Today, I’m very excited to have a powerful new integration ready for you. Twylah is a service that creates beautiful custom brand pages for your Tweets.

And as of this week, you can Buffer Tweets through their most powerful feature: Power Tweets.

Before we spill all the amazing stats that using Twylah and Buffer together will help you achieve, let’s take a quick tour of what Twylah allows you to do.

What is Twylah?

Twylah, in short is service, that makes your Tweets shine. If you sign up for their service, each of your Tweets that you send from now on, will be indexed and displayed on a beautiful brand page for your Tweets.

Here is an example of how this looks like:

This means, if you put your Twylah page as your Twitter profile link for example, visitors will get a much better overview about what your Tweets are all about. Instead of monotonous stream, that might only reach back a few hours, they will get a holistic overview about your Twitter presence.

Now on top of this, Twylah also gives each of your Tweets a designated page. This doesn’t only look amazing, it is also very useful. All around your Tweet, there are a ton of other interesting postings you have made, which relate to it.

How to give your Tweets exponential exposure

Now, purely by having all this related content on your Twylah page, Tweets you posted weeks or months ago, might become relevant again. They can gain traction and tend to have a much longer shelf-life than if they just circulate on Twitter.

The key to post your Tweets in that way is an amazing feature Twylah has built in. It is called a Power Tweet.

Your Tweet gets the look and feel of a small blogpost you have published:

How Power Tweets increase your Twitter engagement

Eric Kim, founder of Twylah, conducted some very interesting research with all Power Tweets, that are posted. The one thing he found is this:

“Power Tweet pages, by themselves increase engagement (as defined by time spent with your content) by 40X.”

Eric explained to me, that this is mostly triggered by the short snippets of text, surrounded by lots of other relevant content right on the Power Tweet page.

This means, that normally, people tend to spend 30 seconds with a piece of content, whereas if clicking on a Power Tweet, they tend to spend 3-5 minutes engaging with it. That’s powerful!

How Buffering increases your Tweets engagement

At the same time, here at Buffer, we analyzed well over 1 million updates posted through the service. We sat down and asked a similar question to Eric, do people click more or less often on Buffered Tweets? The results we published in our research were this:

“On average, people who start to use Buffer, see a 200% increase in clicks on links, retweet rate doubles and Klout scores increased 3.5 points. The data refers to using Buffer daily for at least 2 weeks.”

The main reasons for this we found were that Buffer posts your Tweets at optimal timing and makes creating consistent posting pattern more hassle-free.

All you have to do is Buffer interesting stuff, which of course, takes some doing, nonetheless can be done in a very timesaving way.

And now all together: Buffer Your Twylah Power Tweets

Buffer is now directly integrated into Twylah, which naturally combines the two above results. All you have to do is click the Buffer button, whenever you write a new Power Tweet from now on:

Being able to Buffer your Power Tweets, should give you a leading edge on Twitter and make your Tweets a lot more powerful.

Or to use Pam’s words, go and add some awesome-sauce to your Tweets:

You can give the new integration a go here. If you don’t have a Twylah account yet, just click the below button and you will get special treatment when signing up, getting your Twylah page in no time:

What do you think of Buffer and Twylah now being connected? Do you think this could help with your Tweeting? Let me know your thoughts below:

We realized one thing. Smarter sharing comes with posting algorithms, analytics and other tech improvements. At the same time, talking to lots of your and other awesome Buffer users, what makes sharing smarter, is to be able to do it right where you actually see the great content you come across.

That’s why we went ahead and built a brand new Buffer experience for your browser. Install one of the extensions and see the magic happening, wherever you are:

Get your Buffer browser extension

Each of these extensions is packed with brand new functionality to allow you to Buffer right from Twitter, Facebook, Google Reader and many other places. Let’s dig in:

Add to Buffer directly from Facebook

Which site do we spend the most time with every day? – is what we asked ourselves. Clearly one of the sites that came up a lot is Facebook above lots of others. It is a great place to discover new links, videos and photos.

Being able to share them in an efficient and straight forward way was always tricky. With the brand new Buffer integration, feel free to Buffer several updates without flooding your friends stream.

1. Buffer your status updates

You can now Buffer your status updates. Is it is too late or too early for any of your friends to see your update?

