Buffer Blog

From a UX perspective, if you click on the logo or the name of the website you're at, would u expect to be redirected to another page, or go to the root of that page? Look at buffe'rs blog: http://blog.bufferapp.com/ Logo with the name of buffer goes back to the root. They added a "Whats buffer" link to point to the website.

Great example of this is Buffer app that makes $2MM from ~16K users and 1MM free users: http://blog.bufferapp.com/from-0-to-1000000-users-the-journey-and-stat…

Love this approach - reminds me of how buffer did it - http://blog.bufferapp.com/idea-to-paying-customers-in-7-weeks-how-we-d… Are you planning to do any spend as I didn't see any pixel's on the page as you should be cookie pooling users just in case you do want to retarget them :0

I find it odd that the title says "Science Explains...", but then the main reference is to another blog post[1], which itself does a much better job at quoting and referencing scientific information... [1]http://blog.bufferapp.com/why-we-have-our-best-ideas-in-the-shower-the…

Without being unkind I think the authors on the blog should work on their writing. Read the first sentence of this entry on sleep: http://blog.bufferapp.com/how-much-sleep-do-we-really-need-to-work-pro… Notice the two uses of 'average'? The rest of the blog post is similarly poorly edited. It needs a good reread, edit and subedit to reduce wordiness. Another example that I have a hard time understanding: "Here is what a recent study found: The sleep deprived person can in fact deliver the exact same results as someone who isn’t sleep deprived in an exercise, for when they give it their best shot." Or: "One of my favorite writers and New York Times bestselling author Michael Hyatt does the same things for many years and posted his insights in this great post about napping."

Very cool to see this pop up. I think a hosted service for validating an idea could be very useful for many, especially the non-technical founders who could then get some better validated traction to share with a potential technical co-founder. Great to see Buffer has been an inspiration. If anyone is interested, the screenshot comes from this post with the full details of how I used this method to go from idea to paying customers in 7 weeks: http://blog.bufferapp.com/idea-to-paying-customers-in-7-weeks-how-we-d…

I try to avoid self-referencing, but since it does answer your question, here's my idea creation/testing thought process[1] and a walkthrough of an example I'm currently working on[2]. Joel (of Buffer) also did an awesome write-up of how he validated that idea[3], which is probably the best practice for freemium or subscription ideas. [1] http://thestartuptoolkit.com/blog/2011/12/how-i-come-up-with-new-start… [2] http://thestartuptoolkit.com/blog/2012/02/an-example-of-how-im-current… [3] http://blog.bufferapp.com/idea-to-paying-customers-in-7-weeks-how-we-d…

Great read, thanks. Incidentally, the link at the end 404s: http://blog.bufferapp.com/tagged/building_buffer (looks like it should be http://blog.bufferapp.com/category/building-buffer)

Before I even do any real-world validation I like to score my idea based on four criteria - 1. how much time is needed to get this idea off the ground, 2. how much money is needed to get this idea off the ground, 3. how many new skills are needed to get this idea off the ground, 4. How much will I still enjoy building this a year from now? Sometimes an idea is just too big or ambitious at first and this helps me sanity check it. After that I like to validate my idea - for that I need to learn if people are: 1. interested in the idea 2. willing to pay/use it I always recommend keeping it simple, fast, and cheap - customer interviews, landing pages, mock ups, etc. This example from buffer - https://blog.bufferapp.com/idea-to-paying-customers-in-7-weeks-how-we-… has been around for a while but I still like to point it out as a good way to test a concept and see if people are willing to pay for it. I'd love to hear what you are working on, I'm a business coach and do a lot of free coaching for new startups ping me if interested [email protected]

1. Landing Page Copy: This piece of text is your USP "Identifies which of your subscribers are influencers" I think that all you need is , with a slight modification: i. "Identify influencers in you email list" and ii. the 4 bullet points above the How it works video. ie "Generate relevant content for your audience (more traffic) Segment your audience so you can send targeted offers (save money) Create offers that will convert better (more revenue) Target advertising dollars that reaches your ideal audience (higher ROI)" Everything else is too much to read - most people are just not going to do that. 2. How it works Video: This can then come directly under this copy (in place of the infographic you have currently. 3. Background Image: This is just too random. You want something that's more reflective of your users end state after they've used your product. 4. Call to Action button: Instead of what you have, induce a little excitement/urgency by changing the text in the button to something like "Get Early Access". Being "notified" is just boring. Note: Everything to this point, ie the landing page copy, the video and the CTA button should fit on one page without scrolling. 5. Other Links: The purpose of this pre-launch landing page is to get people to click on the CTA button and give you their email address, not click around. a. If you take the suggestion I made in #2, that removes the need for the "How it works" link in the header b. Similarly, the CTA…

