drop. I’ve got several go-to moves when I’m writing social media updates, too. Title case. Text only. Signatures. I imagine you’ve got your own favorites, too. Combined, there are a litany of ways to compose, style, and organize a social media update, even in just the words we use in our updates. I’m always on the look out for new experiments to try with the way I write a social media update. My la