Tools for Marketing and Content Creation

Paid advertising on social media can be incredibly powerful if you're battling to reach the right audience — especially when you need to tap into very specific demographics. Which is where Facebook really shines. With over 3 billion monthly active users, it's no surprise that Facebook is the go-to social media platform for running ads. The Facebook algorithm can be tricky to figure out, especially when you're just starting out as a small business owner, creator, or social media manager. That's where Facebook advertising comes in — it helps you reach your audience more reliably. That's why, when it comes to social media strategy, understanding how to advertise on Facebook…

Threads doesn’t just reward replies — it was built for them. Adam Mosseri, Head of Instagram, has said this more than once, and he hasn’t minced words on it, either: "The sum of all your replies is about as valuable as the sum of all the value of all your posts," he told Platformer. Turns out, he wasn't exaggerating. We have data to back up just how powerful responding on Threads can be. Replying to comments on your Threads posts can boost engagement by around 42% — the highest lift we've seen across any platform — according to Buffer data scientist Julian Winternheimer's analysis of over 128,000 Threads posts. Julian found that when creators and brands engage back in the…

Scheduling is what Buffer is known for, and fair enough. But there's way more going on under the hood! Buffer has grown into a pretty comprehensive toolkit over the past few years, and some of the newer features (some of my personal favorites) are super useful in ways that go well beyond the queue. Here's what else it can do. Reply to comments across platforms, from one placeIf you've ever posted something, disappeared, and come back three days later to a pile of unanswered comments, this one's for you. Community is Buffer's unified comment inbox. It pulls in comments from Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Threads, Bluesky, and X, so you can see and reply to everything wit…

Hootsuite is a pretty powerful social media management tool. But its $99 per month starting price puts it out of reach for a lot of creators, entrepreneurs, and small businesses — and that's before you even get to the plan most people actually need. Hootsuite's free plan was discontinued on March 31, 2023 — so there's no way to get Hootsuite for free beyond the 30-day trial. When the free plan was axed (RIP), existing users were nudged toward the $199 per month Standard plan — billed annually, which means a lump sum of $2,388 upfront. Some customers chose to upgrade to keep their access to the social media scheduling tool. But for a lot of creators and small teams, $199 a…

Here's something worth knowing upfront: You don't need millions of followers or superstar status to make money on Instagram. Micro and even nano-influencers on Instagram are supplementing — or even replacing — their income with content creation. I now have over 15,000 followers on Instagram, but when I started experimenting with monetization, I had no idea what would actually work. And I tried everything. Affiliate links that made me a few bucks, brand partnerships that weren't really sustainable, and eventually a few income streams that started stacking up month after month. One of the most important things I've learned is that there no ‘easy money’ switch here — turning…

With more than 40 million registered users, Bluesky is fast becoming a decentralized force to be reckoned with — and with good reason. Among the new wave of fediverse platforms and decentralized networks, Bluesky is possibly the easiest to get to grips with, thanks to its clean interface and ever-increasing community of all sorts of creators. From science to K-pop, there’s a space for everyone on the network. If you’re new to Bluesky and the world of decentralized social media, here’s a quick summary: Bluesky was created by former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, and is a decentralized social network built on an open-source protocol called AT Protocol. With the protocol, Bluesk…

Threads has over 150 million daily active users. Great for reaching new audiences. Also, a discovery problem. How do you get seen when millions of conversations are happening at once? Enter: Trending Topics for Threads, right in Buffer. It brings real-time trending conversations directly into Buffer's composer. Built in partnership with the Threads team, Trending Topics surfaces what's trending on Threads to anyone, no matter your location, through Buffer's API access. The discovery challenge on ThreadsThe Threads algorithm rewards genuine conversation and authentic engagement. Success comes from joining discussions people actually care about, at the moment they care abou…

