Buffer is a great tool that helps your organize and schedule your tweets to maximize your shameless attempts to promote your website on twitter.
Well let’s face it, I’m on twitter but with only 39 followers its not really adding any hits to my website…well maybe one or two. What’s clear though is that good blog content without any social media promotion on twitterr , LinkedIN or facebook means I have to rely on Google bringing in the hits, that’s like starting a company with only 1 customer and then relying on that customer only. If I’m going to get 1000 hits/ month, then I’m going to have to get serious on twitter and start churning out content that aligns with what my followers on twitter want to see.
There is one problem, how do you know which links users are clicking and which links their not. What you need is analytics for your tweets, just the same as you need analytics for your blog. That’s where buffer comes in quite remarkably. There are other sites that provide tweet analytics but this one was one of my favorite. Buffer breaks down your tweets into individual tweets and lets you know how many people were reached with that tweet AND how many people clicked them. The main caveat though is that it only works for tweets your tweeted through buffer.
For example, my tweet below on fetch.io reached 40 people and was clicked 3 times. So this tweet generated 3 hits to my website. 3 hits isn’t so great, but 3 hits from 39 followers is quite high, usually I get zero. With this information I can then try to adjust the content to garner more hits..etc etc.
Buffer however was design for something else, for you to schedule your tweets. And here’s where it really excels. Buffer lets you tweet at odd hours of the day, when you’re at work or when you’re on holiday, allowing you to have a nearly persistent presence on twitter. Now it’s debatable if this is good or bad, but Buffer does allow you to distribute tweets over the day which is awesome.
Normally you’re on twitter at 10am, and you’ve got about 5-10 things to say or 20 links to post, rather than concentrating that into a short burst of 10 tweets in 10 minutes, you can distribute that to 10 tweets over 10 hours, the concept does help you tweet your content more efficiently and help you avoid spamming your followers feeds at 10 in the morning.
A quote from Buffers website:
Buffer makes your life easier with a smarter way to schedule tweets. Work out all your tweets at one point in time during the day. Then fill up your Buffer with your tweets and Buffer schedules them for you. Simply keep that Buffer topped up and you will then be tweeting consistently all day round, all week long.
Buffer does have paid accounts, which I’m not paying for because the free version is more than good enough. The concept of buffering tweets, together with tweet analytics all in one package, that’s FREE!! Too good to turn down.
In short Buffer is Definitely Recommended. Check them out @ www.bufferapp.com