Why Building An Audience Is So Hard (And Why I’m Still Trying)

It’s easy to feel like you can grow a loyal audience in no time using the latest growth hacks or Twitter and Facebook tricks. But the truth is, it’s not that simple.

Growing an audience is hard.

You have to have talent.

You have to put in a lot of work.

And there’s no 1–2–3 solution.

In this post, I’m happy to share some of our experiences from building an audience at Buffer alongside six key ingredients to successfully building an audience.

Let’s get started!

Why it’s difficult to build an audience (and why there’s no shortcut)

“Nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty… I have never in my life envied a human being who led an easy life. I have envied a great many people who led difficult lives and led them well.” ― Theodore Roosevelt

It is no secret that we live in an age of information overload. Yet many of us are in search of a larger audience. More readers on our blog. A bigger following across social media. A group of people who read, engage with and amplify everything we share.

The problem is, we live in an attention economy. Everyone is vying for consumer attention, and there’s only so much to go around.

Attention is limited

We all have 24 hours in a day. There’s nothing we can do to change that.

Each day on Facebook alone we are potentially exposed to 1,500 pieces of content. When you add in Tweets, Snapchats, Instagram posts and all the other content we’re exposed to daily, it’s easy to see why it can be so hard to break through as a content creator.

The below graphic from Moz shows how content fatigue could start happening very soon:

It takes a lot of swings

Each day we have a tiny window to grab people’s attention and make an impact with our content. And many of us are in search of that one, elusive thing that’ll get us rolling on the path to success. But that’s not how it works.

Think of yourself as a Major League Baseball player, for every home run, for every cheer from the crowd, there are thousands of practice swings and plenty of strikeouts. Content is no different. You need to step up to the plate and bring your best every day if you want to be a success.

There’s no shortcut to building an audience. It’s a long, winding road. And it takes a number of elements to succeed. Below I’d love to share some of the key ingredients to building at audience.

The 6 essential ingredients needed to build an audience successfully

1. Look for what’s next

The World is moving fast, and opportunities are arising everywhere. New platforms and new trends breed new opportunity. And for early adopters a unique chance to build an audience as Gary Vaynerchuk explains on Medium:

If you play close attention to the people who popped on Vine, or the people who popped in the early days of Snapchat, or Instagram, they all happened to be the Christopher Columbus of their platforms. They were early. So as those platforms took off, they developed disproportionate amounts of followers as new users joined and found them.

First mover advantage

A study from Harvard Business Review found that companies identified as believing strongly in the benefits of adopting new technologies receive a “first-mover advantage” — and are more likely to lead in both revenue growth and market position than their peers.

The same theory applies to new social platforms too. As an early adopter, you can gain first mover advantage and, as Gary Vaynerchuk said, you have the chance to become “the Christopher Columbus” of that platform.

By focusing on what’s next and experimenting with new platforms and technologies, you have an opportunity to jump ahead of the competition and build an audience before the platform is too crowded.

Hone your skills

Shaun McBride, better known as Shonduras online, is one of Snapchat’s first homegrown celebrities, and brands are spending upwards of $30,000 for advertising deals with him and other Snapchat stars.

Before Snapchat, Shonduras honed his skills as an artist. Snapchat merely provided a platform for him to share his skills with the world.

The biggest opportunities ahead probably aren’t on Facebook, Twitter or YouTube but on platforms we don’t even know about yet. That doesn’t mean you can’t start preparing for these opportunities, though:

• If you want to be an influential writer, practice writing: on your blog, on Medium, on Twitter, or anywhere you can scribble down a few words.
• If you love to create video, experiment with Vine, YouTube, Snapchat, and Beme.

Whatever your skill set, find new ways to be creative. Hone your talents. And then when the next big platform launches, jump on it and set the trends there.

2. Have a voice

Everything has been said before, but it’s never been said by you. Your point of view is what makes you interesting. — Jory MacKay

For periods in my writing life, I’ve relied on content that is ‘good enough’, content that gets a point across. That ticks a box. But doesn’t reflect me or my personal beliefs.

On reflection, this doesn’t feel the way to break through and build an audience. Great content should make you feel vulnerable and a little discomfort upon publishing.

As Jory MacKay points out over at Crew, when you approach a new subject, ask yourself ‘how can I cover this in a way that only I can?’  Your voice is what will make you stand out from the crowd.

Saying the same things as everyone else, in the same style will only add to the noise. And you’ll get lost in the endless sea of content published every day.

The below graphic from Sean McCabe illustrates how to find your unique voice perfectly:

3. Do things differently

At Buffer, we’re super lucky to be well-known for our content. But our rise wasn’t an overnight success — and certainly didn’t come easy.

It took some trial and error. And a few years back we found a recipe that started to pay off.

