Resources - Page 39
A collection of posts on Resources
When you have a goal — whether it’s starting a business or eating healthier or traveling the world — it’s easy to look at someone who is already doing it and then try to reverse engineer their strategy. In some cases, this is really useful. Learning from the experiences of successful people is a great way to accelerate your own learning curve. But it’s equally important to remember that the systems, habits, and strategies that successful people are using today are probably not the same ones th
We’ve written about creativity a few times on the Buffer blog, but it’s hard to keep track of everything we learn about it. One day I’m adjusting the temperature in my workspace, and the next I’m trying to put off creative work until I’m tired. If you’re in the same boat, and you find it’s difficult to remember what will improve your creativity and when you should do your most creative work, hopefully this list will help you get it all straight. 1. Your brain does better creative work when yo
There is no one way to create viral content. So many different variables go into a viral post—timing, emotion, engagement, and so many others that you cannot control. There is no viral blueprint. The greatest chance we have to understand viral content is to study the posts and places that do it best, figure out what worked for them, and try it for ourselves. Thanks to some incredible work by the team at Ripenn, we have access to headline analysis from four of the top viral sites on the web—w
We’ve looked at a few different strategies to help remember the names of people you meet on the Buffer blog before, but there’s lots to say about memory. It turns out that science is continually finding new connections between simple things we can do every day and an improvement [htt
Psychological theories often feel a bit too complicated for me (I’m sure there’s a theory that explains why that is) but I’ve come across a few that are simple enough to understand and that I think of often, particularly when dealing with other people. I thought it might be fun to take a brief look at a few psychological theories that are especially relevant for business, marketing, leadership and overall communication skills. Keep in mind I’m no professional psychologist, so if you’re keen to
I get a particular thrill from finding little-known restaurants that serve amazing food. My greatest hits list includes elk tacos at a highway diner, cinnamon rolls at a downtown hole-in-the-wall, and – perhaps my greatest discovery of all – barbecue from a trailer in a parking lot. (Seriously, it’s good barbecue!) The discovery process for great content has a similar thrill. How great does it feel to share a bit of awesomeness that few others have found? Without a doubt, sharing great finds o
I wrote a post recently about ways that you can work smarter, not harder . As I worked through the list of techniques I’d collected, the post became so long that I had to split it in half. Here are even more suggestions to help you make your day more productive without putting in extra hours. 1. Limit your to-do list I’ve written about the history of the to-do list [https://buffer.com/resources/the-origin-of-the-to-do-li
What does your ideal day look like? Would you believe there’s a scientifically correct answer to the question ? Research into the human body—its hormone allotment , its rhythms , and its tendencies [https://buffer.com/resources/5
The other day I was listening to Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People and and I found it amazing how this book, which has now sold over 15 million copies, originally started: “I prepared a short talk. I called it ‘How to Win Friends and Influence People.’ I say ‘short.’ It was short in the beginning, but it soon expanded to a lecture that consumed one hour and thirty minutes.” After giving this talk for some time, Carnegie found that the attendees started discussing their e
“I’m delighted to admit that I’ve failed at more challenges than anyone I know.” — Scott Adams A friend told me recently about a colleague who is entirely open to feedback. When she’s told that she did something wrong, my friend said, she just starts over. She doesn’t take feedback personally, and she doesn’t feel upset about getting anything wrong. When I heard that story, I thought to myself, “I wish I took feedback that well.” I can’t imagine anything better than an attitude like that, esp
Although there are some people who advocate for dropping all your goals or focusing on systems instead of goals , I’ve never managed to fully give up on setting goals for myself. In fact, I just finished my monthly review today, where I looked at how well I did on the goals [https://buffer.gho
Of the many email statistics that blow my mind, I think this one wows me the most: Email reaches three times more people than Twitter and Facebook combined. That’s a lot of people! (3.6 billion or so.) Clearly email marketing deserves your time and attention. And like any aspect of marketing, there can be a learning curve to discover the ins and outs and best practices. Hopefully these answers to ten of the most common and important email questions can make the learning curve a little less st
Every day it seems like we feel hundreds of different emotions – each nuanced and specific to the physical and social situations we find ourselves in. According to science, it’s not that complicated by a long shot. A new study says we’re really only capable of four “basic” emotions: happy, sad, afraid/surprised, and angry/disgusted. But much like the “mother sauces” of cooking allow you to make pretty much any kind of food under the sun, these four “mother emotions” meld together in myriad way
