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Blog - Page 81

A collection of 2,452 blog posts

ToolsJul 9, 2014
10 Time-Saving Social Media Tools for a Productive Summer

Imagine you’ve got a week’s vacation planned this summer (lucky you!), and you’d love nothing more than for your social media efforts to keep humming right along while you’re gone. No problem. There are a handful of social media tools that can assist with your out-of-office marketing. Automation techniques can help fill your queue, and the 10 tools below can help you keep tabs on your profiles, engage with your audience, and communicate with your team. Here are 10 time-saving social media tool

Self-ImprovementJul 9, 2014
What Trapeze Lessons Taught Me About Life: When to Hang On and When to Let Go

I was blown away by a show I saw recently which included performances by acrobats and trapeze artists. The trapeze in particular was captivating to watch. It looked so joyful that I found myself wanting to find out how to have a go! I love to try new things; new experiences make life fun and interesting. And I’m incredibly lucky and proud to work for a company that values positivity, happiness and self-development . Every week we share w

ReportsJul 8, 2014
Is This Urgent? What Happened When We Let Buffer Customers Prioritize Themselves: June Happiness Report

June was a fantastic, fascinating month for customer happiness at Buffer as we made great strides toward meeting goals, expanded our awesome team, and pushed forward in a number of new, exciting areas. Stats June 2014 is the first month that I know of where we hit “inbox zero” at least once per day in both email and twitter. (We use Help Scout and Sparkcentral , respectively.) It feels great to be getting closer to the point where our customers do

OpenJul 8, 2014
What Are You Doing to Feel Uncomfortable?

I believe that when you’re building a startup, it is as much about developing yourself as it is about developing your startup. Recently I’ve realised that “feeling uncomfortable” is just what I need. Why is it a good thing to feel uncomfortable? Seth Godin describes why we should feel uncomfortable using the following chart: Godin argues that most

Guides & CoursesJul 8, 2014
7 Key Ingredients of a Great Twitter Bio

Your online reputation is your reputation. And it better be good. The way you describe yourself on Twitter has everything to do with how people perceive you online . So how the heck do you do it right? In this post, we’ll go over the 7 key ingredients of a powerful Twitter bio–whether you’re a novice [https://buffer.com/librar

ReportsJul 7, 2014
Experiments, New Apps, Sneak Peeks, and More: Buffer’s June Product Report

We’ve been working hard at Buffer to launch new features and products, improve existing product areas and build out our internal tools to help us move faster than ever. This is our first product report of the year, and I’d love to explore everything going on behind the scenes at Buffer! What we launched: New product launches in June In June we had several major launches that are helping us to move the needle of Buffer’s growth. In the web app, we’ve begun curating new topics for content sugges

Online MarketingJul 7, 2014
The Burrito Principle and Beyond: 12 New Marketing Ideas That Are Memorable, Actionable, and Useful

I sometimes find myself getting lost in a sea of marketing advice. There’s just so much out there. We produce four to five marketing posts on the Buffer blog every week, and we are just one of many sources of social media marketing advice. Multiply our handful of weekly posts with the countless blogs, tweets, updates, and emails, and the social media tips grow exponentially. How can a marketing idea or bit of advice stand out from the crowd? We’ve certainly been eager to experiment with answe

Self-ImprovementJul 7, 2014
The Science of Side Projects: How Creative Hobbies Improve Our Performance at Everything

At any given time, I have a side project running. It’s often a new blog or a Tumblr or a book or a newsletter. Sometimes I try to design WordPress themes. Other times I try photography. This ethos of new projects and new improvements runs throughout our Buffer team. We love to find ways to grow, excel, and improve through side projects and hobbies. I have yet to create the next Uber or Gmail—million-dollar and million-user enterprises that b

ResearchJul 3, 2014
The Secret Psychology of Twitter: What Makes Us Follow, Fave, Share and Keep Coming Back

When I choose someone new to follow, when I compose a new tweet, when I share and favorite an update, I seldom think about the why. My following sessions would probably seem haphazard to an outsider, and my favoriting technique comes and goes from one strategy to another. Even so, the way I use Twitter is far less random th

Improving, Even On-the-Go: 16 Things The Buffer Team is Working On This Week

Travel is a high priority for lots of us at Buffer—it’s a bit ingrained in our culture , and it’s always a great experience to see the world and broaden your geographic and cultural horizons . Travel is also the time where it can become a challenge to hang onto go

BufferchatJul 2, 2014
The Best Tools and Sources for Visuals in Social Media: A #Bufferchat Recap

Social media is getting more and more visual. We just can’t get enough photos, videos, GIFs, infographics, and charts. It’s something we’ve blogged about before and certainly something we’ll cover again, given the momentum of sites such as Instagram and Pinterest. At Buffer, we even make multiple original images for most of our blog posts, and our favorite tool for that job is awesome image-maker Canva. Recently we invited Peg Fitzpatrick, Head of Social Strategy at Canva, to join us in for a

OpenJul 1, 2014
Why No One Will Steal Your Startup Idea

When you’ve got a great idea , share it. It might seem like counterintuitive advice, but that’s the philosophy that’s building Buffer: An emphasis on transparency and openness around almost everyt

Online MarketingJul 1, 2014
5 Methods and 15 Tools To Find Your Audience And Build a Community

No matter what you do in life, chances are good you’re reliant on some kind of a community. People to read your writing. Social sharers to spread your message and curate your content. Customers to review your products or services and tell their friends about you. Communities work because they’re built on relationships, and during the early stages of any new project, you need all the strong relationships you can get. The community you grow will be the source of your very first (and potentially