From day 1, we have invested in content marketing at Buffer. Leo kicked things off on the blog back in 2011 and since then we’ve been through quite a few evolutions and tried many different tactics to build our audience.

Here’s a quick at the development of our content over time:

1. Twitter tips: January 2011 – October 2011
2. Pivot to social media tips: November 2011 – June 2012 
3. Pivot to lifehacks, writing, customer happiness and business: June 2012 — March 2014
4. Pivot to social media marketing and content tips: March 2014 to now

And a fun gif showing how the blog design has changed:

If you check back through our first posts, they contain great content but they weren’t distinguishable from other social media blogs out there.

At this stage – when we weren’t getting hundreds of thousands or millions of views per month – we could’ve decided to focus elsewhere. Instead, we tried to do things differently and create our Buffer style of content.

We pivoted from Twitter tips to broader social media tips. And in June 2012 we pivoted again. We began focusing on in-depth, well-researched posts that broke down potentially complex subjects into clear, understandable and highly shareable content. Things started to take off after this pivot.

Here’s an early example of one of these posts:

After some success with this style of post, the biggest jump in traffic came when Belle Beth Cooper joined the Buffer team, and we doubled down on producing unique content.

If it wasn’t for our early experiments, we may never have discovered the potential of this type of content and may never have unlocked all of the traffic (and conversions!) we see today.

You need to keep evolving

Leo and Belle were so great at discovering the potential of in-depth content. Another shift for us occurred a year or so ago when we came to focus social media marketing and content tips – paying particular attention to the visuals and images within our articles.

More recently, Kevan shared that our social referral traffic has nearly halved over the past year. This post sparked a ton of discussion about our content both internally and externally.

The below Tweets from Rand Fishkin especially resonated with our team:

This debate gave us a chance to reflect and re-evaluate our content. It also inspired Leo to share our marketing manifesto. Since then, we’ve re-focused and started experimenting again. As Kevan explains: our blog is our greatest marketing asset. And we just keep changing it.

Only time will tell if our new experiments will pay off. However, one thing is for sure – the hard work from the past years will go to waste if we don’t continue to push ourselves and figure out how to continually keep evolving our content.

4. Hard work

I’ve learned from experience that if you work harder at it, and apply more energy and time to it, and more consistency, you get a better result. It comes from the work. — Louis C.K.

Success comes from the work that no-one sees.

If you want to build an audience you need to put in a lot of hard work.

Let’s take Seth Godin for example.

Before he was a best-selling author and marketing thought leader he was Seth Godin, just another blogger.

Godin’s blog has posts going back to 2002. But, as Ailian Gan points out on her blog, it’s around 2006 where Seth Godin hits his stride and starts to sound like the Seth of today. That’s four years of finding his voice and honing his skills.

Another example is Nils Wagner, the man behind Hoopmixtape. Hoopmixtape’s website and YouTube channel receive millions and millions of views each month.

What’s not clear is the work that goes on to ensure it stays that way. Sam Laird explains over at The Classical:

To stay on top, Wagner travels tens of thousands of miles yearly to gather footage of elite prospects, sometimes driving thirty hours straight and living out of his car for weeks at a stretch.

Building an audience is hard work. And you’ll need to put in the hours if you want to succeed.

5. Focus on quality

In our Buffer marketing manifesto Leo explains:

Sometimes we think that just putting out a consistent number of things will just create some outliers that’ll help us win. Heck, I even believed this for a long time and advised people to just focus on quantity. I don’t think that’s true anymore. Yes, we need to output things at high quantity, but we need to treat every single piece of output as the one that’ll be a breakout hit.

Going back to the baseball analogy from earlier on, every time a batsman faces a pitch, they’ll see it as a home run. Everything they have will go into the next swing. And to build an audience you need to feel that same way about every piece of content you share.

You need to feel that everything you put out is excellent. Every post, every video, every image has the chance to be a hit. Without this feeling, you’re not going to break through the noise.

Quality shouldn’t be confused with perfectionism. Perfect sits in your drafts for too long. Perfect causes delays. Quality is published consistently, without lingering.

On quality vs. perfection, James Clear explains an excerpt from Art & Fear on his blog:

The ceramics teacher announced that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality.

His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the “quantity” group: fifty pounds of pots rated an “A”, forty pounds a “B”, and so on. Those being graded on “quality”, however, needed to produce only one pot — albeit a perfect one — to get an “A”.

Well, grading time came and a curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity!

It seems that while the “quantity” group was busily churning out piles of work — and learning from their mistakes — the “quality” group had sat around theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay.

6. Be consistent

It takes patience to build an audience, and it takes courage to keep putting yourself out there time and again.

Consistency is key, and it doesn’t come easy as Sean McCabe explains:

I think people believe that those who show up consistently have some sort of magic power or inherent ability. “It must come easy for him,” they say. “For others like me, it’s hard.”

