Clearly, content marketing is everywhere. More and more startups get a hold of its huge potential and use it in their strategy. Today, it’s time for another success story, which will hopefully inspire your day.
Buffer is the largest social media management platform
You read that right. Buffer is a free app that helps you schedule posts for your Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+ profiles. In the beginning, it was only for Twitter posts. Now, it has over 1 million users. What is its secret? You’re about to find out.
Growth through content marketing
Buffer’s blog served as the number one growth tactic. More than 70% users have started using the app, because of the content they created. But what so special about it?
- First of all, Leo Wildrich, one of the founders, realized that the blog “it’s not for potential customers, it’s not for current customers, it’s for people who could potentially interact with potential customers“. They wanted to post useful articles, which will reach to influencers.
- Guest posting was a big part of their approach. That way, they are able to build relationships, with the audience and with other bloggers, too. When you are active on another blog, and also on social media, there are higher chances that the people you follow will share your content. Wildrich’s guest blogging alone managed to get over 100 000 subscribers.
- Knowing the audience they are writing for was as important. In this case, they realized that it was a bad decision to target the articles towards people that were already using the app. Instead, they focused their attention on potential customers, who would also get in touch with other potential customers.
- Consistency is key. If you write an article that gets shared hundreds of times, and then you stop writing, it’s not enough. This is a pretty common rule: constant posts make the reader want to come back for more, especially when the content is interesting and relevant.
If your company has a blog, that doesn’t mean you need to write solely about you. You can follow Buffer’s example and talk about experiences, give advice, or write interesting articles, which are fun and relatable to your readers.
How content marketing helped with customer success
Buffer proved to be very professional when they faced an unpleasant situation, and proved once again what a golden mine content marketing is. They were hacked, but they chose not to remain quiet, and managed to react fast. The result was a great amount of support from their customers. Instead of sending a standard email and ask them to change their password, they constantly posted on their social media pages, and on their blog updates on the hacking issue. That way, the customers knew exactly what was going on.
How is transparency integrated in their strategy
Transparency is not a common practice among companies. Still, Buffer believes in it. On the Buffer Open Blog, they post details about the company’s growth, reports, projects they’re working on, and employees’ salaries. Some people blame them somehow for this exposure, but on the long run, it proved to be a very successful strategy.
You should check out their Open Blog for yourself, but I will give you just a little preview of what you can find there. For example, the month of June brought them over 60 000 new users. Their happiness team has reached now 9 members, that managed to reply to 80% of emails within an hour. That is some great customer support! Buffer also focused on creating content, and on helping people share it., by making them suggestions. In June’s Content Marketing Report, you can see what are the stats for their most popular posts on Social, social stats for their social media profiles, interactions, and traffic.
What you should learn from Buffer
It’s one thing when someone tells you how important it is to create content for your company, no matter what’s your field of activity, and it’s another thing when you can actually see what amazing results it can bring to you, based on some other companies’ experience.
Courtney Seiter, the Head of Content Marketing at Buffer, said in an interview that she always wanted to be among words, even before she started working at Buffer. She also talked about how they manage the content, how they organize themselves. One thing she says they do to reach their target is to “make sure every piece we publish is thorough enough, unique enough and helpful enough to pass that test“.
Do you use Buffer? I find it extremely useful nowadays, especially because we can’t possibly be 24/7 near a device to post on social media. An app that does the job for us is just perfect. Also, do you know any startup success story through content marketing?