I’ve noticed that the way I spend my lunch break affects how productive I am for the rest of the day: how quickly I get started once I get back to my desk, how effective I am in the first hour after lunch, and how I feel throughout the afternoon. Luckily, we’ve been writing about ways to improve your day for a while now: from tips on making your environment more conducive to creativity to pushing through writer’s block. Why shouldn’t the humble lunch break get the same treatment? I gathered th
Ready to feel kinda old? Facebook has been around for 10 years this month. (I KNOW.) And on the occasion of the social network’s big decade milestone, it seems appropriate to take a closer look at some of the changes that have been taking place at Facebook since our last roundup. But first, let’s look at how the social media giant has evolved over time with this infographic from DPFOC: Facebook has come a long way in a short decade. Now, let’s take a look at some of its most recent evolut
Constraints can seem like the last thing you’d want for a creative project, but they’re actually beneficial when it comes to doing good work. If you’ve ever faced the common writer’s hurdle of the blank page, you’ll know what it’s like to be paralyzed by innumerable opportunities. What restrictions do is take away some of the choices available to us, and with them, the paralysis of choice that stops us from getting started. We love trying things that seem counterintuitive at Buffer, but we espe
Social media is a crowded place. You need every competitive advantage possible to stand out. Luckily, giving your social media posts a little something extra doesn’t have to mean to a lot of extra work for you. In this post, we’ll go over some simple tricks and best practices of social media formatting to help you create unique, stand-out posts on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn and Pinterest, along with some tools [https://buffer.com/resources/the-big-list-of-100-tools-tips-and-tricks-to-work
“We live in a vague world. And it gets vaguer all the time. In this environment, the power of the specific, measurable and useful promise made and kept is difficult to overstate.” – Seth Godin It’s easy to be vague, broad, and to never commit to a particular direction. It’s frightening to be specific. One of the key things I’ve learned in the last two years of doing startups is that to make real prog
Having a job in social media is sort of weird. There are still lots of people who might think you’re just “on Facebook” all day while in reality you’ve got a big job: figuring out your social media strategy, perfecting the right times to post, understanding your analytics and building strong connections with your community. That’s why it’s nice to be able to take some time to connect with others who have the same challenges as you. Luckily, there are lots of great social media conferences wort
Today’s post was supposed to be about how to have an effective brainstorming session. Unfortunately, when I started researching brainstorming and what it’s really all about, I nearly put myself to sleep. I’ve never come across so much talk of meetings and rules and conference rooms in a topic that supposed to be creative. Then again, that’s part of the problem: brainstorming was actually designed to be a method for solving
Ready to do something really groundbreaking and revolutionary in social media marketing? I’ve got just the thing: customer service. We talk a lot at Buffer about customer happiness, and it’s because we truly believe in it. Here’s how our Leo Widrich puts it: “Customer support is the very rare opportunity to connect to your customers on an emotional level. You can’t do that in any other way.” And while there are a growing number of other awesome companies who feel the same way we do, there’s
“Routines are important, but only if you make them your own. Simply copying someone else’s routine probably won’t work.” — Jeff Goins Although I’ve researched daily routines and habits often, I still find myself constantly coming across great ideas from other bloggers, marketers and entrepreneurs about how they manage their time and productivity. Productivity and using time wisely is always on our minds at Buffer as we develop our social media management tools. In fact, “work smarter, not hard
One of the things I love about the culture at Buffer is the emphasis on working smarter, not harder. Our team is all about getting plenty of sleep, exercise and recreation time so that our time spent working is as productive as it can be. Working harder can be an easy habit to slip into, though. Sometimes it’s hard to switch off at the end of the day, or to take time out on the weekend and stop thinking about work. With a startup of my own to run, I find this even harder to manage lately. Whene
You don’t have to know everything about SEO to start reaping the benefits of it. There are some small but important search engine optimization changes you can make right away. Here are 5 simple things you can do today to improve your SEO. 1. Sign up with Webmaster Tools On-site optimization (making sure all the technical details of your site are how they should be for both search engines and searchers) can be complicated. Luckily, both Google a