Here’s the reality: it’s not easy for anyone — even the people that make it look easy. In fact, if someone is making it look easy, they’re probably working all the harder.

When Unbounce launched, consistency played a big role in the growth of their audience as Co-founder, Oli Gardner, penned 300 posts for the Unbounce blog over a six month period.

Consistently creating content was also critical to our early growth here at Buffer. Within Buffer’s first nine months, Leo wrote around 150 guest posts, which were vital in helping us acquire our first 100,000 sign ups.

Leo explained the importance of consistency over at Search Engine Watch: “Of course the early ones barely drove any traffic and only very gradually did things improve, I think that’s very important to understand. It will take a while until you can find the right frequency of posting.”

Another great example of the power of consistency is Youtuber, Casey Neistat.

When Neistat started daily vlogging he had around 520,000 subscribers on his YouTube Channel. Now he has over 1,500,000 subscribers.

You can see the impact his consistent, daily posts had on his subscriber growth from March — July 2015 below:

One of the best ways to achieve consistency is to set a schedule for yourself and stick to it. Most of us only create content when we’re hit by a moment of inspiration. But if you’re looking to build an audience, you need to be putting yourself out there regularly. 

I’ve always struggled with this one myself. But now, knowing I have to create content on a regular basis, means I can’t skip writing. Instead of sitting down and wondering which days I’ll write, I now have a schedule in place.

Over to you

Building an audience is something I’m continuously working on both personally and at Buffer. The rewards make it feel worthwhile – seeing people share your content and enjoy your work is priceless.

In a way, this post serves as a public reminder to myself that I need to be dedicated and focused every day if I want to succeed and continue to build an audience.

To summarize, here are six action points to keep in mind when it comes to building an audience:

• Hone your skills and keep an eye on what’s next
• Find your voice and create content in a way that only you can
• Discover what makes you different
• Work hard
• Strive for quality and avoid seeking perfection
• Be consistent and put yourself out there every day

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this too. What are your feelings about growing an audience? What have you tried? What’s worked?

Drop a note below in the comments and I’ll be excited to join the conversation.

The post Why Building An Audience Is So Hard (And Why I’m Still Trying) appeared first on Social.

Velux VSE Electric Skylight Repair

Hello all, new member here looking for some advice repairing a 10 year old Velux electric skylight.

My multi-meter shows no power coming coming out, from the converter. I'm trying to get some suggestions for a substitute power converter to use as Velux wants $250 for a replacement, which frankly, is insane.

It's a simple 24 volt, AC/DC, 60 watt, 60 Hz, Class 2 power converter.

I saw a thread on this forum from a couple of years ago where people seemed to have actually solved this very problem. Unfortunately, they never identified the specific converter they purchased.

http://www.doityourself.com/forum/do...working-2.html

What I need to know is whether it's "switched" or "unswitched" type, constant current or constant voltage, and what amperage. Some folks who replaced them used as little as one amp, others used 2.5 amps... does it even matter?

I asked the Velux representative and he wasn't a lot of help. He said the amperage of the motor was "pretty low, like half an amp", but said he didn't know for sure. He thought it could be slightly higher on startup. He didn't think it made a difference what kind of power converter was used. Maybe he's right?

Moderators - I originally posted this over in the "Electrical" section and am reposting here as this seems to be the more appropriate forum.

Thanks in advance for the help!

Where to connect C wire to?

I just bought an ecobee3 thermostat. My current thermostat is only using 4 wires, but it has an extra unused one (the green one that's wrapped around the cable). My question is where do I connect the green wire to to make it my C wire since I don't have 5 terminals inside my HVAC.

Here are a few pictures including a diagram: Imgur: The most awesome images on the Internet

The unit is 15 years old and I tried to reach out to the company but they switch away from HVAC and can't help.

Thanks in advance!

What am I doing wrong? (Wiring outside light)

I have an outdoor motion-sensing light that is worn out from age, so I tried to replace it today. I bought a new light (SKU 248-593 from Home Depot) and wired it in accordance with it's instructions, yet the light won't come on. I used a voltage detector to confirm that the wires are HOT and passing voltage, and the light bulb is good.

Attaching an image to this post failed, so you can see the image of my wiring job here: View image: 20151128 182239

I connected white-white, black-black, and ground-ground. I'm color blind, so maybe the black-back is actually black-red. If so, how do I properly wire this light, as it only has a black and white wire?

NOTE - there is an additional wire in the image, its from the old motion sensor which was external. The new sensor is built into the light. This additional wire has no voltage flowing through it.

