Tools for Marketing and Content Creation

At the start of the year, we asked 11 experts to share their social media predictions for 2025. They pointed to big shifts — world-building, private communities, AI in everything and everywhere, LinkedIn’s rise, and a creator economy moving toward more sustainable businesses. Now that the year is behind us, it’s a good moment to pause and check the tape. Some predictions held up almost perfectly. Others played out more slowly or looked different than expected. That gap between prediction and reality is where the most useful lessons live. In this article, we’re revisiting seven themes from our original piece, from what actually happened, to where expectations missed the ma…

Recently, we realized our way of calculating MRR and ARR wasn’t giving us the clearest picture of our business. A few months ago, we made the decision to cancel the Buffer subscriptions of 1,361 inactive annual legacy subscriptions. We let those customers know they can always use Buffer for free or sign up for an annual plan again. After sending that email and canceling the annual plans, we braced for a $14,000 monthly recurring revenue (MRR) drop. But the numbers didn’t budge. We knew something was off when we didn’t see the immediate impact of cancelling those subscriptions. Instead, those cancellations were being stretched across the next 12 months, tied to each custom…

It can feel incredibly challenging to hire, and hire well. For one thing, hiring is usually a significant time investment for our small team — we once had 1,500 applications in just over a week for a content role (!!) — but beyond that, we are so intentional about the ways that we collaborate. Buffer is a fully remote, global, and culturally diverse company operating with a four-day work week. Finding someone who will thrive in our work environment, and is also highly skilled in the areas we’re hiring for, can be tough. So in a recent hiring round, we decided to try something new. I asked a candidate who was in the final stages of interviewing to spend a full day working …

At Buffer, security has always been a balance: keeping our customers’ accounts safe while making login as seamless as possible for our global user base. A few months ago, we made a decision that might sound surprising — we removed SMS-based two-factor authentication (2FA) and moved fully to email-based verification. It wasn’t a change we took lightly. SMS has long been seen as the standard for 2FA. But over time, the drawbacks began to outweigh the benefits. Here’s the story of how we got there, what the transition looked like, and what we’ve seen since. Why we moved away from SMSSMS-based 2FA has long been considered a security standard, but our team discovered several c…

I keep catching myself doing this thing lately: staring at an Instagram ad, listening to a podcast intro, scrolling past a post — and wondering, 'Wait, is this AI?' Turns out, I'm not alone. A survey by Getty Images states that 76% of people agree: ‘It’s getting to the point where I can’t tell if an image is real’. And it’s this simple sentiment of wondering whether something is real or not that raises an important question for us marketers and creators: How can we shift the narrative of doubt and start focusing on building trust instead? I’ve been reflecting on this for a while now, asking myself what really makes me trust something online and I keep coming back to the s…

If you’ve followed Buffer for a while, then you know we have a few uncommon approaches to teammate benefits and compensation. The example I’ll dig into today is our “Dependent Grant,” which we launched in 2016. Our Dependent Grant is separate benefit, outside of salary, that we grant teammates who are taking care of and supporting family members. It’s an extra $3,000 USD per year per child, up to four dependents total. This has been one of our most unusual (and at times controversial) benefits. Until recently, this was granted for extended family members, like siblings, parents, and grandparents. After eight years, we’ve updated this benefit. As always, we’re here to sh…

One of the first hires we made at Buffer was for our customer support team, and that was intentional. We've always wanted every person who reaches out to feel genuinely valued and heard, striving to set the bar for exceptional customer support. That commitment to excellence in customer support hasn't changed in the nearly 15 years we've been in business. Over the years, we've built a team where everyone takes ownership of the customer experience and actively seeks new ways to deliver stand-out experiences. Buffer’s customer support team includes 18 talented teammates from seven countries, and the average tenure for our team is nine years. Through thoughtful planning with …

If you use Buffer, then you’re familiar with our Composer. It’s where every post begins. Where you draft, tweak, preview, and hit publish. It’s the most-used surface in the entire product, and it’s the core of our value. For a while now, though, the composer has been showing its age. Not necessarily to users (it worked!), but under the hood, it was built on legacy code that made it increasingly difficult to maintain, improve, and extend. Every small change carried risk. Every new feature required navigating layers of complexity that slowed us down. So we decided it was finally time to do something about it. Over the past few months, a small team at Buffer has been moder…

One of the most common questions creators and brands ask: “Is my engagement rate good?” The answer depends on your follower count. A 5% engagement rate looks very different for a neighborhood café with 500 fans than for a news publisher with half a million. That’s why we analyzed 52 million Facebook posts across 213,000 accounts with over 6.9 billion engagements collectively, to see how engagement rates shift by follower tier. The result was a clear picture of what “good” looks like — from under 1,000 followers all the way up to 1 million or more. ⚡ Want to explore more metrics like reach, posting frequency, and growth rate? Check out our Facebook benchmarks tool. 🔢 The a…

