Your social strategy can buff up with Buffer
October 24, 2019
Your social strategy can buff up with Buffer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Buffer
I currently use our Buffer account to schedule news, event info, and fundraisers across our social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn.) It's as easy to push in-the-moment happenings as it is to schedule posts in advance, and it works well on my computer and my Android device, so it really meets all of my posting needs regardless of where I am or what I'm sharing.
- The Chrome Extension-- I LOVE being able to navigate to, say, a blog post I want to share later today or an event page I want to share next week, then click the little Buffer button on my browser window and write/schedule unique posts for each of our social media channels. It's so convenient.
- Scheduling (and rescheduling)-- The interface from the Buffer website itself is really great for scheduling posts to go out to different channels at different times (custom or pre-selected), and also to reorganize the order and timing of your posts on each channel, as needed.
- Re-Buffer-- You can see your top performing posts and easily "re-buffer" them to use in the future. So helpful!
- Analytics-- The analytics on the Pro plan are limited at best. You can simply review your posts from the past 30 days, but you can't access any analysis (or even simple tallying of Likes, Shares, etc.) without upgrading to the Premium or Business plans, which are otherwise more than we need at the moment.
- Publish+Reply+Analyze-- It's a bit tedious to have these basic social media functions/tools separated out as three distinct products, as well as overkill for a small nonprofit without a dedicated social media team. I imagine each tool is good at its job if you need 'em.
- Linking to Accounts-- Buffer seems to lose touch with Facebook and LinkedIn somewhat frequently. It's vaguely annoying but very simple to fix, so I just roll with it.
1 - I manage marketing and communications for all admin and program areas in our organization. I use our social media channels primarily to share program updates, special events, grant awards, and employment and volunteer opportunities with our existing supporters and their friends and followers. Buffer makes this pretty simple and quick to do.
- Our supporters are very responsive to posts about things happening "right this second" and Buffer makes those posts quick and easy to share, even from my phone.
- The scheduling functionality lets me focus more on my event and less on remembering to post about it.
- Buffer makes it easy to recycle high performing content, which helps with engagement and lets me spend my time on other things.
I found Hootsuite to be overly complicated and not very pleasant to use. It just didn't feel nearly as intuitive as Buffer and, at the time, had some limitations I found to be deal breakers. Buffer's clean aesthetic is a big selling point for me, as is its thoughtfully constructed user experience.