My goal is only to convince you to try taking one, perhaps a week of cold showers, and see if you like it and want to keep going. 1) First off, if you're not exercising much, you should probably spend your willpower on ramping that up. In general, research has shown that willpower acts more like a muscle than a purely "fuel tank" model and taxing your willpower in small increments can actually strengthen it in the long run. [1] But in general, your shower time is already allocated for, and happens at a regular interval, so after exercise (which takes up time that people sometimes say "they don't have") it is a good place to do some willpower strengthening. 2) In the book, I actually explain that I start cold for 3 minutes and then end warm/hot. It's actually better than just going warm right away. 3) I admit that when the water is cold, you are not able to think about much. But if you turn it back to warm after a period, you still can spend the rest of the shower thinking. Also I find that clearing your head via the cold means the rest of your day's thinking is more clear, which may be worth the trade off. Ultimately, you should just try it once, go through it, and see if it serves you. [1] http://blog.bufferapp.com/what-the-research-on-habit-formation-reveals…

I perform much better at interviews when I am relaxed. If you put too much pressure on yourself, then you will not be relaxed and will perform badly. If you do a perfect simulation of an interview at home do you perform well? Find an interview question you haven't seen before, and attempt it exactly like you would at an interview. Have a software developer friend mock interview you. If you feel like you perform better in a simulation, you may consider seeing a psychologist or reading some books on the subject. I once went to a workshop on how to deal with high pressure situations, and many of the exercises suggested made a difference to my interviewing. The tips in the following article I feel apply equally to interviewing. I suffer the mentioned symptoms during interviews. When adrenaline levels are high the brain will enable a short-cut mechanism that allows you to make quicker decisions, but often not correct when considering a difficult question. The dreaded "tunnel vision" is a fight/flight response. http://blog.bufferapp.com/what-happens-to-our-brains-when-we-have-stag…

Rather than having a daily list, I use Feeder (Chrome extension: http://feeder.co/) to read my RSS feeds, I had always preferred it to Google Reader, I never did get myself into the mantra of checking Reader often (it ended up being once every few months, when I randomly remembered) ; however Feeder is nice in its minimalistic approach, just showing me how many items for each feed, which encourages me to zero it out, although unlike Reader it just shows the titles of RSS feed items, so I end up judging whether or not to read an article based on the title. A few feeds I follow: News * Hacker News - https://news.ycombinator.com/ (https://news.ycombinator.com/rss and https://news.ycombinator.com/bigrss [a lot of the posts are repeated over both, and note these are not necessarily the front page posts, my guess is that they are upvoted new posts, so I end up reading some posts before they reach the front page]) * Phoronix - http://www.phoronix.com/ (http://www.phoronix.com/rss.php) * ThreatPost - http://threatpost.com/ (http://threatpost.com/feed) * TheNextWeb - http://thenextweb.com/ (http://feeds2.feedburner.com/thenextweb) * Wired - http://www.wired.com/ (http://feeds.wired.com/wired/index) * iClarified - http://www.iclarified.com/ (http://iclarified.com/rss/rss.xml) * TorrentFreak - https://torrentfreak.com/ (http://feeds.feedburner.com/Torrentfreak) * r/WorldNews - http://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews (http://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/.rss) Blogs * Securelist -…

Really good advice about non-code MVP. It reminded me of this seminal post: https://blog.bufferapp.com/idea-to-paying-customers-in-7-weeks-how-we-… The heart of the idea is that an MVP isn't really a Product; it's something to validate against. How specificlaly did you go about promoting your landing page? Just 'hey check this out posts', or did you focus on comments/answers to questions? And how much time do you have invested in this so far? If you get some free time, you might want to also post this on indiehackers.com. Could help a lot of people out there.

