Unlike robust social media management tools like HootSuite and TweetDeck (both excellent tools), Buffer does one thing and it does it exceptionally well. Buffer is a status update scheduling tool, but unlike a more full-fledged social media management tool, Buffer doesn’t ask you when to post your updates. Buffer initially selects four times throught the day when your posts will go out (but you can add, subtract or edit any of those times). Each time you add a new post to Buffer, it simply throws it into the buffer queue behind your other scheduled posts. In the screenshot below, you can see that there are several posts scheduled to go out over the next 24 hours. This is how Buffer works.

Now, I can spend 20 or 30 minutes over lunch or in the evening reading news updates from my Google Reader account or (some of my new favorites) Flipboard (iOS app link), Zite (iOS app link) or even the Bloomburg BusinessWeek (iPad app link) apps on my iPad. Then, when I read interesting articles, I can add them to my Buffer knowing they’ll post later and not inundate my followers as I read each article.

Buffer also makes it VERY easy to add content, whether you’re sharing links of articles you’re reading or whether you just want to schedule a post without a link. Buffer has created more than a dozen different ways to add content to your account. In addition to being able to update from the website, you can also update with an Android app, iPhone app, Firefox and Chrome extensions and (one of my favorites) a way to add to your Buffer via email, it’s easy to keep your Buffer full wherever you are. Below is a screenshot that shows how to add an update to Buffer via email. You’ll receive your own exclusive @to.bufferapp.com email address and everything you send to that address will automatically get added to your Buffer. Just add the email address to your contacts and you can add to your Buffer from anywhere.

Buffer is a free service, but there is also a couple paid versions available. For free, you can have up to 10 updates in your queue, and you can have one account each of LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook. For $10/month you get up to 50 updates at a time, six social networks and up to two team members per account. There’s also a $99/month plan that gives you lots more.

I’ve been using Buffer for about six months now and it has become an indispensable part of my day and my social media routine. If you’re interested in checking out Buffer, click here (referral). If you sign up through my referral link, we’ll both get one extra space added to our Buffer queue.

**Update Thanks to Troy Thompson of Travel 2.0, you can use Tweriod (a free service) to find out the best times to tweet. Simply connect Tweriod with your Twitter account and it will let you know the historically best times to post content to get the most interaction from your followers. Tweriod is included as part of the paid Buffer subscription, but you can look up the times on your own for free as well. **

Related posts:

1. Manage Your Social Media Efforts with Hootsuite
2. Social Media Case Study: OK Go
3. Four On Friday: Social Media Recap

Report No. 8: The Social Breakup

The eighth report in the Subscribers, Fans and Followers series focuses on the “social breakup” – how and why consumers “break up” with brands and stop following them via Facebook, Twitter and email. You might be surprised at how much similarity there is across all channels. Here are some of the highlights:

• Email
  • 67% of subscribers hit the unsubscribe button to end the email relationship rather than just deleting (17%), reporting as spam (8%), ignoring (6%) or setting up a filter to auto-archive the message(2%)
  • Top 3 reasons people unsubscribed from emails:
    • Too many emails from the company
    • Repetitive or boring content over time
    • Email overload – too many emails in general, cleaning out the clutter
• Facebook
  • When fans no longer want information from a brand they previously “liked”, 43% of them go to the brand’s page and click “unlike, 38% click the “X” in their newsfeed to remove them from the wall and 19% just ignore the posts.
  • Top 3 reasons people “unliked” a brand on Facebook:
    • Too many posts – too much frequency can overwhelm users walls
    • Repetitive or boring content over time
    • They only “liked” the brand because of a promotion, discount or deal offered to fans, and “unliked” once they got what they wanted.

• Twitter
  • Nearly half of consumers who created a Twitter account no longer use it with 52% saying they found Twitter to be pointless, 38% saying it became boring and 23% thinking that Twitter was too chaotic.
  • Top 3 reasons people stopped following a brand on Twitter:
    • Repetitive or boring content over time
    • Tweet stream became overloaded with marketing posts, wanted to clean up
    • Too many posts – too much frequency can overwhelm users tweet streams

Notice the striking similarity between why people unsubscribe, unlike and unfollow brands? While there are different strategies to employ for brand to get the most out of email, Facebook and Twitter, online consumers – across the board – seem to all be saying the same thing when it comes to ending their relationship with a brand’s digital initiatives: don’t talk too much and keep the content interesting.

