Twitter has become a really important platform for keeping people informed and that’s why many businesses and individuals use it. When you’re running a business with an online presence, especially with Twitter, it can often be easy to neglect this if you’re too busy focused on the actual business itself and it can make the account seem dormant and less likely to draw attention.
This is where Buffer comes in. Buffer is a uniquely simple app that provides users with a means of tweeting consistently, making the whole process of maintaining an online presence that extra bit more bearable. Find out more inside.
Overview
Buffer is a sleek and polished web app that allows users to post more consistently by providing a “buffer” which any number of tweets can be added to and which will be slowly emptied at set intervals, posted to a designated Twitter account. Scheduled times for tweets can be added to and removed at will and mainly exist to allow users to be more consistent. Offering support for a custom Bit.ly account link shortening and notifications when the Buffer is empty, the app is a unique solution to solve the problem of dwindling tweet rates.
Overview
Pricing
As for its pricing, Buffer operates a “freemium” plan model that provides free accounts with limited resources inside the app with paid accounts offering more. Though the free account is great if you’re only trying out the app before purchasing, the paid versions are definitely worth investing in if you or your business is serious about maintaining an online presence.
Pricing
The premium accounts start from a mere $5 per month and provide you with a considerably larger number of tweets allowed to be stored in the Buffer and tweets per day limit. It also offers an option to add your own Bit.ly details to allow for the easy tracking of stats for links shortened with the service.
Getting Started
Buffer has one of the simplest registration processes of any app I’ve come across. Once you’ve entered your email address and chosen a passsword, your account is essentially created. It’s then possible to login and begin to use the full functionality of the app. After signing in, users are taken to the main dashboard of the app from which the majority of tasks are managed.
Dashboard
It is then possible to connect a Twitter account to the Buffer account, giving authorization to the app to send out the tweets. Another important task is to ensure that the timezone displayed in the dashboard reflects that of the real timezone you are in, allowing tweets added to the Buffer to be timed precisely. Once these steps have been performed, it’s best to begin using the app.
Connecting with Twitter
Scheduling Tweets
Because Buffer knows that your tweets will get differing levels of coverage, depending on the time of day they are posted, they’ve made it really easy to choose times for the tweets in the Buffer to be scheduled. The accounts have, by default, two popular times for tweets and these can be added to, ensuring that the correct interval between tweets is set to enable the regularity of them.
Configuring Tweet Times
It doesn’t take a genius to work out that the more times added, the more tweets will be taken from the Buffer and posted each day.
The Buffer
As you would expect, the most important part of Buffer is the buffer itself. It works pretty much as you’d expect and you can easily add several tweets to your buffer that will be distributed when the time is right.
It’s also possible to view a list of all tweets that have already been sent out by Buffer for easy reference.
The Buffer
The number of tweets that can be added is dictated by the pricing plan you’re on and, once they’re added, tweets can easily be edited, removed or even rearranged to suit the order in which you’d like to send them.
The Buffer works and looks very much like Twitter.com’s interface for posting tweets which allows you to seamlessly switch from using the actual Twitter website to Buffer to post your tweets with no learning curve whatsoever. Overall, it’s an extremely easy process to work with the Buffer and the whole app really shows how powerful
Extensions
Buffer also offers a couple of extensions for Safari and Google Chrome that allows a user to easily add the websites they’re currently visiting to their Buffer. Once the Buffer icon has been pressed inside the browser, the link to the page currently being browsed is automatically shortened and appended to the title of the page, populating the tweet Buffer form that appears. This can, of course, be removed if required and replaced with a standard text tweet but this is mainly for users who want to share links to their Twitter account inside Buffer.
Extension when activated
Final Thoughts
I found Buffer to be a really exciting and innovative app that can be useful for not only people in a business context but also individuals who think that their tweeting rate is slowly diminishing. One of the great things about it is the fact that it really does know how to do its job, taking into consideration the little things like allowing users to specify the times at which tweets should be posted and notifications when the Buffer is empty.
The app also offers some smaller yet useful features like allowing users to enter their own Bit.ly cridentials to allow the easy tracking of the shortened links they share which the Buffer extension generated.
These great features, coupled with the amazingly simple yet powerful interface make a truly brilliant app that can make spontaneous tweeting less painful and more organized. I would more than recommend this app to anyone that feels like their Twitter usage is dropping and need a way to increase it to maintain their online presence.