Installing tiles on unlevel floor

Here is my story. A heated tile floor was installed in our kitchen using ditra less than 2 years ago. Within 6 mos. the grout started crumbling/coming out. The contractor came in, said the group was probably mixed wrong, tried to fix it by scraping the grout out and in the process damaged the tile. They offered to re-lay the whole floor. They removed the tile, wires, ditra and undercoat (pretty well down to the subfloor). They then installed new ditra, new heated floor wires, and put a scratch coat over top. The tile guy (not from the contractors crew, but from the tile store) came in today, used his handy dandy laser level, and refused to lay the tile because the floor was unlevel in several places (possibly because part of the room is an addition?). There is a sight line from one end of the room to the other so the tile must be perfectly straight. He said along that line the floor level goes up, down and then up again over the span of 10 feet. He actually tried laying one row of tiles, but only got half way along and would go no further. He didn't want to take responsibility for the job because he knew he couldnt do it right. Said the floor should have been leveled properly in the first place. So he removed the tile he had layed and left. I intend to tell the contractor and the tile store to work it out among themselves, but I worried if it looks bad when it is done I will have no recourse. Its not like I am paying the contractor; the money for this job is coming out of his own pocket, which is probably why he is rushing to get it done. So, my questions are:
1) Should he have re-leveled the floor before installing the ditra?
2) Is there any way, other than tearing it all out again, to resolve this issue? Note: the ditra and heated floor is already down
3) If he gets another tiler to do it and it doesn't look right, should I expect him to fix it again ( I know, seems like a no-brainer, but I will admit I am picky)
3) What is my recourse if he refuses?

Toronto has plenty of capacity for refugee influx, city staff say

Thousands of Syrians are expected to settle in the GTA between now and March.

How to fix this table

Hi all, hoping I can find some help with a problem I'm having here. I inherited this beautiful table from my grandparents but the table isn't level and is getting worse. The problem seems to come from the fact that one of the legs is splitting. I know nothing about woodwork but the little bit of advice I have gotten from people I know is to use wood glue and a clamp. That's the most I've gotten and I really don't know whether to take it as gospel or where to run with it if that's what I need. Was wondering if someone could tell me what I should buy specifically and give me a step by step on what to do here. I would really like to keep this table, not just because it's gorgeous but for the memories as well.

I've included some pictures here of the table, the leg, and a close up of the split if that helps. Thanks in advance.

Attached Images

Mayor John Tory ‘surprised’ by developer opposition to Scarborough subway

Tory says the development charges for the Scarborough subway are a "modest adjustment" to existing fees.

Cathedral ceiling ventilation

Hi guys.
I am from BC Canada
This is my first owner project. I am building a small garage house at my backyard. There are no attics in this house. All cathedral ceiling.
My framer just finished the roof today. And i have noticed there are NO venting space in all of the ridges.

The roof is constructed by 2x4 (12 inch on center) laying perpendicular on to the 2x10 rafters (16" O.C). So there are an inch and half air space between the roof sheeting and rafters.

My framer said all the garage houses are built like this....

Because there are skylights and dormers, most part of the roof can not be ventilated from one side of the rake soffit to the other side of the rake soffit.

From what i see, i can only ventilate the roof from air going under the eave soffit and out to the rake soffit, or or vice versa. I am planning to add those plastic rafter vents( baffles) between each rafter from the eave soffit all the way up to the ridge to create an extra one inch air space. so that the air can also move vertically up under the 2x4.

so my question here is....will my cathedral ceiling be well ventilated?
I have attached some pictures here for reference.



View image: IMG 20151124 142353
The front

View image: IMG IMG_20151124_141220
The Back

View image: IMG_20151124_141045
Eave soffit and skylight

View image: IMG_20151124_141045
Last one the closed vent ridge.

Any advice would be great. Thank you guys.

Attached Images

Toronto taking wait-and-see approach to medical pot

The effect of rules allowing medical pot users to puff in public unless a proprietor bans it is "not on our radar”

Trade Show Display – Efficiency Engineering

Efficiency Engineering wanted a large curved back drop display with a standing bar advertisement. They had a important trade show to attend and wanted to stand out from the crowd with their business solutions. Keeping within the current marketing branding we created a “Stand Out Solution” and the client was very pleased. Any trade show displays you request, we at Grand River Sign Design can handle and turn around in a timely matter.

pilot light on Heil furance

I hope someone can answer this. I have a Heil gas pack with electronic ignition, Question, Does the pilot light goes out after the main burner goes off?

Once-dead Fort York bridge ready to rise

The $19.7 million bridge for cyclists and pedestrians will connect Stanley Park to the Fort York grounds.

Wet Floor in 2011 Highlander - Spiders the Cause?

Hi All,

About 3 years ago, our 2011 Toyota Highlander (6-cylinder, not a hybrid) started having a very wet floor (as in very damp to the touch, and the bottom of the mats were always wet) and smelling mildew-y. Turns out that the tube running from some part of the air conditioner that exhausts out water got a spider-web in it; so whenever we used the air conditioner, water couldn’t drain out and started overflowing from something and into the car. We ended up having to tear out and replace all the carpets, having all sorts of mold/mildew remediation, etc. Took something like 2-3 weeks; not fun. The actual “fix” for the problem (not the fix for all the damage) was apparently just taking canned air and spraying out the tube to get the web out. We were told that spiders building webs like this is a known issue but that there is no way to stop it.