Report No. 9: Mobile Dependence Day

The ninth report in the Subscribers, Fans and Followers series really focuses on our increasing dependence on our smartphones and other mobile devices. Even within the past year, the share of US consumers with smartphones (as opposed to feature phones) has grown dramatically. Here are some of the high points about what it means for interactive marketers:

• 89% of US consumers 15+ own a cell phone. 41% of those have smartphones
  • Android: 33%
  • iPhone: 25%
  • Blackberry: 19%
  • Other: 23%
• Smartphone’s Big 5 (the five most frequently used functions on today’s smartphones):
  • Phone Calls
  • Texting
  • Email
  • Internet
  • Facebook
• How important is the smartphone to people who own and use one? Here is the percentage of people who would (if forced to choose) rather keep their smartphone than the following items:
  • Game Console: 72%
  • Dishwasher: 46%
  • Laptop: 40%
  • Microwave: 34%
  • Refrigerator: 13%
  • Car: 8%

The rest of the report gives recommendations of ways you can integrate your marketing efforts across all three communications channels and is definitely worth a read.

Have you looked through ExactTarget’s Subscribers, Fans and Followers series? What do you think about their findings?

Related posts:

1. Subscribers, Fans and Followers – How are You Meeting Their Needs?
2. Subscribers, Fans and Followers: Facebook and the Collaborative Future
3. Connections 2010: Video Recaps (Part 1)

Looks like Facebook has decided to jump head-first into offering group buying discounts a la Groupon, Living Social, and a host of other local and national ‘group discount buying’ programs. I checked my email about 10 minutes ago and had my very first Facebook Deal staring me in the face. There were rumors that Facebook Deals would launch in five US cities this week and it appears they official have launched in Atlanta, Dallas, Austin, San Diego and San Francisco.

Just like Groupon, Living Social and other group buying programs, I received the Facebook Deal in my email instead of through Facebook. They must have realized the power and personal nature of email marketing to have launched a program that is so dependent upon email as opposed to their own platform.

The most interesting part of the email is that I now live in Indianapolis, but the Deal (see screenshot below) is for horseback riding in Acworth, GA (a suburb of Atlanta). I did live in Atlanta for a couple years, but I’ve been in Indy for the past 5 years, so Facebook needs to do a bit of work with their Deal targeting.

Have you received a Facebook Deal yet? Do you think you’d be likely to buy a deal via Facebook or will you stick with Groupon, Living Social or another similar daily deal program?

Related posts:

1. How to Provide “Fans Only” Content and Deals on your Facebook Page
2. Facebook Groups Vs. Fan Pages
3. Subscribers, Fans and Followers: Facebook and the Collaborative Future

For the next few days, you can optionally switch to the new Pages format or stick with the old one, but as of mid-March, all pages will be automatically transitioned to the new Pages format, so it’s worth making the switch today.

Photo Ribbon:

One of the most visible changes is the addition of the photo ribbon to the top of the page. Just like user accounts, pages can now feature a random assortment of their recently posted photos. A couple of details:

• Unlike on your Personal Profile, you can’t specify the order of the photos – it just selects the 5 most recently uploaded photos to display at random.
• You can remove photos from showing up in the ribbon – simply click on the ‘x’ in the upper right-hand corner of each individual photo.
  • Note: This won’t delete the photo from your gallery, it just makes it so it won’t show up in the photo ribbon at the top of your page.

Tabs Moved to Left:

This was another big change from the way that Pages used to function; but again, it helps Pages mirror the Personal Profiles display and shouldn’t take too much getting used to. Now, instead of seeing your tabs at the top of your page, they cascade down the left-hand side. This also allows for longer custom tab names (see the image at right) and Facebook allows you have more visible tabs.

If you already had a custom landing page, everything should still work fine and users can still be defaulted to whichever page you’d like.

Use Facebook as Your Page:

This is one of the most significant upgrades to the new Facebook Pages. We actually saw a glimpse of this when Facebook accidentally rolled out the feature to all users for about an hour back in December. When you click on the link that allows you to use Facebook as your page, it literally allows you to use Facebook as your page.