These days, it feels like Threads is dropping new features every week. Whether it's small quality-of-life improvements or game-changing updates (we see you, Trending Topics), the Threads team has been busy since their rocketship launch in 2023. The only potential downside to all that fun new stuff for its 400 million monthly active users to play with? It's not easy to keep track! Which is where this guide comes in. Here, I’ll unpack some of the top new features on Threads by Instagram — plus how to use them to grow your following. Let's make sure you're getting the most out of Threads, shall we? Jump to a section: 1. Topics, not hashtags 2. Trending Topic…

Tried and tested strategies for growing your following on Threads, with insider tips from the Threads team. There's no doubt about it: Threads is here to stay. After a record-breaking start, Threads is fast proving that it was no fly-by-night fad but a force to be reckoned with among the other social media giants. Threads by Instagram now has 400 million monthly active users and counting. To put that into perspective, that's a little over a third of X's (formerly Twitter) monthly active users of 550 million — and X has a good 16 years on Threads. If you’re a creator, marketer, or business owner, growing an audience on the platform is well worth it. Especially if you’re in…

Our old homepage hero technically showed all the platforms we support — but it felt overly corporate. Like a feature list wearing a trench coat. So in early 2025, we redesigned our homepage as part of an overall website redesign. …

A few weeks ago, we completed our seventh profit share at Buffer, distributing $377,005 to 75 teammates. This represents more than a dollar amount. It reflects a real turnaround in our growth and in where we are headed. Just a few years ago, we were not in a position to do this at all. We went through two years of net losses, made hard decisions, and focused deeply on rebuilding a healthy, sustainable business. There were moments when profitability and profit sharing felt far away. So returning to this practice in 2025, with an average share of $5,095 per teammate, feels especially meaningful. It reflects the resilience of our team, the care people have put into their wor…

Let me just put it out there: There has never been a better time to become a LinkedIn creator, even if you’re starting completely from scratch. LinkedIn has over a billion users, but only a small portion of those are actively creating. That means less competition for attention on the LinkedIn feed — and as a result, plenty of opportunity to increase your followers on LinkedIn. I can personally attest to the power of focusing your creative efforts on LinkedIn. I've been posting consistently on LinkedIn for about six years now, and it's helped me grow to over 22K followers — which has opened up some incredible opportunities. Increasing my LinkedIn following has helped me …

If you've been wanting to post on social media but keep putting it off, this one's for you. I asked Buffer's team of creators — because creating is important to us since our product is for creators — to share what actually helped them get past the fear, overthinking, and blank-page paralysis that accompanies early-stage content creation. And their advice was refreshingly actionable. A bit of backstory: In an initiative spearheaded by Sabreen Haziq, our Senior Brand & Community Manager, Buffer's team has been transforming into a group of creators with real skin in the game. Over the past 8 months, we've collectively: Published over 11,000 postsEarned 14 million impress…

I love the idea of the mythical Instagram hack. When a social ‘expert’ pops up on my feed, emphatically telling me to do the Fate of Ophelia choreography during the full moon after every post to go viral — there’s a good chance I’ll give it a bash. (If you saw me practicing that dance in my last vlog, no, you didn’t.) The fact is, though, those hacks, in the truest sense, really don’t exist. The quality of your content is the be-all and end-all of Instagram post performance. But there are a handful of things you can do to give your content a helpful little boost. Posting at a good time for the platform can help, as can keeping up a consistent posting cadence. We have data…

Managing multiple social media accounts can feel like a lot — especially when you're doing it solo. But with the right approach, it doesn't have to be overwhelming. If you're a creator or small business owner trying to stay active across multiple social media networks, you're probably wondering how to make it all work without burning out. This article shares seven strategies you can use (with software recommendations in between) to manage multiple social media accounts effectively. Quick summary: how to manage multiple accountsUse templates: Create repeatable formats in Canva to reduce design time and maintain brand consistency.Repurpose and crosspost: Share high-performi…

Threads might look a bit like Twitter and feel like Instagram, but the fledgling social media platform is a bit of both — and neither. Threads has been positively flying since it first burst onto app stores in 2023. In just a few years, the Meta-owned app amassed 141.5 million daily active users, with many serious superfans in its ranks (several of the Buffer team among them!). And those superfans will be quick to tell you that social media strategies for Instagram and Twitter/X aren't plug-and-play for Threads. The Threads algorithm is all its own, and — if you're serious about building an audience on Threads — it's well worth getting familiar with how it works. Whic…

