What’s working for you social media these days?
One of our goals at Buffer is to always be iterating and experimenting with what we do on social media and in marketing. Whether it’s cutting our posting frequency, curating content, or creating square videos, we’re always up for trying new strategies! Lots of times these experiments fail (and we learn valuable lessons) and other times they end up revealing great opportunities to grow.
So what are you experimenting with on social media this week? This month? This year?
We’d love to help with some ideas!
We’ve collected our 25 most effective social media growth strategies that have helped us move the needle over the past year. These tips and strategies are straight from our Buffer playbook and have helped people (including us) find great success on social media! We’re excited to deliver these strategies to you in a free daily email.
Join us for 25 days of social media growth strategies!
We’d count it an amazing privilege to share with you these strategies over the next several days. You can join for free by visiting the landing page below.
We’ll send you one email per day, Monday through Friday, for the next 25 days.
All of the lessons contain detailed knowledge-packed information on how you can get started with that specific strategy immediately. These are real strategies, resources, and tips that we’re currently using here Buffer or that we have used in the recent past.
A huge shoutout to the amazing folks who are blazing trails on social media marketing and inspired many of the strategies that you will read about in this email course. Lots of them have been guests on the Buffer Podcast – The Science of Social Media!
Bonus: Many of the social media growth strategies include a short video tutorial!
Course preview
Here’s a quick look at what’s in store for our social media growth strategies course in the first 15 lessons:
- The “Why” and the “How” behind social media marketing
- The web’s top (free) social media content curation tool
- Tools for creating videos on a budget
- 5 hidden Instagram marketing features
- Must-have image creation tools for savvy marketers
- The power of resharing content on Facebook
- 10 incredible stock photo websites to bookmark
- Building your brand through content curation
- Sell your product through educational screen recordings
- Less is more with Facebook posting (preview below)
- Understanding social media algorithms
- 6 time-saving social media tools
- Social media analytics and benchmarking
- 5 secrets of successful video marketing
- Strategies for sharing content across social media
Join our 25-day social media growth strategies course to see these lessons in detail and receive the remaining 10 lessons!
A sample lesson
We’re excited to make sure that you get all of the information and takeaways you want from these emails and so I’m happy to share here a sample of one of the lessons from the course. Here’s lesson #10 (in-full) –
Less is more with Facebook posting
In October of 2016 we dramatically changed our Facebook posting strategy.
A gradual, but noticeable shift in many social media algorithms and an influx of brand advertising on Facebook meant that it was important for us to either start experimenting or we’d continue to see a decline in organic reach and engagement.
We needed to make a change.
We cut our posting frequency by more than 50% on Facebook and began to truly focus on quality over quantity. What happened next, even the most optimistic social media manager couldn’t have expected:
Our Facebook reach and engagement began to increase even though we were posting less!
We’ve written a detailed breakdown on the impact this change has had on our Facebook results – But in the meantime, here’s a quick overview of our current Facebook strategy that we hope will help to spark some inspiration:
One or two posts per day maximum
The main reason why I believe we’re seeing such a dramatic increase in reach and engagement is that we’re only posting one or two pieces of content per day on Facebook.
This serves two valuable purposes:
1. It forces us to only share the best of the best content because we literally have limited space
2. It allows the Facebook algorithm to focus on delivering one piece of content (vs. multiple) to our audience
Curated content
Previously, we used to shy away from curated content because it didn’t directly affect the bottom-line: traffic, subscriptions, sales, etc.
However, sorting our Facebook posts by “Most Reach” shows exactly the impact it has had on our Page and growth: 7 of 11 of our most successful posts throughout the last 14 months are curated (not created by Buffer). These posts have combined to reach more than 750,000 people, averaging to about 107,000 people per post.
Curated content may not “directly” affect our bottom line, but it plays a significant role in reach, engagement (likes, comments, shares) and page growth.
Focusing on brand awareness and engagement
Focusing on brand awareness and engagement vs. driving traffic to our website has become a staple of our strategy as well.
We’ve witnessed a shift in many social media networks over the last year. It used to be that brands and businesses could post links to their blog posts and watch the traffic flow in. And while that’s still the case for many publishers, savvy marketers can benefit from thinking about their content strategy as a whole – focusing on both direct traffic as well as engagement.
Posting content that aims to drive engagement only helps to build an activate Facebook audience. Then, right when you need them most, you can deliver a piece of brand content that will help move the bottom line.
Boosted Posts
Last, but not least, I’d love to address how important Facebook boosted posts have been in increasing reach and engagement on our Page.
Currently, we spend roughly $40 per day boosting our best-performing content on Facebook.
Boosting posts takes content that’s already performing well and amplifies it on a huge scale. As that implies, the key is to focus on boosting great content, not necessarily posts that aren’t doing well and “forcing” them with advertising dollars.
You Can Do It
Head over to your Facebook Analytics and calculate your average post engagement for the previous 7 days (total number of engagements / total number of posts).
Then, cut the number of times you post over the next 7 days by 50% and really focus on only posting your best content. Once 7 days is up, calculate your average post engagement again.
Did your engagement rate and total engagements go up or down? We’d love to hear!
Thanks for joining us,
Brian & the Buffer Team
F.A.Q. – Frequently Asked Questions about this course
Does the course cost anything?
It’s 100% free!
We’re excited to give these strategies away in hopes that might be helpful for you and your social media marketing efforts.
Who is it for?
Everyone! It’s not tied to Buffer accounts at all, so both current Buffer users and yet-to-be Buffer users can join.
What happens at the end of the 25 days?
At the end of the 25-day course, we’d love to send you a congratulatory email (on a job well done!) plus details on where you can continue your education and connect with peers online. I’ll also be around to answer any follow-up questions you might have about the emails and subjects included in this course.
Will you be signing me up for other newsletters or lists, too?
Nope, we will not sign you up for other email lists without your express permission. Your email’s safe with us. 🙂
Help! I haven’t received my confirmation email yet!
If you can let us know the email you signed up with, I’d be happy to look you up in our system to see if all’s in working order. The first email should be headed your way shortly after signup, or first thing on Monday if you’ve signed up on the weekend. If you’re yet to see anything, I’d be very happy to investigate for you!
(Often times, some folks experience a bit more of a delay than others, depending on email service provider)
We’d love to invite you to join this course!
It would be awesome to have the opportunity to share these social media growth strategies and connect with you over the next 25 days.
If this course interests you at all, you can sign up directly online here!
We’re excited for the chance to share with you!
Feel free to leave any thoughts, questions, or comments here on the article, and I’ll hop right on them!