Just Buffer it:

2. Buffer images from Facebook

Also, from now on, whenever you click the share button on a picture, you can Buffer it. The best part? It Buffers the actual picture:

If you click the Buffer button on pictures, it will take the picture instead of a link and you can share it also on Twitter or LinkedIn right away:

3. Buffer links and status updates from Facebook

Of course, you can also just Buffer status updates with Buffer buttons on each of your sharing boxes

Reshare a status update with Buffer

And it of course also works when Buffering links you came across on Facebook:

Buffer directly from Twitter.com

What’s up there right after browsing Facebook for our daily Social Media activities? Tweeting of course, is what we thought.

On our hunt to allow you to share smart and efficiently wherever you browse, we went ahead and added Buffering functionality right into Twitter for you.

With Twitter.com, you can now add new posts to your Buffer without having to move to another tab or opening a dashboard.

There are 4 key ways you can now add to your Buffer right from Twitter.com:

1. Buffer retweets

You can now Buffer retweets, so you can share more of the great content of your Twitter stream. And all that without ever overwhelming your friends and followers, having Buffer space out your posts for you:

2. Buffer new Tweets

You can also Buffer new Tweets from now on. Just open the Tweet box and start writing a new update:

Pro tip: This is especially handy if you want to post to different Twitter usernames, than you aren’t currently logged in. Just hit Buffer and toggle the other avatars and off you go:

3. Buffer blogposts via the Tweet button

One very handy feature is that if you now, click the Tweet button on any page, you will also be able to Buffer the post that you were reading:

Google Reader & Buffer

Now, that Facebook and Twitter were covered we thought some more. Which places on the web do you find awesome content so you should be able to Buffer from it? Google Reader of course – was our answer.

Whilst Buffer’s browser extension was already working inside Google Reader, we have now also put some neat Buffer buttons right inside your Google Reader. At the bottom of each post, you will now have a slick Buffer button available:

There is also a subtler icon available for you, so you can Buffer items in a more compressed view on Google Reader:

Reddit and HackerNews now Bufferable

As the last addition to complete the full guide of mastering the new Buffer browser extensions, we have added some neat add-ons to HackerNews and Reddit.

Reddit, tagged as The Front Page Of The Internet, now carries a subtle Buffer button on each item, so you can add it straight to your queue:

HackerNews, probably the most popular news site for startups and coding topics, has gotten a similar enhancement from us here:

Our most important goal is to let you Buffer from anywhere you go on the web. With these latest additions, I hope we have made a big step in that directions.

Go grab the new extensions for your browser here:

Get your Buffer browser extension

With these new additions, we hope Buffering is taken to a whole new level. What do you think of these additions? Where else do you want to Buffer from?

This is a guest post by Gregory Ciotti, a contributing Buffer Blog columnist. More about him at the bottom of the post. 

Twitter has fast become not only a very important part of the web as a whole, but also a very integral part to how we consume important and breaking news.

Twitter users are increasingly not only getting updates from those whom they elect to follow, but also by choosing to consume new information by searching for a topic in addition to following accounts.

The Twitter search portal now receives over 1.6 billion (yes, billion) searches a day. Twitter has also added things like “trending topics”, and major search engines have included option to search public social streams (such as Google Real Time).

With all of this potentially important information and news being spread on Twitter, how do users assess what information is reliable and what isn’t?

Fortunately, a recent research study conducted by Carnegie Mellon University reveals those answers.

Does This Really Matter?

You might be thinking, “Does reliability really matter on Twitter? What’s the worse that could happen, I get tricked into thinking a celebrity is dead when they really aren’t?”

While fake celebrity deaths and other pranks taking over Twitter’s trending topic are of little long term concern, what is a concern is the increasing reliance on social media for important news items.

This includes things like

1. Natural disasters (and subsequent aid efforts)
2. Politics & campaigns
3. Breaking news (think: protests, World news, scientific breakthroughs)

While I’ve personally covered studies on what influences users opinions on websites (in particular, blogs) on my research on blog design, social media is a different ballpark (since, by nature, people trust the Twitter website as a whole).

The Study

The study itself included 256 participants, ranging from 18-60 years old (average age of 32). All participants were required to have recently “read tweets” (ie: they used Twitter recently), 91% having read them in the last week, and 74% reading them at least once a day.

They found that people were not very concerned with credibility for users they already follow, and more concerned with tweets & users they encountered via search.

