Tools for Marketing and Content Creation

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…

I don’t need to harp on how amazing Instagram can be for your business. Of its 2 billion monthly active users ( 🤯), 44% purchase products on the platform weekly. That’s a lot of potential for brand awareness and revenue. The problem is that using Instagram for business can be a tad overwhelming — especially if you’re starting today. With its plenty of (very useful and interesting) features and rapid updates, you have to juggle many moving parts to be successful on this social media platform. That’s why you need this comprehensive guide on how to use Instagram for business. We’ll cover: How to set up your Instagram business account (skip if you’ve got one already)How to op…

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…

How do you really know if your likes, comments, and shares are “good enough”? It’s easy to stare at your own numbers in isolation and feel unsure. Sometimes, your social performance only makes sense when you can stack it up against businesses similar to yours. In this article, I’ll walk you through the latest social media benchmarks across five major platforms, giving you a clear, grounded sense of where you stand and where you can grow. I’ve used data from the following Buffer reports: Buffer’s best times to post on social media — which analyzed one million posts sent through BufferBuffer’s Instagram benchmarks — calculated using aggregated data from over 27 million post…

Landing paid partnerships as a creator doesn’t necessarily require a huge following — but it does require a professional influencer media kit. Many brands and companies are happy to work with creators and influencers with smaller followings, but they’ll likely want to see some proof of your metrics and professionalism before sending you a contract or products. Enter: a media kit. Media kits are essential for social media influencers looking to monetize their work, no matter their audience size, says Ayomi Samaraweera, former TikTok employee turned creator, now the founder of Canopy, an online community for creators. Ayomi would know — she landed her first deal with only …

Big marketing dreams, but working with a tight budget? After more than a decade of marketing for bootstrapped brands, I've learned that you don't need to spend a fortune on fancy digital marketing tools to see results. It's all about building a smart toolkit that punches above its weight. One that helps you work efficiently and get results without breaking the bank. That's where this comprehensive list comes in: 28 digital marketing tools that help growing brands succeed. Many of these tools offer free or low-cost versions, so you can start small and scale up as you're ready for more features. Consider this your guide to building a powerful marketing tech stack that works…

Our data scientist has uncovered loads of fascinating numbers about social media performance this year. The best times to post based on engagement, how often you should be posting on various platforms to maximize your reach, what the impact of replying to your comments actually is, and a whole lot more — Julian Winternheimer has been busy! But this might be his most important analysis yet. We give you: ✨ The Most Used Emojis in Social Media Posts in 2025. ✨ According to his analysis of millions of posts, these are the most-used emojis in social media posts this year. OK, OK, it’s probably not the most important, actionable study we’ve ever done… and it probably won’t help…

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…

Social media managers are juggling multiple plates at once every day: brainstorming content ideas and creating text and video contentscheduling posts and engaging on multiple social media accountsanalyzing social media marketing performance and tweaking strategy based on data…And a lot moreWhew. It takes some elbow grease to keep the wheels spinning. But what if you don’t have to do all that every single day? What if you could automate the mundane, repetitive tasks to social media tools and focus on your core jobs that actually move the needle toward your return-on-investment (ROI)? Enter: Social media automation aka using software to automate repetitive tasks like sched…

Great experiences rarely come from one big moment. They’re built through hundreds of small details that add up over time. That idea guided how we spent some time this year focusing on customer experience at Buffer. Customer Experience Week was our first dedicated, cross-functional sprint centered entirely on how Buffer feels to use. We took advantage of the natural slowdown at the end of the year to form small teams, each focused on one improvement they believed they could meaningfully ship in a short window. This wasn’t our first experiment with focused building time. We’ve run initiatives like Build Week in 2022 and 2023, where teams explored new ideas and shipped exper…

LinkedIn’s algorithm has always been a bit of a mystery — until now. The LinkedIn team has been pulling back the curtain on the algorithm in interviews with Entrepreneur, talking about how it works and why going viral isn't the goal. We've looked at two: On the website, with Editor-in-Chief and VP of Content Development, Dan Roth, and Alice Xiong, Director of Product Management.On the podcast, with Senior Director and Executive Editor at LinkedIn News Laura Lorenzetti.In this article, we’ll highlight the key points from the team’s interviews about the LinkedIn algorithm and share practical tips for applying this knowledge to your content. Jump to a section: …