This means several things:

• Your notifications area () now shows new fans added and lets you know when someone leaves a comment on your wall, or likes or comments on one of your posts.
• You can post on other Pages as your page – very helpful if you’re want to post as your official presence on other pages – just don’t go overboard. This is the feature that has the biggest opportunity for abuse.
• You can now “share” items from other pages onto your page. You’ve been able to do this as an individual for a long time, but now this functionality extends to Pages and is extremely helpful.
• You now have your very own News Feed. Go around and Like different pages and they’ll all show up in your custom news feed. Just click on the Facebook logo when logged in as your Page to get to your Page’s News Feed.
• You can also set up email notifications to be sent to you when a user likes or comments on a post on your wall.
  • This is a great feature for any Page managers who have been looking for real-time notification when their Facebook Wall gets some responses.
  • However, if you manage a Page with a large following, you could very easily become inundated by a flood of email notifications, so it’s probably only really useful as you’re beginning to grow your page.

Featured Likes:

You can now feature up to 5 other pages in the Featured Likes section on the left-hand side of your page. Click on Edit Page, then go to the Featured Tab to select anywhere from 1 to 5 pages that you want to always display under the Featured Likes section. The other pages featured will randomly generate from all the pages your brand has liked.

This is a great way to feature timely pages, to highlight members of your organization or to give someone an added-value push on your Facebook page.

Move to iFrames Instead of FBML:

This is probably the most important and most technical upgrade that Facebook made with their recent Pages upgrade. I’ll go into more details about how to set up a Facebook Landing Page without using FBML in an upcoming post, but here’s the short of this change.

Several years ago Facebook developed their own simplified version of HTML called FBML (Facebook Markup Language). FBML was developed with the intention of making coding easier for people who didn’t know the first thing about coding. It enabled users to utilize a very simple block of code (see below) to do many things, including specifying which content could only be seen by fans as opposed to anyone who visited the Page.

<fb:visible-to-connection>
Fans will see this content.
<fb:else>Non-fans will see this content.</fb:else>
</fb:visible-to-connection>

Back in the fall, Facebook announced that they’d be getting rid of FBML in favor of a standard HTML control called iFrames. Essentially, an iFrame allows you, as the programmer, to call in an entire page – created and hosted elsewhere – to display within the iFrame. This actually allows for much more flexibility when creating customized Facebook landing pages, but it is a big departure from Facebook’s old standard of FBML.

Those are some of the biggest changes involved in the Facebook Pages redesign. How will you start using the redesigned Pages for your organization’s benefit?

Related posts:

1. How to Provide “Fans Only” Content and Deals on your Facebook Page
2. HootSuite5 – More Advanced Features
3. How To: Create a Facebook Username

I’ve recently noticed that while lots of Facebook Fan Pages have created a custom username for their URL (facebook.com/VisitIndiana, for example), there are still plenty of Fan Pages out there that still use their long, cumbersome URL instead of a shortened username (facebook.com/pages/Visit-Indiana-Indiana-State-Tourism/42785429080).

With so many URL Shorteners being used today (Bit.ly, Goo.gl, etc.), it might seem like it doesn’t matter what your Facebook Page URL is,

Luckily, Facebook makes it easy to create a custom username for your personal Facebook account and your business’ Fan Page.

The only caveat is that you have to have at least 25 fans of your page before you can create a username for it. This is Facebook’s way of ensuring that people aren’t creating pages just to squat on popular names.

The video below gives you a quick walk-through to help you create your custom Facebook Username. If you can’t view the video, just click through to the full post and you’ll see text directions to create your username.

Here’s a simple 4 step guide to creating a Facebook Username:

• Log into Facebook and go to Facebook.com/username
• Select whether you want to create a username for your personal profile (recommended) and/or your Fan Page
• Enter the username you want and click on Check Availability
  • VERY IMPORTANT: Facebook doesn’t allow you to change your username, so double-check the spelling to make sure you get it right!
• Read the terms and click on Confirm

There you go, you’ve created your username on Facebook. Now you can promote your new shortened Facebook URL!

Related posts:

1. Facebook Groups Vs. Fan Pages
2. How to Provide “Fans Only” Content and Deals on your Facebook Page
3. How To: Pull Your Blog Posts Into Facebook

1: Facebook Introduces One-Time Passwords Via Text | PC Magazine

Social Mediarology thinks: For as much flak as Facebook has received lately for their lack concern for users’ privacy, this is yet another step in the right direction. Facebook also recently released the ability to log out of other locations remotely and this One-Time Password feature is just another way Facebook really is looking out for their members. If you’ve ever felt nervous about logging into Facebook on a public computer, this is a great way to check in on Facebook without the worry.

