5 Things I Learnt from Buffer's Social Media Webinars

Last updated on 26 November 2024

This post may contain affiliate links. If you make a purchase with one of these links, I recieve a small commission at no additional cost to you. Read the full Affiliate Policy.

Buffer’s Social Media webinars

I watched all 5 of Buffer’s social media webinar in 20016. And they were good. Really good.

While I have been blogging for a long time now, and been on social media for even longer, there are obviously things I still don’t know, and things that I am so ready to learn. As part of my job I look after some of the social media platforms we use (Facebook, Twitter and Instagram), so we had a look at the 5 videos, all prepared to learn some new things. Because we live in New Zealand, the only live Buffer webinar we could watch was the first one, 3 Clever Ways to Discover and Share the Very Best Content on Social Media, but all the rest of the webinars were on YouTube, so over the course of the week we had our notepaper and pens ready to learn some new things.

And boy did we learn.

You can actually find all of these on YouTube now, but I thought that I would just share with you guys 5 things that I learnt from these great webinars, one from each of the talks.

1| 3 Clever Ways to Discover and Share the Very Best Content on Social Media

In the first webinar, Kevan Lee (@kevanlee) talked about curating the content that you share. The main 3 steps for curating content are Discover, Read, and Share. Which may seem obvious, but what I really loved about that is really the Discovering section. The links, images, videos and other things I share with you guys are usually just ones that I’ve literally stumbled upon in my wanderings around the internet. Perhaps someone Tweeted something that was interesting, or I found a particularity awesome Pin and wanted to share that on Facebook.

But Kevan was giving tips on how to actively search for and lookout for interesting things you think are worth sharing. Using sites like Panda, Nuzzel and Pocket let you do things like seeing all the links the people you follow on Twitter are talking about, or use save links for a later date. Definitely want to have a go at using some of his suggestions and better curate the things I share with you guys.

2 | Inside All the Newest Instagram Features to Boost Your Marketing

Hosted by Ash Read (@ashread_), this webinar was all about the new features on Instagram. If you’re on this awesome platform, then you’ll be aware of the new Stories feature. This really excited me, because I had been debating with myself as to start using Snapchat for blog things as well as personal things, or even try out Facebook Live (which scared me a lot, I won’t lie). But with Instagram Stories, I feel like it’s the perfect mixture of the two. Thank you, Instagram, for hearing my cries.

Ash gave some good tips on using the Stories feature and definitely prompted me into having a go myself. I think it’s a great way to show people the behind-the-scenes not only of life in general and what you happen to be getting up but also for behind-the-scenes for the blog. If you follow me on Instagram and have seen my first story, it was really giving people a sneak preview of the (then) upcoming blog post on How to Make a Giant Pompom, and how I was putting the post together. I really hope to utilize this more and jump on the Stories bandwagon.

3 | How to Get Your Content Seen in the Facebook News Feed

Oh my goodness. This was the webinar I was most looking forward to, and boy did I learn a lot. Facebook Pages are always a struggle. I’m sure you will agree on if you, too, have a page of some kind. But Brian Peters (@brian_g_peters) shares some incredible tips on using Facebook pages and how to get your content seen.

I think the biggest, most helpful, thing that I learnt from this webinar was about the dreaded Facebook algorithm. There was quite a bit to this, but the main thing that I picked up and have already started using (which you may or may not have noticed already), is having a strategy. Again, may seem simple, but it’s amazing how many simple things either slip your mind, or you don’t already implement.

Watch the webinar to get all the details, but just one thing I picked out of it was that if you post say 3 things in a row that don’t get much attention from your followers (i.e. not many likes, comments, or even reach), then the 4th thing you post isn’t going to be shown to that many people. But, if you post something that gets a lot of attention, then Facebook recognizes that as something the people want to see, and your next post will be shown to more people on their Newsfeeds. This semi blew my mind.

I always knew or rather was aware of, the idea that if people interact with your posts then more people will see them, but I never really thought that one post would affect the following post. It may seem unfair, but that’s how Facebook rolls. We just need to figure out how best to work around that. Since mixing up my posts a little bit already, I’ve already seen the reach of posts grow, which is super exciting. If you’re struggling with your Facebook page, I highly recommend taking a look at Brian’s webinar.

4 | Crawling, Walking, Running Analytics: The 3 Stages of Social Media Data

Another webinar from Kevan Lee (@kevanlee). In this one, he talked about the different stages of analytics. Analytics can be hard to get your head around – it’s something I am still trying to figure out! – but these different levels are really helpful to learn about. Kevan gives some good tips and even provides some excel spreadsheet templates that you can use yourselves. These help you analyse what’s happening with your social media and the posts you’re sharing.

I think my favourite thing about this webinar was how he emphasised that it didn’t matter what stage of the analytics game you were at. You can start with crawling and be there for ages and ages, and that’s totally okay. If you’re ready to move on to Walking, then he gives you the means to do that.

5 | 5 Quick Ways to Build a Far-Reaching PR & Outreach Strategy on Social

I’m not in PR, but this was still an interesting webinar from Buffer’s Hailley Griffis (@hailleymari). She was mainly talking about strategies for people in PR on using Social Media to better connect with others. There were 5 key parts: Follow, Research, Engage, Discover and Leverage. While it was definitely PR focused, there were still some good things that I got out of it. One of those things was her love of Twitter lists.

I knew that you could create lists on Twitter, but I didn’t really know why you would want to. Now I do. Hailley says she has heaps of lists on Twitter, some public, some private, but she uses them to gather together accounts in similar sectors. That way, she can go to one, e.g. Reporters, and see all the Tweets from all the reporters she followers. It condenses what you see to the list you’ve made; you don’t have to trawl through your entire Twitter feed to see one article you may or may not share.

To ignorant-about-lists me, this was ingenious. I’ve already started putting together some lists of similar accounts, such as my fellow NZ Bloggers, news accounts, lifestyle blogs etc to better see and connect with those people. To me, this makes so much more sense than everything being all together.

So what?

So I’ve learnt these 5 things (and more!) from Buffer’s social media webinars. But how does that help you? Well, if you just read this and do nothing, then it won’t.

But if these 5 things I’ve learnt spark some interest in you, then I really highly suggest taking a look at the webinars. Most are only a half-hour long, and they are full of great tips and tricks. You can find them all on their YouTube Channel, or check out the Buffer Blog. The blog has so many articles and helpful tips that you’re bound to find something that really benefits you and your social media life.

Did you catch Buffer’s social media webinars?

What have you learnt recently about social media?