In addition, the results of the study found that people were most concerned with credibility for topics like news, politics, emergencies, and consumer information (product information & reviews).

That last one is especially important for business owners to keep in mind.

Last but certainly not least, the researchers found that there were 10 aspects which made tweets appear more reliable to their participants.

These were then grouped and scored on a scaled form [1-5] on how much of an impact they had, with 5 being the highest.

Let’s dig into their findings, shall we?

What really does make a tweet more trustworthy? Here are the results:

1.) The post was retweeted by someone you trust [4.08]

This is probably the most subjective of all of the measurements from the study, and yet, it’s still no surprise to see it at number 1.

Trustworthiness is a quintessential psychological element of social influence.

Quite simply, trust has been found to be the biggest factor for influencing someone, online or otherwise.

In this example, seeing Hiten Shah, a true startup expert retweet something about startups, immediately adds a huge amount of credibility to the Tweet. And naturally I will be inclined to click through much more frequently.

No need to overthink this one: be trustworthy, don’t link people to suspicious web pages, don’t take advantage of their willingness to follow you to promote garbage (or constant affiliate links), and above all else, only connect yourself, your name, and your brand to projects you are proud of.

2.) The author appears to be (or is) a subject expert [4.04]

Authority has long been a proven technique for increasing influence.

As covered in Cialdini’s classic work that covers the psychology of influence, the concept of Authority is listed as one of the 6 key ways to be more influential.

Reason being, people seem to follow the advice of people they perceive to be as “experts”, even to extremes as found in the Milgram experiment.

On Twitter, positioning yourself as an expert largely has to do with the credentials you outline in your profile, your connecting website, and your following.

Dave Larson from @TweetSmarter has worked over 5 years on becoming the go to expert about all things Twitter and Social Media. It is no surprise that his Tweets, who are always very clearly on topic, are one of the most reshared and clicked on links.

Short version: be focused and work on becoming an expert!

Know that large numbers (such as followers) doesn’t always equal expert status, it’s more about showcasing your accomplishments in the short amount of space you have on Twitter.

3.) You follow the author [4.00]

Clarification here: this means that when you see a tweet via search or a retweet, as obviously you need to be following people to see their tweets.

So, if someone retweets another person’s tweet (with a link to an article), this study has shown that trust is exponentially higher if you already follow the original author.

Clearly another good reason pick up more Twitter followers, beyond the additional clicks and retweets of your content.

4.) Tweet contains URL you’ve clicked through before [3.93]

This finding spells out two implications in my eyes:

1. You should be tweeting a few stories from “big sites” (think sources for news, NYTimes etc.)
2. You should be working on getting your own site to be recognizable

It’s also been found that full URLs (when seen on Twitter) get more clicks than shortlinks that don’t reveal the address, especially if the person clicking isn’t familiar with you (or your brand).

Given this result, you might want to try throwing in a few articles a week from sites practically everyone had heard of, your favorite newspaper or large media source being a good place to start.

5.) Author is someone you’ve heard of [3.93]

Again with authority, this highlights the importance of building things outside of your Twitter account (you are, aren’t you? ;))

Most importantly, you need to be getting your name out there in your niche, which is far more important to your business than large exposure in any old place.

People often need to see/hear a name or brand multiple times before they remember it, this is called effective frequency.

A good place to start with building your brand/name is with content marketing, including running a blog for your business and investing some time in guest posting.

6.) Account has a verification seal [3.92]

I thought this one was particularly interesting, as I’ve always suspected that a verification seal does have a pretty solid impact.

Nowadays, you don’t have to be a celebrity in a traditional sense to get verified by Twitter, if you can build a fairly influential presence online, you are likely to get invited or able to apply to get verified and have the seal show up on your account.

You’ll notice that a lot of these aspects are based a lot off of what you’ve accomplished outside of Twitter… building authority is a very involved process, and includes much more than building a popular Twitter following!

7.) Author often tweets on the topic [3.74]

This is one of the most actionable aspects of the entire study.

This is because not only does tweeting about a very specific topic help with your credibility and trustworthiness, it’s also good practice for your business to use on Twitter.

You’ll notice that great Twitter brand pages like the KISSmetrics Twitter page always include links from other sites as well as their own, but the focus remains solitary: in this instance, all of the tweets are about analytics & conversions.

