Category: Business1

Here are five lessons Laura Martisiute learned along the path of small business ownershipI never thought I’d own a business. I also never thought I’d be able to make a living from writing.Yet here I am, with a (small) content marketing agency, selling services to companies, including series A startups and tech enterprises, and making a six-figure dollar income each year. All this because I stumbled onto writing for a living accidentally. Back in 2015, I was in college and needed a job, but the market was tough, and no one was hiring. One day, I typed into Google “get paid to write” and stumbled on an ad for a site that paid writers $100 for accepted pitches about interesting topics. When I told my parents I got paid $100 for writing an article online, they were amazed. So was I. After graduating, I worked in various B2C marketing roles with tourism companies and heritage sites, which meant working alongside digital marketing agencies. I...

Meet Rachel Pereyra, who bootstrapped her business from $400 to $180,000. Read all about it in Open Books, a series by Buffer.🖤At Buffer, we’ve long aimed to default to transparency, a practice we believe helps eliminate inequality and gives everyone a greater chance of succeeding. Financial transparency is especially close to our hearts, which is why we’re proud to share Open Books, a series of small business owners giving us a peek inside their books in the spirit of being open about finances as well. Join us as we explore the highs, lows, and hard-won financial lessons that have paved their paths, and discover how you can apply their insights to your own small business journey.Rachel Pereyra began freelancing as a virtual assistant in January of 2020 to earn extra money to help her and her wife pay off their debt and save for a house. By that summer, she had proven she could secure a steady stream of clients...

This simple shortcut will help you cross-post and schedule posts to Bluesky with your iPhone. Bluesky is fast emerging as one of the major contenders in the race for the top Twitter (X) alternative — and with good reason.The new platform is easy to use, it offers a high degree of control over your timeline, and — thankfully, given X recently axed the feature — headlines still pull through with links. Bluesky, which was created by former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, is a decentralized, invite-only social network built on an open-source protocol. People are flooding to the platform — it hit 1 million users in September 2023. And what with Pebble/T2, another Twitter alternative, closing shop, Bluesky may soon see another spike in popularity. It makes sense that users are looking to add it to their social media management system — and that having Bluesky as a channel in Buffer is a highly requested feature! Rest assured, we are working on it. You...

Organize all of your ideas in one place with Buffer's new tagging feature. Manage your creative output. Track the success of different types of content. And build a searchable library of content.In the ever-evolving landscape of content creation, where the competition for attention is relentless, the ability to connect with an audience or foster a thriving community hinges on one crucial aspect: the content itself. You might know Buffer as a trusty tool for social media scheduling, but what you might not know is that people are creating thousands of content ideas and saving them to Buffer every day. They’re harnessing Buffer to build their own universe of content.This chart shows the weekly growth in the number of ideas that have been added to Buffer.These are not just snippets or clever captions waiting to be unleashed; they are seeds of potential, each with the promise of becoming a blog post, a captivating podcast, an engaging YouTube video, a viral Reel,...

Growing her LinkedIn following helped Aarushi Singh take her consulting business from a $0 startup to a thriving $100,000 yearly. Here's how she did it.I may not have Justin Welsh's celebrity status on LinkedIn with half a million followers, but my journey is worth sharing. With just 30,000 engaged followers on LinkedIn, I managed to take my consulting business from a $0 startup to a thriving $100,000 yearly.I started as a content marketing consultant, leaving behind my nine-to-five corporate engineering job in 2018. My LinkedIn became my business’ lifeline, connecting me with clients and global brands, while giving me the freedom and flexibility to earn more.While I enjoyed my stint as an engineer at a big corporation, I soon realized it wasn’t for me. I wanted to build something of my own with a flexible schedule and better pay. I wanted the chance to network with industry leaders and work with more prominent brands.I had dabbled in content marketing, but...

Personal brand experts walked this writer through exactly how to switch up her personal brand — and offered some more general advice, too. In my 20s, I fell down a health and fitness rabbit hole. Well, not so much ‘fell’ as hurtled head first, banged my head a bit, and didn’t emerge until a good few years later. It did mean I went through a very intense period of saying no to dessert (would not recommend), but it also helped me fall in love with exercise (would recommend) — and almost accidentally, build something of a personal brand. At one point, I’d started a fitness blog, landed a great job as a writer at Women’s Health Magazine, and dabbled in personal training. As a result, I built up a 6,000-strong following on Instagram.But by my late 20s, my obsession with health and fitness had cooled to a much more balanced hobby — which was around the same time I moved into content...

There are few things that spark as much joy as being able to organize anything and everything by color. It’s an easy and visual way to lay things out, and in the world of content and social media, staying organized is one of the best ways to keepThere are few things that spark as much joy as being able to organize anything and everything by color. It’s an easy and visual way to lay things out, and in the world of content and social media, staying organized is one of the best ways to keep on top of planning. That’s one of many reasons that so many of us at Buffer were looking forward to adding tags to our Buffer posts. These handy, color-coordinated tags are like a breath of fresh air for anyone looking to add some visual organization to their content creation and planning.Read more about our latest feature: TagsThere are plenty of ways to use this new...

We reckon publishing Reels on Facebook is the fastest way to grow your audience. Read on to learn how.With 2.9 billion active users, Facebook is the most popular social network of them all – and short-form video is the hottest content format on the block. So a Reels feature was an inevitable addition.As a creator or a brand, diving into Facebook Reels could be a game-changer, getting a fresh set of eyes on your content with content you can repurpose from your current efforts. We reckon publishing Reels on Facebook is the fastest way to grow your audience. Read on to see how. 👇💡Start scheduling Facebook Reels in Buffer →What are Facebook Reels?Facebook Reels are like their Instagram counterparts — trend-focused, short-form videos that use different unique editing tricks, sounds, and filters to engage viewers. Here's a breakdown of their core attributes:Duration: Ranging from three to 60 seconds, these snippets are perfect for quick, engaging storytelling.Format: Designed for mobile, they...

If you’re a graphic design or video-editing novice, this list of the best places to find Instagram templates will have you creating beautiful content in minutes. When it comes to curating a cohesive brand and an aesthetic Instagram feed, templates are a marketer/creator/business owner’s best friend.Because, let’s be honest: who has a brilliant designer or video editor on hand to expertly craft every single post, Story, or Reel you need to grow on Instagram?Here at Buffer, we’re a small Marketing team that doesn’t! We do have a brilliant designer who lends a hand for launches and special projects, but many of the Instagram posts, Stories, carousels, and Reels you’ll find on Buffer’s Instagram feed were created with the help of templates. In this article, I’ll unpack Buffer’s go-to template sources, plus my personal favorites. Even if you’re a graphic design or video-editing novice, this template list will have you creating beautiful Instagram content in a couple of minutes. Instagram templates for feed posts,...

Meet Kat Boogaard, who grew her freelance business to $300,000 before scaling back. See her revenue numbers and more in Open Books by Buffer.🖤At Buffer, we’ve long aimed to default to transparency, a practice we believe helps eliminate inequality and gives everyone a greater chance of succeeding. Financial transparency is especially close to our hearts, which is why we’re proud to share Open Books, a series of small business owners giving us a peek inside their books in the spirit of being open about finances as well. Join us as we explore the highs, lows, and hard-won financial lessons that have paved their paths, and discover how you can apply their insights to your own small business journey.Kat Boogaard’s journey into freelance writing isn’t all that unique: She was working full-time in marketing but yearned for more flexibility, creativity, and control in her work. Reflecting on her past projects and assignments, she noticed that writing was a common thread. So,...