How Buffer Is Helping Entrepreneurs Get Social Media Savvy

If you haven’t heard, social media is pretty important in this day and age.A successful social presence can allow a startup to rival the caliber of its competitors or even rise to the ranks of much larger corporations.And yet, for many, social media remains an enigma.All too often, entrepreneurs fail to utilize the full potential of their various social channels due to a lack of understanding or available info.Buffer, however is aiming to change this.A tool that allows users to, “schedule, publish and analyze all posts in one place,” Buffer is making social seamless.The company’s Director of Marketing, Kevan Lee, sat down with TechDay to reinforce the value of being savvy with your social and how a solid presence can accelerate your business.

As an enigma to many, how does Buffer assist in demystifying social media both in terms of maximizing value and understanding analytics?

Our aim is to help people have a greater voice on social media, and in order to do this, we feel that people must find it easy to share consistently and to recognize what's working. Because of this, the Buffer product places a lot of emphasis on publishing and analytics.With publishing, we hope to make social media as simple and easy as possible so that there's littler barrier to building a solid, long-term social strategy. For instance, scheduling content ahead of time helps you batch your social media work to make sure that it gets done consistently.And for analytics, one of the hardest things is information overload, which is why we've simplified the analytic overviews we provide in Buffer so that you can see at-a-glance which content is working best and easily do more of it.

With the growing prominence of similar platforms, how does Buffer differentiate itself and remain the primary choice?

We're grateful to have a couple significant differentiating factors. First, we have a clean and intuitive interface with our product. Working with Buffer feels easy and enjoyable because of the style decisions we've made and the features we offer (we're not an all-in-one solution, but rather we aspire to provide the essential social media tools at an extremely high quality).The other differentiating factor is the authentic interactions you get with our team. We pride ourselves on our customer support; every question you ask will get answered fast, with expertise and friendliness, by our worldwide support team. In addition, we place a great emphasis on customer education and resources because we want to see you succeed on social media. These resources are available to any Buffer user through our blog, emails, video, and more.

With a wide pool of potential users (bigger businesses, startups, nonprofits etc) what value propositions are emphasized to appeal to each market?

We tend to focus on the jobs that someone hires Buffer to do, rather than focusing on the specifics of different markets. So we know that people tend to hire Buffer to 1) help their team work together smoother with social media marketing, 2) maintain a consistent presence on social media, or 3) analyze what's working so they can improve their social media results.

For startups without a dedicated social media team, what value does Buffer specifically offer to beginners and those unfamiliar with the nuances of various platforms?

Often times, we've found that early-stage startups or small marketing teams must have employees who wear lots of hats -- social media being one of the hats. If this is the case, then Buffer can help by making speedy work of the social media marketing aspect of one's role. You can plan and schedule a full week's worth of social media content in just a couple hours, freeing you to spend the extra time on other marketing activities. Also, with Buffer's ease-of-use and educational resources, the barrier for entry is quite low and on-boarding quite smooth.

What would you say to entrepreneurs who aren't currently using a platform like Buffer?

One of the first places that a potential partner, customer, or investor will go to learn more about you is on social media. There is a huge opportunity for you if you build your social media presence. And there's no excuse not to -- Buffer and tools like it make social media planning quick and easy.

What new things can we expect to see from Buffer in the near future?

We're excited to do more with analytics, both improving the overview analytics in the product and exploring new ways to bring analytic insights to customers. We also have seen positive traction from our social customer service tool, Respond, and we're eager to double down there and explore more ways to help people engage with their customers online.