Be Kind, Buffer!

Shawn Powers — Wed, 26 Apr 2017 14:27:21 +0000

I like to tweet. Not like a bird (well, not usually), but tweeting on Twitter. I like to post silly pictures and say silly things. Unfortunately, a few things usually happen:

I take a bunch of photos within minutes of each other.
I want to post to Twitter and Facebook.
People don't want to see ten tweets from me in rapid succession.

I used to use a complicated combination of Instagram, If This Then That and a third-party Twitter client in order to post once and have it go to multiple social media sites. That didn't solve the problem of posting too often. It also made posting plain text vs. photos challenging.

Thankfully, Buffer solves all my problems with a cool app and website. Basically, you set up "times" throughout the day that you want to post your tweets/Facebook posts. You can "buffer" as many posts as you want, but the Buffer program will send them to the social-media sites only one at a time, at the appointed scheduled time. It also will accept plain text or photos, so I can use the same method for posting no matter what the media.

There are lots of interesting abilities too. For example, on the website, you can have Buffer analyze your social-media accounts to find the best time to post throughout the day. I actually prefer to set the times myself, but if you're looking for maximum "reach" for your posts, I imagine Buffer's algorithm is nice.

My favorite feature is that Buffer works on iOS, Android and the web. So no matter where I am, or what device I'm using, I can post to my social-media sites and know they'll be delivered in a non-annoying way. There also are paid features for folks who want more out of their social media, especially for companies that use it as a part of their marketing. For me though, the free features are absolutely perfect. Even if I had to pay, however, I think I'd still love it, because it has revolutionized the way I post to social media. And to my Twitter followers: you can thank Buffer for my apparently improved etiquette while posting!

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Talking to Twitter

Reuven Lerner — Thu, 27 Feb 2014 19:27:09 +0000

by Reuven Lerner

Integrating Twitter into your application is easy, fun and useful.

I'm a very quick adopter of many new software technologies. I try new programming languages, browsers, databases and frameworks without hesitation. But when it comes to social networks, I'm a bit of a Luddite, waiting to see what all the fuss is about before making them a part of my life. Sure, I signed up for Facebook almost as soon as it was available, but I haven't really posted much there. I do use LinkedIn, mostly to collect and find contacts, but I don't post there very often either, unless I'm announcing a presentation that I've added to SlideShare.

Twitter is something of a different story. There are people, it seems, for whom Twitter is the ultimate in communication. I've been on Twitter for some time, but other than an occasional foray into that world, I didn't really pay it much attention. Even now, after having decided several months ago that I should try to get into Twitter more heavily, I find that while I look through my feed several times a day, I tweet only once every few weeks. Call me a dinosaur, but I still prefer to use e-mail to be in touch with friends and family, rather than 140-character messages.

Although I don't see Twitter as a great medium for interpersonal communication, I recently have begun to appreciate it for other reasons. Specifically, I have discovered (perhaps long after the rest of the world has done so) that using Twitter as a sort of public logfile can make a Web application more visible, updating the rest of the world as to the status of your work and your on-line community. Doing so not only lets people hear about what you are doing—and potentially rebroadcast it to the world, by "retweeting" your message to followers—but it also increases your application's SEO, or visibility on various search engines. Finally, you can use Twitter to bring attention to your on-line presence by following other people. (The idea is that when they receive your follow request, they may try to find out more about you, exploring your site or even following you back.)

I might sound like a social-media consultant, but I've seen the difference that Twitter can make in an application. I recently connected my PhD dissertation project (the Modeling Commons) to Twitter, such that each public action is sent to the Twitter feed. The combination of tweeting updates and following other people has had a remarkable and direct effect on the number of visitors who come to my site, the length of time they remain and the number of pages they view. Now, I'm not talking about millions of visitors per month. My application is still of interest mainly to a small community of people working with the NetLogo modeling environment. But the change has been obvious, and I grudgingly admit that I owe some of it to Twitter.

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