Fast forward to yesterday – we again have a wet floor (although maybe not quite as wet but the mats are wet on the bottom), the mildew smell, etc. We obviously haven’t been using the air conditioning recently (we’re in NJ), but I’m assuming that using the defroster could have the same effect. So, if there is a spider web there, it looks like I may have to have that removed, and then tear out all the carpets and go through all the mold/mildew remediation again.

Am I looking at this correctly? Could it be something else? My wife drives the car, and she doesn’t remember driving through any huge puddles recently. Any thoughts, help or insight would be greatly appreciated. I am planning on taking it to STS (where we generally go for all non-warranty work) to take a look on Saturday, but I'd rather avoid the time and expense if not needed.

Also, I seem to remember that last time, the mechanic at the dealership we went to said that from inside the car, near where the driver’s or front passenger’s knees are (I forget which), there is a panel that can be removed and the exhaust tube accessed. Anyone know anything about this?

Thanks for any help.

Toronto council to look at lifting Grenadier Pond skating ban

The $50,000 program would see an “ice engineer’ test Grenadier Pond daily and post coloured flags to signal the safety.

3rd Party Facebook Publishing Tools Aren’t Penalized: Debunking An Age Old Social Media Myth

If you search for information on how Facebook’s Newsfeed algorithm treats posts from 3rd party publishing apps, you’ll find plenty of content suggesting that reach and engagement will be lower through 3rd party posting.

As a subject very close to our hearts here at Buffer, we wanted to dive in and share our own thoughts and experiences in this area.

The TL;DR version, is that posts from 3rd tools are not penalized and will perform just as well as posts shared natively to Facebook.

If you’d like to dig a little deeper, I’d love to share our research and reasoning with you here.

Let’s go!

3 key reasons why Facebook 3rd party tools aren’t penalized

1. Our own (anecdotal) 3rd party posting test

As the idea for this post arose, we decided to run a quick experiment of our own to see whether posting from a 3rd party app (Buffer) or posting natively would have any affect of the reach and engagement our posts received on Facebook.

(Granted, a two-week study of one page doesn’t prove anything concretely and simply provides some anecdotal evidence).

Posting natively to Facebook

From November 15th-21st we scheduled every post natively through Facebook’s own scheduling tool.

The average post in this week reached 1,357 people (3.2% of our audience). And an average of 66 engagements (Post clicks, Likes, Comments & Shares).

Here’s the data from Facebook Insights:

Posting using Buffer

The average post in this week reached 1,595 people (3.8% of our audience). And an average of 70 engagements (Post clicks, Likes, Comments & Shares).

Here’s the data from Facebook Insights*:

*During this week we launched Buffer’s Social Media Calendar — due to the high engagement we see with a new launch (and paid boost) we excluded this post for the dataset used.

What this tells us

From this experiment it seems that posting using a 3rd party or natively won’t affect your reach or engagement on Facebook.

The week we posted with Buffer was a little higher on average but there could be a multitude of reasons at play here.

2. Facebook’s official statement (3rd party posts are not penalized)

A lot of the stigma around this subject probably comes form the fact that 3rd party posts used to be penalized on Facebook.

However, this is no longer the case. Back in 2011, Facebook’s Matt Trainer explained:

“…we recently made a fix that added more signals to detect good quality posting behavior. This should improve the situation with the distribution of posts coming from third-party apps in the News Feed.”

Facebook have also removed attribution from 3rd party posts, so a Facebook user now cannot tell whether a post has been shared natively or via a 3rd party.

At the time of announcing this Facebook again stated that it does not penalize Pages that make posts from 3rd party publishing tools, but said it was unclear whether mention of where a post is coming from had an effect on how users responded to it.

With the post attribution removed a few years back, it now feels clear that Facebook indeed do not penalize brands who post through 3rd party tools.

3. Most of the data on this subject is misread (and what to focus on instead)

Most studies we’ve read on this subject take a set of brands and measure performance of posts made by Pages that used a specific 3rd party tool, to the performance of posts made by those same Pages that did not use a 3rd party tool.

That’s a very rational approach, but some of the things these studies don’t account for is the types of brands using each 3rd party app:

For example, comparing data from a brand that uses an enterprise level piece of software like Adobe Social or Spredfast vs a brand who use PostPlanner or Hootsuite feels a little skewed to us.

Let me explain a little here…

What should we focus on with these studies?

Some 3rd party posting tools are deemed to get more reach than others, but really it could be any number of factors that mean brands using Buffer or Hootsuite or Adobe social, get more reach than other tools.

