Blog Review

Buffer blog provides in-depth analyses of trending topics in various areas of importance to the social media and digital marketing world. Their posts are based on experience, statistics, research and field tests. 

Their articles are well-written, entertaining and provide countless tools, tips and links that I’ve already found myself referring back to again-and-again. 

The writers actively engage with people In the comments section, and not just by posting an emoji or liking a comment. They ask questions, comment back and seem to genuinely want to hear from their followers.

This would be one of my main takeaways from this assignment. That behind every profile pic (with a few exceptions) there is a real person and social media marketing should focus as much on the social aspect of things as it does on the marketing.

I’ve been listening to the Buffer podcast, The Science of Social Media, for the past few months and the one topic that has consistently come up, is how important it is for brands to include video in their social media marketing strategy.  

In the past, the idea of producing video content for my social media was intimidating.  I didn’t know how to edit video. I didn’t have the right equipment. I I didn’t feel confident enough to put myself out there. 

After reading this post it became clear to me that producing short video for the web is not that hard. All you need is your phone, a few images, an app and a little creativity.  You don’t even have to be on camera if you are not comfortable with it. 

The post gave a list of some of Buffer Blog’s favourite video editing tools like Animoto, Quik and Legend. I plan on testing driving all of them to see if I like them.

The post also gives a list of video ideas and examples to get you started.

I have to say that one of the things that Buffer Blog does extremely well is that they give you high quality content, with excellent tools and resources and they are ever so subtle when it comes to promoting their products in the blog. It makes me feel like they are genuinely trying to build a community online and not just trying to get you to download their apps or sign up for a subscription.

This is a very thorough post which sets out Facebook’s algorithm values, gives an overview of the algorithm and also outlines a few Facebook dos and donts.  There is even a video of Adam Mosseri, VP of Product Management for Newsfeed of Facebook, explaining how the newsfeed works.  

The cornerstone of this article, however, is a chronological list of all of the changes to the Facebook algorithm that have taken place since way back in August 2013 up until now.  

With Facebook being such powerhouse of a social network, and the issue of the algorithm change being such a hot-topic, I thought that this post was a must-read. 

It was definitely a “heavier” read than my first blog reflection post.  The subject matter is complex so I had to break this post up into smaller chunks and read it over a few days.  It was a worthwhile read and the information was valuable but the list of updates is a bit overwhelming to absorb in one sitting. I would suggest listening to the Buffer Podcast on this topic instead. I listened to it at work during my lunch break one day to compare the two delivery methods and by far preferred the podcast.

 At a loss, I took stab in the dark and entered “How to Write a Blog Post?” in the search bar and Voila! 

The original post is pretty old and it was last updated 2 years ago, but I thought it would still be useful to read and reflect on. 

The article is truly authentic in that at its core the writer is being completely transparent about his blog writing process.  He goes into specific detail on what steps are involved, how long each step takes, what he does to prepare for writing a post and how he promotes it once it is posted. 

I particularly liked the way the writer, not only shared a detailed account of his current blog writing process, but also told us what he used to do.  What I got from this, is that the process can evolve and that it’s important to be flexible and experiment a little throughout the blogging process. 

I also thought that the use of  links, images, graphics and screenshots made a pretty lengthy article more engaging.  

Overall, I really enjoyed this post. Halfway into reading it I found myself popping over to Evernote and saving it to a notebook for future reference.  Despite the fact that it was over 3 years old, this post provided me with a wealth of information and resources that are still applicable today. 

The main reasons I chose Buffer blog were:

It was highly recommended

With so many blogs out there to choose from I did not know where to start.  Buffer was highly endorsed by my Instructor so I did a little investigating of my own and thought it was a great choice.  

I liked the look and feel of the blog

At first glance I noticed that there were quite a few interesting articles and not too much self-promotion. One of my pet-peeves is reading a blog post just to find out it’s just a big giant ad. 

Their content is timely and relevant.

After reading a few paragraphs of one post I quickly realized that I needed this blog in my life if I wanted to successfully navigate the ever-changing landscape of the social media marketing world.

The Layout:

Buffer Blog has a clean and modern layout with a somewhat masculine colour palette.  The desktop version of the homepage is quite simple, with the most recent post highlighted by a page-width feature image, that contains the title, author and a read more button. Below that, there are more posts laid out in a 2-column grid which includes all of the same info as above, as well as a snippet of the post and a tag.  

The mobile-version of the blog is very similar, but posts under the feature post are laid out in a single-column, rather than a 2-column grid to make it easier to read on a smaller screen. 

At the time of writing this post there were 5 calls to action on the homepage. There were 3 CTAs to get started with the Buffer application. One in the header, one half-way down the page and one in the footer.  There was one CTA to listen to the Buffer podcast The Science of Social Media. Finally, there was a CTA to subscribe to the Buffer Blog via email.

While I was following Buffer blog, they posted timely and original content, 1 to 4 times a week, broken down into the following categories:

Buffer News

Case Studies

Design

News and Trends

Online Marketing

Social Media Marketing

The Science of Social Media

Buffer blog features the social links to all of the major social media platforms in the footer of each page, and blog posts are promoted across all of these channels, with one exception.   Buffer’s Instagram account showcases beautiful landscape, travel and nature photography mixed in with a few pics of some of the cutest dogs (and a few other animals) on the ‘gram.  

Social Links

Facebook

Twitter

LinkedIn

Instagram