2: Klout Now Measures Your Influence on Facebook | Mashable

Social Mediarology thinks: Klout’s influence score has become one of few widely-recognized and respected Twitter influence scores on the web today. You’ll find Klout’s scores baked into Twitter clients like HootSuite. Klout’s foray into Facebook is interesting because while finding a definitive influence score for Twitter or Facebook is nearly impossible, it seems much more difficult to do so for Facebook, where there are many more variables to take into account that for Twitter.

3: Skype 5.0 Busts Out of Beta, Integrates Facebook Friends | Engadget

Social Mediarology thinks: There have been rumors for a few weeks about the integration of Skype and Facebook and half of the equation is now solved. With the 5.0 release of Skype, Windows users can log into Skype and bring all their Facebook friends with them. Then next step will be Facebook pulling Skype into their own chat application to create Skype-enabled text, audio and video chatting. While many businesses are starting to use Skype more and more, their integration with Facebook will bring more users to Skype.

4: URL Shortener Bit.ly Now Generates QR Codes | Mashable

Social Mediarology thinks: QR codes are gaining popularity with the advent of mobile apps that can easily scan this new style of barcode. Foursquare even allows users to scan a QR code that will check them in to a location. While QR codes are still in their infancy, they are becoming more common and Bit.ly has done themselves a great service by making QR code creation so simple (just append .qr to the end of a Bit.ly URL and they’ll display your QR code. Take a picture of the one above using a QR code scanning app on your mobile phone and it’ll redirect you to SocialMediarology.com.

Related posts:

1. Four On Friday: Social Media Recap
2. Four On Friday: Social Media Recap
3. Four on Friday: Social Media Recap

1: Facebook Ads Become Dramatically More Transparent | AllFacebook

Social Mediarology thinks: This is a simple but beneficial change for Facebook users and for advertisers. The ad’s URL only displays if it’s taking you off Facebook.com. So you still won’t know exactly where the on-site ads will take you, but this is a great step forward in transparency for all Facebook users.

2: Windows Live Outsources Blogging, Migrating 30 Million Users To WordPress.com | TechCrunch

Social Mediarology thinks: Four years ago, Microsoft launched Windows Live Spaces, a blogging platform for Live.com users (the successor to MSN and what preceded Bing). Over the past four years, WLS has racked up 30 million users and starting now, those users are being migrated over to WordPress.com – the world’s largest blogging site. This is a great move for Microsoft, because it will give their users more robust features through the WordPress interface and it allows Microsoft to focus their efforts where they’re more urgently needed (Windows 7 phone?)

3: Get at Clue: What do People Remember About Your Site? | ReadWriteWeb

Social Mediarology thinks: Clue is a great free web design usability tool that can help you as you’re in the process of redesigning your website. Enter the URL you want to test into Clue and they’ll spit out another URL for you to share for feedback. Users are given five seconds to view your page then they’re asked what they recall from the page. Each Clue ‘test’ is live for 48 hours and results are easy to view – just add a + to the end of the test URL and you can see the results.

4: Don’t Let the Intern Run Your Social Strategy | Travel 2.0

Social Mediarology thinks: Troy does it again with another great post about managing your company’s social strategy. While interns may have a greater degree of technical knowledge, they shouldn’t necessarily be the front-lines of your social strategy. The first step toward a successful social strategy is buy-in from the top of your organization.

Related posts:

1. Four On Friday: Social Media Recap
2. Four on Friday: Social Media Recap
3. Four On Friday: Social Media Recap

Mythbusting with Jeff and Morgan:

Throughout the Subscriber, Fans & Followers research, Jeff and Morgan were able to identify some really interesting information. Some of that information was picked up by local and national news outlets, but like with most research, you can make it say whatever you want it to say. Some news outlets ran tiny portions of the research, skewing some of the data. That’s where Myth #1 comes into play.

Myth #1: Email Usage is Dropping:

In the video below, Jeff and Morgan talk about how Nielsen just came out with data saying that email usage has dropped significantly in recent years. In short, the Nielsen study, only includes email accessed via the web – Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc – but it doesn’t include email accessed via mobile platforms or even Outlook!

Myth #2: Facebook Fans are worth 136.38 dollars:

Some recent research said each Fan a brand has on Facebook is worth roughly $136. While that may be hard to prove one way or another, during the SFF research, participants were asked: Are you more likely to purchase from a brand after becoming a Subscriber, Fan or Follower? The results were different than you might think.

Only 17% of Facebook Fans said yes, while 27% of email Subscribers gave the same answer. The real kicker is that a full 37% of Twitter Followers said they’d be more likely to purchase from a brand after following them on Twitter. Obviously, this question only asks about intent and there aren’t any hard dollar figures behind it, but the fact that more than a third of Twitter Followers would be more likely to purchase from your brand after following should encourage you to start using Twitter.