For example, many of the enterprise level brands that use products like Adobe Social will have large, highly engaged audiences — as well as strategic and creative teams behind their social content.

This means they’re likely to receive higher engagement than your average Facebook Page, whether they post natively, through Adobe Social, PostPlanner, Hootsuite or any other 3rd party tool.

In order for these studies to get more accurate findings from their results, we feel it’d be better to measure the same brands and way of posting across various tools (e.g. one brand using Buffer, Adobe Social, Hootsuite, etc).

Though our gut feeling is that this approach wouldn’t show any significant variations in reach or engagement no matter which tool is used to post.

Facebook knows what we like

We have that gut feeling because Facebook’s timeline prioritizes content from the pages and people we regularly engage with.

For example, I ‘Like’ The Next Web’s Page on Facebook. And because I regularly engage with their content, Facebook deems that I have an affinity with that page and ensures I see more content from them.

So whether a post is sent from a 3rd party or natively it’s still likely to show up in the timelines of more Facebook users as more people regularly engage with their brand and like to see their content (this helps to explain why we saw very little difference in our brief native posts vs Buffered posts experiment).

By penalizing 3rd party posts, Facebook would essentially make their timeline less engaging for their users.

Bonus: pay close attention to the content

Any drops in engagement or reach seen via 3rd party posting, could also be attributed to the type of content shared.

As Buzzsumo, who studied over 500 million Facebook posts, cautioned, is the same care put into the posts shared natively versus those shared through third party tools? It could be that 3rd party posting may simply cause users to create less engaging, and timely posts. Thus resulting in less engagement.

If you’re using a 3rd party tool – or even Facebook’s own scheduling feature – try to be mindful of your audience and ensure the content doesn’t come across as ‘automated’.

If you’re sharing a timely post about something real-time, it’s not a good bet to schedule it 12 hours later when the story is old.

Over to you

Over 2 million people use Buffer (including 2,500+ large businesses and agencies) and no customer has shown us data alluding to less reach or engagement on Facebook due to 3rd party posting.

Have you ever noticed a difference in reach or engagement for your posts shared via Buffer (or any other 3rd party tool) vs posting natively?

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this and the data used in studies below. Excited to jump in and join you in the comments.

The post 3rd Party Facebook Publishing Tools Aren’t Penalized: Debunking An Age Old Social Media Myth appeared first on Social.

Help! My Sliding Deck Door is leaking rainwater in my house

Ok....so I heard raindrops at my sliding door in my townhome I just bought a month ago. It is leaking from the top of the door but the inside....not even where the door lies on the track?? Im freaking out and cant figure out where its coming from....anyone had an issue like this?

Robertshaw 780-715 opens main valve first time, but additional times only sparks

I think the title may be a bit misleading but wasn't sure how to shorten it up. Here's what's happening:

I have a robertshaw 780-715U ignition control unit on a gas furnace. When heat is called for the first time (usually in the morning), the igniter sparks, the pilot lights, 5 seconds later, the main valve opens and all is good. The house warms up and the call for heat turns off. The problem then starts with the second cycle. The second call for heat has the ignitor spark and the pilot light but no main valve opening. After the pilot lights, the spark stops, but then resumes about 5 seconds later. This unit is configured with a combined sensor/ignitor.

I've tried replacing the sensor ignitor but the symptom is the same (purchased robertshaw 1751-729). I also tried using A white rodgers 50d50-843 but that doesn't spark at all though the pilot valve opens on that unit.

In trying to diagnose the 780-715U, I check voltage between the main valve lead and the "white MV/PV" lead and I do not get any DC voltage when I would expect the main valve to be open. I have to say that I'm not 100% sure about that voltage reading because the ignitor is sparking and I'm a little nervous about getting close to that ignitor lead.

While I'm okay with buying another 780-715U, I had assumed the white-rodgers would be okay.

Do you all have any suggestions for further troubleshooting?

John Tory’s smooth sailing at Toronto city council is about to get rougher

Star analysis of key votes shows the mayor has been getting his way so far, but the freedom of allies to vote against him could spell trouble ahead.

Help with gas line

I am trying to replace my gas fireplace logs. The new set cam with a new burner pipe. I am havin difficulty disconnecting to existing pipe. Any suggestions?

How to Develop and Perfect Your Social Media Sharing Schedule (It Could Double Your Traffic!)

Nowadays, in order to grow an audience on social media, it’s not as simple as just posting when you feel like it.

Audiences have become more sophisticated over time and as a result it is important to have some sort of social media strategy. In order to start implementing that strategy, a schedule is a must for a lot of businesses.

A sharing schedule can help you double your traffic and provide your audience with consistent and valuable information that will make them more likely to follow and engage with you.

It can be a little daunting getting started, though. As you try to figure out

• Where to share?
• What to share?
• When to share?