If Ali Abdaal can’t think of a sufficiently intriguing thumbnail for his video ideas, he won’t even make the video. No matter how great the idea is, the YouTuber with 5 million subscribers revealed it’s not worth the effort of writing, recording, and editing a video if he doesn’t have a showstopper thumbnail for it — because no one is going to watch it. But wait: YouTube is a video platform, so how much can a static image contribute to your content success? Surely you can scrub to a still from your video in YouTube Studio, and you’re good to go? Turns out: not quite. There’s a good reason YouTuber MrBeast famously pays around $10,000 for a single thumbnail design and gen…

Staying consistent on TikTok sounds simple enough. But coming up with video ideas, filming, editing, writing captions, and posting nearly every day? That’s a full-time job — with overtime. That is, unless you work smart. Scheduling your TikTok videos ahead of time is like unlocking the “easy mode” of consistency — giving you more breathing room and better results. In this guide, I’ll walk you through exactly how to schedule TikTok posts (on both desktop and mobile) and help you find the best method for your workflow. Jump to a section: How to schedule TikTok posts on desktop How to schedule TikToks on desktop using the TikTok web browser …

LinkedIn used to be the place you'd dust off your resume and hunt for your next job. Today, that’s just a sliver of how people are using the social platform. A quick scroll now throws up founders building in public, creators sharing their wins, and hot takes on everything from positioning to pricing to — of course — AI. And while businesses are still hiring on LinkedIn, many are also pulling back the curtain to show what life inside their company really looks like. This evolution has opened up serious opportunities for both brands and creators. With over 1 billion users, LinkedIn has grown into a place where B2B professionals, creators, and businesses alike can grow thei…

Delivering consistent mobile experiences is hard. Between iOS and Android's distinct design languages, different versions of native components, and Buffer's own design language, mobile apps can sometimes feel fragmented. Designers and developers end up speaking different languages, duplicating work, and shipping experiences that feel inconsistent across platforms. At Buffer, we really felt this friction. Our mobile design workflow wasn't as efficient as it could have been. We spent too much time reinventing the wheel, manually patching together screenshots, and playing catch-up with our web app counterpart. We knew we needed a better way. So we built one. Meet 🍿 Popcorn T…

This is probably going to age me, but remember when adding a link to an Instagram Story required you to have at least 10,000 followers? Thankfully these days, it's a whole lot easier with Instagram's link sticker — and you can use it no matter how many followers you have. It's well worth doing, too, particularly if you want to monetize your work on Instagram. Over 60 percent of Instagrammers use the platform to research brands and products, and including links in your stories is an excellent way to get them over to your website or products. Convinced yet? Here's exactly how to add a link to an Instagram Story, using the platform's handy link stickers — along with some exa…

Social media shifts every year — with new features, algorithm changes, and more competition for attention. And a lot of it is beyond your control not what the algorithm prioritizes, nor what goes viral, nor how people respond to your content. However, you’re in luck: even with so much outside your influence, two actions you can do, remain reliable for growth: showing up consistently and engaging with the people who show up for you. In this guide, we’ll break down why these two actions matter, how to strengthen each aspect, and the additional layers, like how often to post, when to post, and what formats to prioritize, that can help you accelerate your results in 2026. Eng…

Remember when social media content was limited to Facebook statuses and, er, “pokes?” Even a few years later, cutting-edge content was limited to a blurry photo with an oversaturated filter on Instagram. It seems bizarre now, given how much you can do with social media today. With the ever-growing list of platforms releasing new features daily, it's an exciting time to build a following online — but it's not an easy one. With the plethora of social media content options available every time you open your favorite app, it can be difficult to know what type of content your audience most wants to see. Short-form video? A carousel? A good old-fashioned selfie? Well, that all…

Instagram has officially launched the feature folks have been clamoring for for years. Hello, shiny new repost button. 👋 Users have been reposting content on Instagram since the app's release, but with this new feature, they’ll no longer have to rely on screenshots and third-party tools to share the content they love. Even better: This new mechanic will ensure the original creator will get credit for their work. I’m pretty excited that Instagram took the time to perfect this. Because when done right, sharing Instagram content from your community, customers, or collaborators can help you celebrate them and stay consistent on the platform. Talk about a win-win. Whether you'…

Link sharing on social media is always an adventure. Some social media platforms make it easier than others — Instagram allows you to link directly from your Stories and in your bio — but adding a link to your TikTok bio is still a fiddly process. In this article, I’ll walk you through exactly how to add a link to your TikTok bio step by step, why it might not be working for you (and what you’ll need to do to overcome that), plus a way to direct your followers to multiple links with Buffer’s free link-in-bio tool. ⚡Plan, create, and schedule content to grow an engaged following with Buffer's TikTok scheduling and analytics tools. Jump to a section: Why a website link m…