It's easy to Google your answer[1]. You are right. Blue instills trust, similar to most Financial Services institutions. https://blog.bufferapp.com/the-science-of-colors-in-marketing-why-is-f…

Buffer has a good post on how they did this. https://blog.bufferapp.com/idea-to-paying-customers-in-7-weeks-how-we-…

If they're treating ad views the same as regular story views, it's once the ad is initially loaded[1]. But, as others have mentioned, Snapchat appears to be more interested in sponsored content and Discovery features. 1. https://blog.bufferapp.com/social-video-metrics

On the consumption side all blog engines seem about the same. On the production side they've added a few nice things that a static blog engine doesn't have - collaborative feedback on a draft before publishing, paragraph-by-paragraph statistics on "read ratio", time spent with an article, etc. https://blog.bufferapp.com/how-to-use-medium

Try and talk with your potential customers. * Build a landing page where you explain what you want to build * Add a pricing page and ask for money * Ask for users address if interested * If enough interest is shown - build your first MVP Here's a more detailed example about validating an idea - https://blog.bufferapp.com/idea-to-paying-customers-in-7-weeks-how-we-…

this is telling Just take a look at all these successful startups which either had a temporary domain name, or which still have a different domain name to their name: Square was squareup.com, DropBox was getdropbox.com, Facebook was thefacebook.com, Instagram was instagr.am, Twitter was twttr.com, Foursquare was playfoursquare.com, Basecamp is basecamphq.com, Pocket is getpocket.com, Bitly was/is bit.ly, Delicious was del.icio.us, Freckle is letsfreckle.com https://blog.bufferapp.com/how-to-name-your-startup

Yup, thats right. Sorry for lame landing page. We have a prototype ready but before deciding to formally put it out, quickly wanted to run it down with a few people to see if there is actually some interest. Its largely inspired from the Buffer guy experiment to validate before he decide to finally build it - https://blog.bufferapp.com/idea-to-paying-customers-in-7-weeks-how-we-…

Blogspam: Original: https://blog.bufferapp.com/improve-my-body-language-secrets

Here is a more actionable list: http://blog.bufferapp.com/10-scientifically-proven-ways-to-make-yourse…

Are you thinking about the change from 10 to 8 hours? Because that change seems to have been quite successful all over the world. Regarding the 8 hour work day: “One of the first businesses to implement this was the Ford Motor Company, in 1914, which not only cut the standard work day to eight hours, but also doubled their worker’s pay in the process. To the shock of many industries, this resulted in Ford’s productivity off of these same workers, but with fewer hours, actually increasing significantly and Ford’s profit margins doubled within two years. This encouraged other companies to adopt the shorter, eight hour work day as a standard for their employees.” http://blog.bufferapp.com/optimal-work-time-how-long-should-we-work-ev…

There's been a lot of literature on introversion and extroversion lately. They can explain it much better than I. Here is a good article: http://blog.bufferapp.com/introverts-and-extroverts-what-they-are-and-… I don't mean to imply that introverts like movies and extraverts don't. Only that, as a manager of developers, you should seek to understand the type of people on your team along many different dimensions, introversion and extraversion being one of them. Then cater your activities for those particular people. What worked for the mix of people on my team may not necessarily work for the mix of people on your team.

I read somewhere recently that if you fantasize/talk about your ideas/goals it triggers your brain to let you feel a similar satisfaction for actually accomplishing the said idea/goal. Of course now I can't find the article so take it with a grain of salt. I did find this article which is related… http://blog.bufferapp.com/how-our-brains-stop-us-achieving-our-goals-a…

He was probably going off of Joel/Buffer's example landing page: http://blog.bufferapp.com/idea-to-paying-customers-in-7-weeks-how-we-d…

It really bugs me that people can rip content wholesale from someone else's blog, add a tiny attribution at the bottom, and consider it fair game. For reference, this is actually a Buffer blog post: http://blog.bufferapp.com/10-scientifically-proven-ways-to-make-yourse…

Original article: http://blog.bufferapp.com/the-science-of-colors-in-marketing-why-is-fa…

I found this pic interesting: http://blog.bufferapp.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Screen-Shot-2013-… What I've found recently is I feel like I think better when I scrunch into a position like this. I don't know why, and it's not like my own scientific study. Maybe it's just like going into an isolated place like a shower helps me think better, this type of position seems to as well. I'll cross my arms, and even scrunch my shoulders over. It might even look like I'm in pain. But how many times have you also seen someone say "Let me think", and they might cross one arm over their chest to hold the other arm at the elbow so that arm can rub their head and cover their eyes. So this thesis about these poses being better for power, and confidence is interesting. But I'm curious if there's a lot of usefulness from both.