Blog - Page 91
A collection of 2,456 blog posts
When I joined Buffer, one of the things I was most excited about was seeing how we can get a lot done with a distributed team. I knew that Buffer was specifically set up to work this way and I was curious about seeing that play out. It turns out, this is possible mostly because of the great tools we use. We’re continually testing and adding new ones to our arsenal to make sure we’re all on the same page and are looking after our customers as best we can. Here are some of the products and servi
Before I became an entrepreneur, I went to business school. While studying for my MBA, there was one lesson that I learned which has proved to be useful over and over again in my life. I was sitting in a marketing class and we were discussing ways to design a wonderful customer experience. The goal was not merely to provide decent service, but to delight the customer. Behavioral scientists have discovered that one of the most effective ways to create an enjoyable experience is to stack the pai
You may have heard about the recent security breach that affected many Buffer users. This is something we would have hoped to never face in our lives. And yet, through the experience of the hack, we’ve had a unique opportunity to learn about security and safety on a level that we would have likely never explored before. On top of that, we were incredibly amazed by how supportive our customers (you!) were through the whole process of recovery. With all that trust given to us, despite the big m
Reposting the same content on social media can be quite a controversial topic. Some people don’t like it at all, while others advocate it strongly. For Buffer’s social media accounts, we regularly do this. We found this to work surprisingly well and thought it might be interesting to explore the topic in a more analytical way. Here is some interesting data around republishing your content multiple times on social media. Simply looking at the latest social media stats [ht
My co-founder Leo has had quite a few different roles throughout the lifetime of Buffer, and he’s had a large impact on lots of different areas. Until now Leo’s title has been CMO, however he’s working in the trenches of business, on marketing with Belle, as well as doing BD and also admin tasks (like organizing the retreat!). Looking backwards, his real strength has always been in getting things done and moving things forward, regardless of which area of Buffer. We
I’m a big fan of music, and use it a lot when working, but I had no idea about how it really affects our brains and bodies. Since music is such a big part of our lives, I thought it would be interesting and useful to have a look at some of the ways we react to it without even realizing. “Without music, life would be a mistake” – Friedrich Nietzsche Of course, music affects many different areas of the brain, as you can see in the image below, so we’re only scratching the surface with this post,
How much time do you spend consuming information that you have no intention of taking action on or that you don’t care deeply about? For example: the nightly news cycle of local crimes, the endless stream of Facebook and Twitter updates, celebrity gossip, reality TV shows, Buzzfeed articles. The list goes on. In this age of information overload, your life can be filled with irrelevant or unnecessary information in an instant. And here’s the main problem: After a while, these information sour
I’m pretty lucky to have Leo around, because there are lots of times when I’m stuck on a title for a post, or the perfect word for something I’m writing. Fortunately, we’re pretty keen on experimenting and testing here at Buffer, so I can try lots of different ideas and see what works best. Even better, though, is having some data to give me a rough guide on where to start. I found some really useful data about crafting the perfect blog post or copy, and hopefully you’ll find it useful too.
I recently covered some big changes that Twitter has made, and here is another one. Twitter just added inline images to tweets so that you don’t need to click a link to see an attached image, but rather the Tweet itself expands. This only works with images uploaded directly to Twitter, which use a pic.twitter.com URL. If you Tweet a Vine video, you’ll also see this inline on Twitter.com or in the official Twitter apps for iPhone and Android. On top of that, you can easily post any image you fin
I’m fascinated by the link between the way we live our daily lives and the health and happiness we enjoy. There are choices that you make every day, some of which seem completely unrelated to your health and happiness, that dramatically impact the way you feel mentally and physically. With that said, here are 10 common mistakes that can prevent you from being happy and healthy, and the science to back them up. When the Buffer team explored the science of happiness before on this blog, the int
I’ll confess up front: I have terrible posture. It’s been bad since I was in high school at least, and probably for even longer than that. It’s one of those things I keep in the back of my mind as something I know I should do, but never get around to, like eating more vegetables and sending more postcards. It’s really interesting to explore commonly-held assumptions for the Buffer blog, because I often find out surprising things. Researching how our posture affects us was no different. If you’r
Every month, the Buffer team shares some stats about our business, including how our blog posts did , what’s happening in Buffer for Business , and even our revenue . We also love to share what’s happening in the world of Buffer support. Here’s
We all have things that we want to achieve in our lives — getting into the better shape, building a successful business, raising a wonderful family, writing a best-selling book, winning a championship, and so on. And for most of us, the path to those things starts by setting a specific and actionable goal. At least, this is how I approached my life until recently. I would set goals for classes I took, for weights that I wanted to lift in the gym, and for clients I wanted in my business. What I
Below is the monthly update email I have just sent this morning to all our investors. I hope you enjoy taking a read about the full details of our work on Buffer in the last month. I’m excited to hear from you in the comments if you have any questions about what we’re up to! Growth/numbers: * New users: 77,000 (Total: 1,123,000, from 1,046,000: +7.4%) * Daily active users: 32,500 (from 30,000: +8.3%) * Revenue: $199,000 (Annual: $2,388,000 up from $2,088,000: +14.4%) * Business [http://buff
If you’ve been venturing a bit in the online marketing world like me, I’m sure you’ve heard the term “marketing funnel” before. To be frank, it was never something that appealed to me. It always seemed like just a way to optimise how many people are giving you money, which doesn’t seem very caring. So when I came across this post by MailChimp co-founder Ben Chestnut about why he hates funnels, I was excited to see that the traditional funnel isn’t the only way successful companies do marketing.
