I’ve long since professed my love of the BufferApp. But it’s been a while since I’ve shared some of the ways I use this tool, so I thought I would add some tips today. (About a year ago my youngest daughter landed a job with Buffer – so take that for what you will as you read! – To me, it’s just another reason to love them.)
Millions use Buffer for it’s core namesake functionality – buffering social media updates over the course of a day. While it does accomplish this task in ways that no other tool has been able to replicate, it does much more.
Below are three of my favorite ways to amplify Buffer’s usefulness.
Upload in bulk
One very useful way to use Buffer is in support of a campaign. Let’s say you have an event coming up and you know you’re going to promote landing pages and valuable content related to the event. Or let’s say you have an entire network of contributors, whose content you want to share.
Using the 3rd party Bulk Buffer you can add a CSV or text file of dozens or even hundreds of links and have them automatically distributed across your Buffer schedule.
I’ve also used this approach to que up an entire week’s worth of activity so I could forget my social habit during a vacation. Of course, you could also do this kind of thing on behalf of a client that has engaged you to beef up their social media participation and sharing.
Re-promote old posts
Make sure you install the Buffer Chrome Extension so that with one click you can compose an update to buffer from the page you happen to be on. Then check out the “new scheduler” in the window that pops up. This tool allows you to set repeated, future posts of this update in pretty much any schedule you dictate.
I will often put blog posts into schedule days and weeks out so that they receive ongoing, future attention without any additional effort on my part.
Look, it’s silly to believe that everyone that needs to read your awesome post will see it today. You will find that your traffic for your posts often doubles by adding repromotion to your routine.
Hook it up to your RSS reader
Even though you can find plenty of people suggesting that no one uses RSS readers anymore, you shouldn’t listen.
Subscribing to and easily accessing blogs is still a big part of my ongoing education, sharing and idea getting. Sure, I also subscribe to a handful of targeted aggregators like Newsle and love the “Buffer Suggested” links that show up daily in my Buffer account, but I also fire up Feedly everyday and because I’ve authorized a connection to Buffer I simply share all the posts I want to share during my morning read and push them to Buffer.
By adding each of these elements to my daily and weekly routine I can multiply my social media sharing efforts with very little extra work.
What are your favorite Buffer hacks?