Every year brings a fresh wave of headlines and bold predictions about what social media is about to become. A new platform. A new format. A new rulebook we’re all meant to learn overnight. But when you zoom out, the underlying dynamics don’t actually change all that much. ✅ Creators want more ownership. ✅ Audiences are more precious about what they give their trust and attention. ✅ Platforms are making updates and changes. I’ve been working in and around the creator economy long enough to recognize these patterns when they keep showing up. I see them as a consumer, through my work at Buffer, and as a creator who’s increasingly embedded in the space myself. That’s why thi…

GIFs are awesome. And they’re everywhere. We use them at Buffer in our posts, threads, emails, and our Slack channels. Anywhere there’s a message, there’s the chance for a GIF. ‌‌ What is a GIF, you ask? For the uninitiated, GIFs are really just animated image files. GIF stands for Graphics Interchange Format. While plenty of people have very strong feelings about how to pronounce the word — ”giff” vs. “jiff” — the original creator of GIFs, Steve Wilhite, once said: “The Oxford English Dictionary accepts both pronunciations. They are wrong. It is a soft ‘G,’ pronounced ‘jif.’ End of story.” Want to know how to create a GIF and when and where to share them? We’ve collected…

My mom taught me a neat trick when I went to college: Take the leftover veggies from dinner, chop some fine onion, add some hot sauce, and use it as your sandwich spread. I used the hack all the time — sometimes for breakfast on busy mornings and other times for snacking in late evenings. I was always surprised at how different yet familiar the sandwich tasted. That's content repurposing in a nutshell: You take existing content and adapt it into new formats for different platforms. But what most of us struggle with is practicing repurposing content regularly. It doesn’t become a part of workflows so easily, and it’s often more difficult than it looks. In this article, I’…

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…

This post was originally published on October 15, 2014, and we have just updated it with the latest information and screenshots of Twitter analytics. We're longtime Twitter fans, it's been an amazing tool for building personal brands and helping small businesses grow. Yelitsa Jean-Charlies is a good example of both, she's founder of Healthy Roots Dolls and she used Twitter to grow her brand and bring “the beauty of our diversity to the toy aisle.” Since 2017, she's been using Twitter to build a brand rooted in authenticity and her personal story. Through Twitter, she tripled her mailing list, got new partnerships, generated organic leads, and contributed to the conversat…

🚀Bluesky scheduling is here! With Buffer's Bluesky integration, you can cross-post to other platforms, analyze your content performance, store all your ideas in a single hub, and so much more – even with a custom server. Buffer for Bluesky is available on all plans, including free →Bluesky is a decentralized social media platform that’s part of a wave of new social media platforms that aim to give users more control of their content and audiences. It’s rapidly gaining fame thanks to its in-depth user customization and control and if you’ve recently joined, welcome! Having spent over 6 months testing it out — and even longer as a user, I can say that Bluesky stands out as …

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…

Buffer is a social media productivity tool for creators, small businesses, freelancers, and agencies. A place to schedule posts, manage comments, and track performance across Instagram, LinkedIn, Threads, Bluesky, Facebook, X, TikTok, YouTube, Mastodon, and Google Business Profiles without getting sucked into the feed. Most social media tools are built for brands with big budgets and dedicated teams. We build for everyone else: the creator just starting out, the small business owner doing everything themselves, the freelancer building a personal brand between client work, and the agency managing multiple clients without the enterprise price tag. In 2025, we shipped a lot.…

“How often should I post on social media?” is a question that has plagued marketers and creators since the invention of social media marketing. So, what’s the right number? In this guide, I’ll share data-backed tips on how often you should post on the most popular social media platforms. Jump to a section: At a glance: How often you should post on every social media platform How often should you post on Facebook? How often should you post on Instagram? How often should you post on TikTok? How often should you post on X (formerly Twitter)? How often should you post on Linked…