OpenJul 1, 2014
Octavio Aburto is Buffer’s Newest Happiness Hero

I’m thrilled to announce that Octavio Aburto has completed his 45-day Buffer Bootcamp and is joining us full-time as Buffer’s newest Happiness Hero! Hailing from Mexico, Octavio supports both our English- and Spanish-speaking customers. Adding another language to the list at Buffer has been a huge benefit, especially for the Happiness Team. Octa is our first Spanish-speaking hero, and he is also much more than that. :) Everything is a bit brighter with Octavio ref

OpenJul 1, 2014
Nicole Miller is Buffer’s First Community Champion

I’m so pleased to announce that Nicole Miller has completed her 45-day Buffer Bootcamp and is joining us full-time as Buffer’s first Community Champion! When Nicole joined Buffer, a few things immediately changed. First, she started taking amazing care of our community, and Buffer stickers have now gone to all corners of the world. Second, the pet-to-human ratio at Buffer increased significantly. And third, she took Buffer’s handwriting-legibility average to n

OpenJun 30, 2014
The Habits of Successful People: They Work To Understand Context

I’ve had a few different experiences in my past that made me reach a big realisation. What I’ve discovered is that the context of any situation is very important. Hiten Shah clearly already understands this very well. This Tweet from him is what tipped me over the edge to share some of my further thinking around context: Get context before you give advice. — Hiten Shah (@hnshah) August 30, 2012 [https://twitt

ResearchJun 30, 2014
Why We Stopped Focusing on Direct Social Media ROI: A New Way of Viewing Conversions

Do you measure the return on your social media investment? It seems blasphemous not to, yet that’s exactly the direction we’re experimenting with at Buffer. We’ve recently shifted our focus toward email list building along with continued traffic growth. These metrics are common enough; it’s what we’ve stopped measuring in lieu of email that is most unique and notable. We no longer focus on social media ROI. It’s strange but true. We’re a social media blog that does not emphasize social media

18 Things We’re Improving This Week

Not only do we strive for personal improvement every week at Buffer, those of us who work on the blog here get the opportunity to dig into the science of self-improvement in many different areas. Here are a few resources for improvements that might be on your list: • 6 Research-Tested Ways to Improve Your Memory • 8 Ways to Improve Your Morning Routine [http://blog.bufferapp.com/youve-got-25000-mornings-as-an-adult-8-ways

Buffer NewsJun 26, 2014
Introducing Daily by Buffer: Content That’s Easy to Find, Easy to Share—Wherever You Are

Important update: We’re retiring the Daily app and Suggestions feature – beginning August 1, we’ll start turning off Suggestions in phases. Read more… Buffer’s mission has always been to do one thing really well: make it super easy to share great content. We think our web app and mobile app make it pretty easy to share, so what about the second part of our mission? How can you stock up on great articles and photos to share? Finding great content—the kind that moves you, makes you think, or st

OpenJun 25, 2014
Buffer May Update: $283k MRR; We’re Now a Team of 24

I’m excited to share the details for Buffer’s progress in May. If you want to read our update from April, you can take a look here . I’ll keep it short this month, just wanted to give you an update on our latest progress. Traction update • New users: 60,000 (Total: 1,537,000, from 1,477,000: +4.1%) • Daily active users: 40,000 (last month also 40,000) • Monthly active users: 156,000 (down from 157,000: -0.6%) • Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR): $283,00

Content MarketingJun 25, 2014
An Expert Guide to Idea Curation: How to Get More Ideas for Great Content

Where do blog post ideas come from? This one came from someone else’s headline. We are constantly inspired by the amazing work of others, and we owe a lot to the deep thinking and amazing resources that are readily available within the industry. How can we get more ideas more consistently? There’s inspiration everywhere. We’ve just got to keep our eyes open. Copyblogger gave us the inspiration for this post. One of their recent headlines mentioned “idea curation,” a new-to-us term that really

OpenJun 25, 2014
How to Create a Secure Password You Can Remember Later: 4 Key Methods

How do you balance the necessity of highly secure passwords with the utility of easily recalling them all? It’s a question I mull each and every time a security breach happens. When the Heartbleed vulnerability was discovered last spring, the mandate was for everyone to change all their passwords right away. It’s still on my to-do list. I cringe at the thought of getting hacked, and I also cringe at the thought of taking the time and mental energy to do a complete overhaul of my favorite passwo

Tips / How ToJun 24, 2014
5 Data-Driven Ways To Get Your Facebook Post Seen by Your Audience

If you’ve been struggling with Facebook lately for your brand page, don’t think you’re alone. Between changes to the layout of brand pages, News Feed algorithm adjustments, and countless other tweaks and changes, marketers are constantly on their toes anticipating what’s coming next. A current issue that many are facing is the decline of a post’s organic reach. Marketers have had their organic reach cut by more than half with their Page’s published posts. This change is caused by a deeper und

Self-ImprovementJun 24, 2014
Why I Built A Weekly Creativity Routine

Many people around me have a pretty good artistic side: Music, painting… they are crafters of all sorts, they can truly create things out of thin air! As for me? Well, I’m not a gifted artist. I shouldn’t be allowed to sing outside my shower and I still struggle to draw a smiley face. For a while, I thought the artistic road wasn’t something for me, period. Yet, the thing is, even though I can’t create very much, I still have pretty strong opinions about what I like. Curating creativity It t