The advantage to doing this is that you start to become a resource for those in your niche, and not just a blatant self-promoter of your own content.

The Buffer Twitter account is also “guilty” of using this strategy very well, with links to Twitter + Blogging content from all over the web, making them a great account to follow to get more than just “Buffer updates”.

8.) Author’s tweets frequently include similar content [3.71]

As I mentioned above, this is one of the more interesting aspects for me, as it’s one that is completely under your control.

It seems as though Twitter followers enjoy users who have a “focus” with their Tweets, and it makes sense.

You might read a newspaper to get “the news” on a variety of topics, but do you ever do that with websites?

Do you ever go to Spotify in hopes of watching a video?

Will you head over to SlideShare in order to listen to music?

Similarly, do you visit your favorite Twitter Tips blog (hint: it’s this one ;)) to read articles about fashion or cooking vegan food?

Of course you don’t!

That’s why you need to give your followers what they want: your focus needs to be on promoting content your followers will enjoy reading, and that includes content other than your own stuff.

Creating a Twitter page that becomes a resource for anyone in your niche, and you’ll have “flocks” of followers heading your way with no promotion necessary.

9.) Author’s user image includes a personal photo [3.70]

This is another interesting one, especially for brand pages.

I’d imagine that when you are a huge national brand, this doesn’t really matter as much.

But what if you aren’t?

Some brands which revolve largely around one figurehead (even if in reality they are a run by a multiple person team) can get away with running a “headshot” of their lead member.

You can see this in action on the Copyblogger Twitter page:

If your presence online is really tied to you as a person, it makes sense to do this; if it’s a little more ‘faceless’ (see: the KISSmetrics blog, consisting of mostly guest posts), it’s better to use your brand’s logo.

Overall though, I would take this data as a sign that personal accounts are important in addition to brand accounts; I wouldn’t go around changing your brand accounts to have a ‘face’ in them, better to promote your brand, which is what your Twitter page should ideally be about.

10.) Author is often mentioned or retweeted [3.69]

Last on our list of influence, and I believe rightfully so, as this one is simply the culmination of those mentioned above.

An expert who provides a quality resource on their Twitter page, who tweets consistently about reliable, informative content, is simply bound to be mentioned and retweeted often.

Don’t focus on retweets and mentions all that much: focus on creating an influential and useful Twitter page, and these results will come naturally.

The Psychology of Being Influential on Twitter

I’ve noticed throughout this study that a lot of the aspects of a “trustworthy” Tweet or account has a lot to do with the 6 principle of “Influence”, noted by Robert Cialdini.

Specifically, 5 of the 6 pillars of influence are especially prevalent in the characteristics of a trustworthy account or tweet:

Social Proof: Simply enough, people look towards others very often in determining what to do (and if something is trustworthy).

Noted in the study are quite a few examples on the importance of authority and “proof” of that authority,  specifically, aspects like the “Verification Seal” have been shown to be excellent forms of social proof on Twitter, along with a healthy following and numerous mentions and tweets about the author.

Reciprocity: This comes in the form of “giving” people something.

On Twitter, this is present in tweeting about quality content.

This includes both your own content and that of others, you need to be providing value on Twitter for your followers if you hope to keep them engaged (no more buzzwords, I promise ;)).

Create a resource and people will reward you with retweets and increase clickthroughs to your links: you’ve earned it by providing value to them.

Commitment and Consistency: One of the most obvious connections from “Influence” to this Twitter study was the importance of consistency: giving people similar content over time was shown to increase trustworthiness.

If you constantly tweet about sociology, social psychology or psychological research, you will begin to be seen as a trustworthy resource on those topics.

However, if you extend your reach and start tweeting about men’s fashion, dog training and celebrities, you’ll be seen as a jack of all trades and a master of none, and thus not as trustworthy on any one topic (and you’ll likely be viewed as a spammer).

Dominate your niche with commitment and consistency, and you’ll be rewarded with influence.

Authority: Another obvious connection to make from Cialdini’s book and this study is with the importance of authority.

People will tend to obey authority figures, even under some conditions where it is more than obvious that they shouldn’t.

Take this crazy story on ‘Authority’: A doctor was once working with a patient who was having ear problems, when all of a sudden he was called away to an emergency in the ER and was forced to leave hasty instructions for the nurse.