Since Elon Musk took over Twitter, or X as it’s now called, a number of alternative platforms have emerged to capture users who have been leaving. Some focus on tight-knit communities, while others aim to match or exceed Twitter’s original reach. One popular option is Bluesky. It’s a decentralized social network built on the AT Protocol. The platform has seen steady growth and frequent updates since launch, making it an intriguing choice for people seeking alternatives to X. Because it’s open source, developers can propose changes and potentially shape the platform’s future. 💡Schedule your Bluesky posts! With Buffer's Bluesky integration, you can cross-post to other platf…

We recently started a small project to clean up how parts of our systems communicate behind the scenes at Buffer. Some quick context: we use something called SQS (Amazon Simple Queue Service. These queues act like waiting rooms for tasks. One part of our system drops off a message, and another picks it up later. Think of it like leaving a note for a coworker: "Hey, when you get a chance, process this data." The system that sends the note doesn't have to wait around for a response. Our project was to perform routine maintenance: update the tools we use to test queues locally and clean up their configuration. But while we were mapping out what queues we actually use, we fou…

So many factors contribute to the success of your videos on YouTube: your video title, thumbnail, YouTube SEO, and (perhaps most importantly) the quality of your content. It’s a lot to consider, and it’s often not easy to pinpoint what will resonate with your YouTube subscribers the most. But thanks to our analysis of more than 1 million videos shared on YouTube, we can offer a little more concrete guidance on at least one of those factors: the best time to post on YouTube. As we’ll get into later on, this is not a magic bullet for content success — the factors I mentioned above have an outsized impact. But compared to all the work that goes into the rest of these process…

I’ve been fortunate that we've closed down for the last week of the year for the last eight years that I’ve been at Buffer. We kicked off this at the end of 2016 and have kept up every year since then. Closing down for the last week of the year is an opportunity to pause and recharge. It’s like a reset, except across the whole company. I love telling people about this practice at Buffer because they have so many questions about how we continue to operate while closing down for a week. As we work with many small businesses and creators who can sometimes struggle with working over the holidays, it feels especially important to share how we’re going about this. So in thi…

I have three kids under five — and getting them out of the house regularly is essential. I'm always scouring Google Reviews for new and interesting kid-friendly things to do in our neighbourhood. I look for great reviews, of course, but you know what stands out even more? Reviews with responses from the business. There's a "kids' cafe" not far from us that responds to every review. That tells us they care about their customers — and we go there often. I know I'm not alone in this, either. BrightLocal's research found that 88 percent of consumers would use a business that responds to all of its reviews, both positive and negative. Here's the data on why you should be repl…

I've wanted to be a social media creator for years. Six months ago, I finally started — and almost quit before I posted a single thing. I had plenty of ideas — the problem was that every piece of advice I found was written for a brain that works very differently from mine. I was diagnosed with ADHD in 2019 and level one autism in 2020 — and not one article I read addressed what it takes to stay consistent when your brain fights you on it. So I stopped following everyone else's advice and built a system that works for my brain instead. My brain doesn't naturally see the steps between "start a social media account" and "become a successful creator." I see the end goal, but …

It’s January, and you’re fired up—new year, new strategy, new wins. Or maybe it’s March, and you’re side-eyeing your social media, wondering if you missed the reset window. Spoiler: You didn’t. Whether it’s the first week of January or the last day of October, the best time to get your social media on track is right now. This checklist is your blueprint for momentum in 2025. Whether you’re aiming for more consistency, kickstarting your creator journey, or landing your first brand deal, this guide will help you build a strategy that sticks. So grab your notepad, open your planning app, or start a fresh Google Doc and let’s dive in. Callout: P.S. Scroll to the end for a sim…

Not sure where to start with social media marketing? This guide walks you through everything from choosing platforms to building a strategy that sticks. Marketers, social media is where your audience already hangs out — and it's one of the best ways to connect with over 5 billion of them in a real, meaningful way. And it’s not just about staying in touch. Social platforms have become powerful discovery engines. A growing number of people actively use TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, and others to research products, read reviews, and decide what to buy next. In fact, 63% of Gen Z and 49% of millennials say social media ads or recommendations influence their purchasing…

Most social media tools — including Buffer, historically — operate on a pretty simple model: you give us your content, we publish it, we show you some charts. If you want to improve, that's on you. Go look at the analytics. Figure out what's working. Adjust your strategy. Come back and use the tool again. The problem is the gap between the data and what you're supposed to do with it. It’s where most people get stuck. Take posting times as an example. It's one of the most common questions we hear: "When should I post?" And the honest answer has always been: "It depends. Look at your analytics. Test different times. See what works for your audience." Which is technically co…