In this post I’ll help you answer these essential questions and share some ways that you can develop and perfect your sharing schedule (with a sneak peek at how we do things here at Buffer too).

Let’s dig in!

Where to Share?

So you want to share, but where should you share? There are so many different platforms all with their own advantages, however it’s almost impossible to share on each network well unless you have a large team helping. If that isn’t the case, focusing on specific platforms might be the best solution here.

When thinking about which platforms you should prioritize in your schedule, a good question to ask yourself is:

Where is your audience?

Do they spend most of their time on Twitter? Facebook? Knowing this will allow you to focus your energy on the place where you have the potential to reap the most benefits.

Pew Research Center put together a list of the demographics of all the key social networking platforms. This might help you get a little more insight into each platform.

Once you have narrowed down the platform(s) you would like to focus on, you can now come up with you sharing plan.

Different plans for different platforms

I would definitely recommend coming up with different plans for each platform you select. Facebook is very different than Twitter for instance, so it makes sense to have a different approach when sharing to your audience on Facebook versus your audience on Twitter.

CoSchedule has a really neat graphic sharing some of the different topics to share for each platform. They also go into depth for each platform over at their articles if you would like more information.

What To Share?

Now that you have figured out where you want to share your awesome content. It’s time to figure out what to share.

Sharing More Than One Type of Content

A good way to share is to have a mix of content to provide your audience. I would recommend not solely focusing on your own content, but giving them variety to look forward to. Providing a service or entertainment to your audience is more likely to lead them to follow you and engage with all of your content, rather than bombarding them with only promotional updates.

Here is an example of the type of content you can share.

According to CoSchedule, a report from The New York Times Customer Insight Group found five major reasons why people share content with their networks:

1. 49% share for entertainment or to provide valuable content to others.
2. 68% share to define themselves.
3. 78% share to stay connected with those they know.
4. 69% share to feel involved in the world.
5. 84% share to support a cause.

So give them something they can share!

Is Your Content Evergreen or Time Sensitive?

When it comes to your content, it can be good to think about whether what you are sharing is evergreen (can be shared multiple times at any point in time) or time sensitive.

A schedule for time sensitive material will most likely be different than one for evergreen content. For instance, time sensitive material will only be able to be shared within a specific timeframe before it is retired, while evergreen content could potentially be shared again a year from now.

If you have both types of content, coming up with separate sharing schedule for each type might be something to consider.

How Do You Want to Share?

You have your content ready to be shared, but how do you want to share it? How do you want to relay it to your audience? Do you have a specific tone you would like to use?

Here are a few things you can think about.

Voice

Creating a consistent voice is a really important component of your social media strategy. We have written an extensive guide on how you can find yours here.

Type

Links, images, videos, quotes, GIFs. There are so many different ways you can share your content. Finding what works best for you whether it’s only images or a mix of everything will be a great asset for creating your schedule.

Update

While I do recommend sharing the same content multiple times, I do not recommend you share the same update twice. Find different ways to share the content. Pick an image to share for the first time, then find a quote the second time and maybe a GIF the third, so that your audience doesn’t feel like they are always seeing the same thing in your feed.

As for the update itself, we have a handy guide and infographic to help you with sharing the optimal length every time.

Share this image on your site!

<p><strong>Please include attribution to http://blog.bufferapp.com with this graphic.</strong></p><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> <p><a href=’https://blog.bufferapp.com/optimal-length-social-media’><img src=’http://blog.bufferapp.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/social-media-length-infographic.jpg’ alt=’The Optimal Length of Everything Oline’ width=’1000′ border=’0′ /></a></p><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> <p>

When To Share?

You have now figured out where and what to share. The next step is figuring out when to share and importany when to re-share! Kissmetrics found that re-sharing content could double your traffic:

Frequency

Let’s first think about frequency. How often do you want to share?

• On publish
• Later that same day
• Next day, Daily
• A Week later
• A month later?
• Even later than that?

It really depends on your needs and your audience’s response to that frequency. Some of the best practices for each platform are highlighted in the infographic from SumAll below.  This is only a guideline, I would highly encourage you to test things for yourself as well.

Share this image on your site!

<p><strong>Please include attribution to http://blog.bufferapp.com with this graphic.</strong></p><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> <p><a href=’https://blog.bufferapp.com/how-often-post-social-media’><img src=’https://bufferblog-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/infographic-how-often-to-post-twitter-facebook-social-media.jpg’ alt=’How Often to Post to Social Media’ width=’1000′ border=’0′ /></a></p><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> <p>
Here is our sharing schedule at Buffer. You can see that we tend to share more often on Twitter and less on other platforms, leaving more time between each share.

When starting out, I would recommend looking at the content you have already shared and taking a look at what you feel might be the best times to share your content. If you haven’t shared anything yet, this is the perfect time to start experimenting and learning about your audience.