Quick Summary We didn’t publish any content for an entire week after we were hacked at the end of October. This affected our traffic numbers, which dropped 2% compared to September. On the upside, we got 55% more email subscribers than we did in September. How did the blog do overall? * Total uniques: 547,339 (-2% from Sep) * Total posts published: 15 (9 in-house, 6 guest posts) * Total posts republished: 4 (TheNextWeb, Lifehacker, Fast Company) * Top 3 referral sites: Facebook (84,374 uniq
In October, we’ve been trying to push hard on the Buffer for Business front. Since we want to try and be as public and transparent about the things we’re doing, here are the full numbers about how Buffer for Business performed in October. I’ve also emailed a new section to the team titled “Outlook and Thoughts” at the bottom, that I’ve included here. I (For reference, here is the September report [https://buffer.com/resources/how-much-revenue-did-buffer-for-busi
Seeing your name in the phone book used to be the ultimate, I remember it clearly. As a boy, I dreamed of the day when I would have the independence, stability, maturity, and home phone to be listed on page “L” alongside my fellow human adults. I’d crack open the new Yellow Pages, thumb through the Lees, and lo and behold, there I’d be. A celebrity. My Yellow Pages dream has vanished. Now it’s all about Google. I want my face on a Google search results page. The ticket to my desired Internet
Buffer was hacked on October 26th, resulting in several thousand spam posts appearing on Twitter and Facebook. Here is the impact on our numbers. Last Saturday I was sitting in my favorite coffee shop doing a few support tickets and writing a blog post when I opened Facebook and saw that the whole of my timeline was full of spam. The next thing I noticed was that all of the spam was “via Buffer”. I scrolled and scrolled and it was endless. We’ve written a lot about what actually happened [http
Ah, ideas. Who doesn’t want more great ideas ? I know I do. I usually think about ideas as being magical and hard to produce. I expect them to just show up without me cultivating them, and I often get frustrated when they don’t show up when I need them. The good news is that it turns out cultivating ideas is a process, and one that we can practice to produce more (and hopefully better) ideas. On
Update: This article was originally titled “Buffer has been hacked – here is what’s going on”. The hacking incident happened yesterday (Saturday) and below is a recap of everything that happened. Please ask us any questions you have in the comments below. If you’re reading this, the most important section for you is Update 7. We’ve discovered the source of the breach and closed the vulnerability. Keep reading for the full story. Update 9: We’ve discovered the exact details of how the Twitter
As the Buffer team grows we’ve been able to make some awesome adjustments to our mobile apps, including some great new features. In case you missed some of the recent additions, I’ve collected a run-down for you of how they work in our Android and iPhone apps. We’ve also included a few features that are easy to miss and might be a good bonus, which should make your Buffering much easier. Look f
In the northeastern hills outside Kyoto, Japan there is a mountain known as Mount Hiei. That mountain is littered with unmarked graves. Those graves mark the final resting place of the Tendai Buddhist monks who have failed to complete a quest known as the Kaihogyo. What is this quest that kills so many of the monks? And what can you and I learn from it? Keep reading and I’ll tell you. The Marathon Monks The Tendai monks believe that enlightenment can be achieved during your current life, but
Wow, it’s really not a small task these days to keep up with all the recent changes to Social Media. Only a few weeks ago, we talked about the biggest, new Facebook changes where especially the link posting iterations changed a lot of our behaviors. Looking at the biggest Social Media statistics [https://buffer.com/resources/10-surprising-social-media-statistics-that-will-make-you-rethink-your-strateg