Alfred Lua
A collection of posts by Alfred Lua
A collection of 99 posts by Alfred Lua - Page 4
Ninety-three percent of marketers we surveyed are actively using Facebook for their business. And almost everything that Facebook does to its family of products can have a great impact on marketers. From releasing stories across Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp, and Messenger, to going all-in on live video, Facebook’s product decisions affect billions of people globally. Imagine how it may feel like to know about Facebook’s upcoming developments and begin to plan how you can utilize them — perhap
As a marketing team spread around the world — from the West Coast in the US to the East Coast in the US to Canada, to the UK and Singapore, we always keep an eye on the latest marketing and productivity tools to help us stay connected and do our best work. Our team also covers a range of marketing disciplines from social media to community building , to press relations, to con
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
Facebook Insights is one of the most powerful Facebook marketing analytics tools available. When you dive into your Facebook Insights, you’ll receive a wealth of data to help you understand more about your Facebook Page. With so many different data-points available to measure — such as Likes, engagement, reach, and demographics — Insights will help you to understand how your content is resonating with your audience, how your Page is growing and provide you with an awesome overview of how your
Instagram offers incredible opportunities for businesses of all sizes to reach their target audiences. But as more and more brands join Instagram and the feed becomes more competitive, it can be harder to stand out. Imagine being able to reach the specific groups of Instagram users you want to connect with, engage them, and convert them into customers. Well, that’s totally possible! In late 2015, Instagram opened up Instagram ads. Using the Facebook
Update (January 2018): We have an updated list of the top 22 social media conferences to attend in 2018. Feel free to check it out! Working on social media can be a little lonely at times, especially if you are working as a team of one. Imagine being around like-minded people who understand your daily struggles and learning from top professionals in the marketing world. Maybe even doing this while on a vacation! Social media conferences are the secret to all that. These conferences, ranging f
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
Storytelling has always played a part in successful marketing. Stories enable us to build personality and create a connection with consumers. But can we actually tell a story on social media? Is it possible to narrate a story with social media posts that are supposed to be short and sweet? It turns out there are many ways to use social media for storytelling! In this post, I’d love to share 20 actionable ways to use social media for storytelling. Ready to dive in? Navigating this article
Video is taking over social media. In our end of 2016 social media survey, 83 percent of marketers said they’d like to create more video content if they didn’t have restraints such as time and resources. We also found that 30 percent of marketers are looking to spend more time focused on Facebook video in 2017. To help you make the fullest use of video marketing on social media and create a successful social media strategy for 2017, we’ve pulled together 50 of the most relevant video marketing
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
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
In our State of Social Media report, eighty-three percent of marketers said they’d like to create more video content in 2017. And we can certainly see why marketers are so hot on social video. Facebook believe that most of the content we consume online in the future will be video. Twitter has recently relaunched Vine as a camera app enabling users to capture and share short-form video on the platform. And more than 10 billion videos are watched on Snapchat every day. So it’s clear video is inc
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
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,
Tech startups are known for their fast pace; big changes can happen in days or even hours. How much would change if you walked away from one for a month–or even longer? Would you be left behind? Would you be able to catch up? Would you even have a job at the end of it? In 2016, I had the opportunity to find out the answers to these questions for myself when I took a six-week sabbatical to study and complete my undergraduate degree. I’d love to share everything about this experience — how I pl
Ninety-one percent of marketers invested in Facebook advertising last year . And it’s easy to understand why when you look at the data: more than 1.4 billion people use Facebook every day, and on average, each person spends more than 50 minutes a day across Facebook, Messenger, and Ins
We previously shared what $5 per day will buy you on Facebook Ads , but how much does Facebook advertising really cost? That’s a tricky question! And the short answer is, it’ll never cost you more than you have to spend. If you have a budget of $5 per day, Facebook Ads will never cost you more than $5 a day. However, there are a number of factors that will affect how far your budget will stretch and the success you’ll see for your money. Maybe a better
We are very grateful for all the research that has been done on social media. Social media studies have given us great ideas to improve our social media marketing , helped us understand the psychology behind social media behaviors , and made us better marketers . To help you better understand the ever-changing
With all the great articles out there, it can sometimes be hard to catch up on every single one of them. So imagine being able to go through a 2,000-word article in a minute or two. Or even faster. Enter: SlideShare! With SlideShare, great ideas and strategies are condensed into a couple dozen concise slides. For marketers, it’s a powerful content network: Over 70 million people visit SlideShare, and we had several Buffer SlideShares that got over 100,000 views apiece [https://buffer.com/resources
Update (January 2018): We have an updated list of the 20 best new social media tools to try in 2018. Feel free to check it out! The social media world is a fascinating one. Every so often, a new social media platform emerges to capture our attention (Peach) or become part of our daily lives (Snapchat). The social media tools landscape can be just as fascinating — and robust! Every week, people build and launch new social media tools, empowering us marketers in our day-to-day work. To give yo
This year alone, Instagram has released business profiles and features like Stories and Zoom. Lucky for us, Instagram has something new to share again: Shopping is coming to Instagram! Starting this week, Instagram is testing a new way for users to learn more about products they discover in the app and to purchase those products if they wish to. The entire e-commerce flow from discovery to purchase is contained within Instagram, which may potentially help solve one of the biggest Instagram que
I like to think that reading the blog of a marketer I admire is like having a coffee with them and getting a chance to learn all about their approach to marketing. ☕ Personally, I have benefited a lot from reading these blogs, especially blogs published by startup marketers. Here are a couple of reasons why I love them: 1. When they write about their work, I get to learn about how they approach growth and marketing at their company and what tactics, techniques, and channels they use. 2. When
On September 14th, I celebrated my first Buffversary — a year at Buffer , a social media management startup. I thought it would be a good opportunity to take some time to reflect on the past year and share some of the things I learnt. A bit of background: I’m a Community Champion and I have been working on our community initiatives such as our weekly #bufferchat and our Slack community. Recently, after the Marketing and Community team combined forces [https://buffer.com/res
What should you do if you want to become the best at what you do? There’s probably a long list, with lots of options. One thing we’re particularly fond of at Buffer when it comes to improving ourselves is listening to podcasts relevant to our niche and industry. In our case, that means social media podcasts! What we love about podcasts is that they make it easy to hear from industry leaders and talented folks about their experiences and advice (which we might not be able to read about anywher