A key part to figuring out your frequency will be finding the point at which sharing more would yield diminishing returns. CoSchedule has a fantastic graphic illustrating diminishing returns.

And that’s when testing comes into play, which I discuss further below.

Create a calendar

In order to keep you on track, creating a calendar might be a huge help. It can also help you outline one time events. For example if you plan special coverage around the Holidays, a calendar could help you plan ahead and make sure you won’t forget to share.

Hootsuite has a great template available for a social media content calendar.

Here at Buffer, we have our own Social Media Calendar which you might find helpful in planning your sharing. The calendar is available for those on Awesome and Business plans (if you’re not yet part of our paid plans, I’m hoping you this might convince you to give it a try!) and allows you to take a look at your week of sharing at a glance.

It could be helpful in planning and putting into action your sharing plan, by letting you schedule updates in the future, shifting things around if needed by dragging and dropping and giving you a visual of what you are sharing when.

Here is an example of our current social media calendar on Buffer:

Testing

Now that you have a base to work with, I would also recommend implementing some testing into your sharing in order to come up with your perfect schedule.

Some of the things you can test include:

• Different times
• Different days
• Different topics
• Different types of updates (pictures versus no pictures, videos, quotes etc.)

I would recommend being quite intentional with the way you test things. Make sure you are able to measure the correct variable and that what you are seeing is due to the variable you are trying to measure.

For instance, if you would like to figure out the best time to share your blog posts, trying different days and times is a great way to start. However, it is important to continue the experiment for some time before drawing conclusions. An update performing really well on a Tuesday at 9am, might be due to it being an optimal time or it could be the result of the blog post itself being more popular amongst your audience. That is why I would recommend, testing that specific time multiples times in order to confirm that posts shared then do in fact always outperform posts shared at other times.

Analyze

Once you’ve spent some time testing, you can focus on analyzing your data. A few questions you can ask yourself when looking at the results include:

• When is your audience online?
• When do you get the most reach/engagement?
• What types of updates tend to get the most engagement?

Take a look at the performances for all your posts in the previous 30 (or 60) days and figure out what seemed to resonate with your audience.

Buffer provides great analytics for you to use if you are using the application to share your updates.

Adjust

You’ve tested, analyzed and now you can adjust. Taking into account everything you have learned, you might want to adjust your sharing schedule by implementing some of the discoveries from your data analysis.

For example, if you noticed an increase in engagement for blog posts updates on Tuesdays at 9am (after you have confirmed it through multiple testing), you can start sharing your blog posts at that time from now on.

I would also encourage you to continue to test, analyze and adjust, in order to make sure your schedule remains adapted to the changes in your audience’s wants and needs.

Bonus: How We Share at Buffer

At Buffer we’re constantly changing and testing new approaches when it comes to social media, especially after losing almost half our social referral traffic. I wanted to share our sharing schedule for both Twitter and Facebook and some of the things we’ve been trying lately.

How We Share on Twitter

Our current Twitter schedule involves sharing 11 times a day during weekdays and 8 times a day during weekends. Here are the current times we share (our timezone is set to Denver, CO).

I would say that 99% of our posts include some sort of media. We tend to use mostly images, since they tend to be they help boost our engagement, we have also enjoyed sharing GIFs and videos once in a while.

Here are some of our most engaging posts in the past 30 days taken from Buffer’s Analytics. A few standout findings:

• You will noticed that these all contain an image (we tend to create our images using Pablo)
• 3 out of 7 are about Twitter
• Two of the updates link to the same article, highlighting the importance of re-sharing your content
• One is a competition we ran to celebrate reaching 400k followers. (We’d love to experiment a little more with competitions)

In general, we tend to reshare posts that seemed to resonate. We sometimes change the update and sometimes reshare as is.

How We Share on Facebook

Our current Facebook schedule has us sharing 3 times a day on weekdays and once on weekends. Here are the current times we share (our timezone is set to Nashville, TN).

On Facebook, we focus on sharing posts from Buffer’s Social and Open blogs and use the status copy to provide context or a story around the post being shared.

We have also recently started sharing quotes that inspire us on a regular basis (those quotes are also being shared on Twitter and seem to be appreciated there as well).

Here are some of our most engaging posts in the past 30 days taken from Buffer’s Analytics. Some of the things that seem to resonate here are announcements, images, insider story about Buffer and life hacking type articles.

One of the things we’re also thinking of experimenting with is the timing of our shares. One of the tools that we will be using to find new optimal times to share is the Buffer Optimal Timing tool, which finds the best time for you to share on a specific social network and updates your Buffer schedule accordingly.

Over to You!

What are some of the steps you’ve taken to develop and perfect your social sharing schedule? Have I missed any steps? Do you have additional tips? I would love to hear them all in the comments section.

The post How to Develop and Perfect Your Social Media Sharing Schedule (It Could Double Your Traffic!) appeared first on Social.