Myth #3: Twitter is Dying:

2009 was a great year for Twitter and it became the fastest growing social media channel ever. At some point, the rate of growth was going to have to slow down a bit. Even though we’ve seen some higher profile users quitting Twitter recently (John Mayer, Demi Lovato), Twitter is far from dying. Jeff and Morgan remind us that Twitter users create six times more content online than non-Twitter users. So, while a few celebrities may come and go, the real influencers on the web still use Twitter heavily.

Did you attend the Connections 2010 Conference? What was the biggest takeaway you got from the conference?

Related posts:

1. Connections 2010: Video Recaps (Part 1)
2. Connections 2010: Conference Recap
3. Subscribers, Fans and Followers – How are You Meeting Their Needs?

Twitter Users as Content Creators:

Through their SFF research, Jeff and Morgan discovered that Twitter users end up creating six times as much content online as the typical online consumer. This is extremely powerful news and should be a wake-up call to marketers – just because only 5% of online consumers follow a brand through Twitter, those consumers are some of the most influential people online today.

In the video below, Jeff and Morgan talk about the tremendous reach and influence of Twitter users.

3 Follow-up Points to SFF Research:

The final report in the SFF study was released just before the Connections 2010 conference and Jeff and Morgan talked about three follow-up points to the research. First, SFF’s are long-term assets, not short term sales opportunities. If you only look at the short term, you’re overlooking the true value of your SFFs. Second, SFFs must be integrated and optimized. Once you’re involved in email, Facebook and Twitter, you must continually work to integrate and optimize the content across all three channels. Finally, leadership must unify email and social marketing – don’t look at email, Facebook and Twitter as channels in separate silos.

Keep an eye out for another post of videos from the SFF talk later in the week. Were you at the Connections 2010 Conference? What was your favorite session?

Related posts:

1. Connections 2010: Conference Recap
2. Subscribers, Fans and Followers – How are You Meeting Their Needs?
3. Subscribers, Fans and Followers: Facebook and the Collaborative Future

Also, if you’re attending ExactTarget’s Connections 2010 Conference on September 14-16, drop by the Lead Nurturing and Lead Scoring session on Wedensday (9/15) at 9:45am – I’ll be speaking about how we’ve worked with Right On Interactive to nurture and score leads through the Visit Indiana Foursquare/Leaf Cam promotion.

Report No. 5: Facebook X-Factors

The fifth report in the Subscribers, Fans and Followers series focuses on Facebook. After detailed reports of Email and Twitter users, how do Facebook users stack up? Do they want to interact with companies or do they want to keep Facebook purely personal and clear of marketing speak? Here are some of the highlights:

• The top four things that motivate users to follow a business are:
  • To receive discounts or promotions
  • To show my support of the company to others
  • To get a freebie (free samples, coupon) – very similar to #1
  • To stay informed about the company’s activities
• 70% of consumers who ‘liked’ a brand or company on Facebook didn’t feel they’d given the company permission to market to them (maybe Troy Thompson is on to something with his thoughts about comparing Facebook Likes to bumper stickers).
• Far and away, consumers use Facebook to reconnect with friends and maintain current friendships as opposed to maintaining and cultivating professional relationships.

So Facebook is used primarily for connecting with friends and less so for connecting with businesses. And consumers that do connect with businesses are really looking for a good deal. How can you leverage those opportunities to bring success to your company’s Facebook page?

Report No. 6: The Collaborative Future

The sixth report in the Subscribers, Fans and Followers series really focuses on ingetrating email, Facebook and Twitter – keeping in mind the strengths and weaknesses of each medium. Here are a few insights gleaned from the sixth report:

• Email is more likely to drive increased purchase intent among the largest group of consumers.
• Facebook is the least effective channel to drive increased purchase behavior.
• Twitter is actually the channel that is most likely to drive increased purchases and recommendations after a consumer follows a brand.

The rest of the report gives recommendations of ways you can integrate your marketing efforts across all three communications channels and is definitely worth a read.

Have you looked through ExactTarget’s Subscribers, Fans and Followers series? What do you think about their findings?

Related posts:

1. Subscribers, Fans and Followers – How are You Meeting Their Needs?
2. Sharing, Retweeting and Mentions on Facebook and Twitter
3. Four On Friday: Social Media Recap