He ended up writing: “Patient needs medication (it was a liquid) in R Ear”.

What he meant was the patient needed the medication applied to his Right Ear (R Ear).

Instead, the nurse, not questioning the doctor’s apparent instructions on the note, applied the medication to the patient’s REAR!

The patient didn’t even bother to speak up, even though he knew it was ear problems he was having!

Authority is a huge aspect of being trustworthy, enough to result in crazy examples as described above, so make sure you are building authority with your brand (just don’t go giving medical advice ;)).

Liking: Is it any surprise that people find people they “like” to be more trustworthy?

Not at all, and in fact, that’s one of the main advantages to social media marketing: really connecting with your customers.

Companies go all out in order to be seen as “likable” these days on social media, the above being a fairly funny example of this.

We’ve also noted in the study that people trust accounts with actual photos more than a logo in many instances: it’s easier for people to like other people than it is for them to like brands.

Some bigger Twitter accounts I know like to use things like “Quotables” and other bite sized tweets (that don’t include links) to better connect with their followers: your content doesn’t always have to be promotional in order to have an effect.

Over To You

Only one question today…

What characteristics do YOU look for when deciding to trust an author or an individual tweet?

Any warning signs you tend to avoid?

t the same time, if you are trying to make your workflow more efficient, getting by with just Twitter.com is a little difficult, you probably already know this.

As of a few days ago, we have therefore added a brand new Chrome extension that will give you a great new experience right on Twitter.com. With the Buffer button inside Twitter, you can add retweets to your queue, post to multiple profiles and lots more. Here are the top 4 features for you to turn Twitter.com into your most amazing Social Media tool with Buffer:  

1.) Post old style Retweets at optimal time

Ever since Twitter introduced the new way of retweeting someone, it became very hard to add a comment to your retweets. You can also no longer show your appreciation for others by mentioning them in your retweet easily.

With our latest changes to the browser extension, this should all work super efficiently now. All you have to do is click the Buffer retweet button and add another update to your queue to be posted at optimal timing later on:

2.) Post to multiple profiles from Twitter.com

Another helpful tip, that I have actually only discovered after using the extension for a while, is that you can now post to multiple Twitter or Social Media profiles right from Twitter.com.

Start writing a Tweet or a retweet and add it to your queue with just one click:

And when you do so, you can easily add it straight to multiple profiles you have connected to your Buffer account. Check out the example below here:

3.) Use the Tweet button on any website to Buffer

Another addition, that isn’t actually just limited to Twitter.com is that the extension also works on any page, that has a Tweet button installed.

Buffering the great articles you find, instead of Tweeting them right away, can be a huge win to get more engagement on your postings:

So, whenever you click Buffer instead, one more post lands in your queue and is ready to go out when more followers will see it:

Of course, installing the official Buffer button for your blog, will make sharing that article even more efficient.

4.) Buffer normal Tweets with one click

Lastly, you can also just start Buffering normal Tweets, so you can get all the additional analytics that Buffer has available for you. This includes number of retweets, clicks on links, mentions and favorites all saved for you:

You can of course do the exact same thing with replies, so your Twitter stream isn’t either 10 replies or 10 content Tweets in a row, but rather a mixture of the two:

How much are you using Twitter.com? Have you thought about giving the Twitter.com interface a full try? I hope with the new Buffer browser extension it will make your life a lot easier and most importantly save you tons of time when interacting on Social Media.

What are your thoughts on these new features? Any other places on the web you would like to Buffer from or to? Let us know below.

What an incredible journey looking back. It was a little over one year, in December 2010, that Joel first launched Buffer from his bedroom in the UK. Since then things have changed upside down – lots of times.

Today is a huge moment, and we wanted to take a time-out from our busy days and say thanks. Thanks to you and everyone else being on board of this crazy Buffer journey so far.

As of today, you and all Buffer users together have just published 10,000,000 updates via Buffer.  And our growth continues to move faster than ever before. We are now posting around 1 new update every second.

That’s well over 80,000 updates every day, or 2,400,000 updates every week.

I sometimes wonder how many books could be written by now with all those updates! Doing a little research all of you are writing 4 copies of Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace every day, or well over 400 copies so far, with one book having well over 3,000 pages.

Thank you.

Where we stand to today could not have been possible without the kindness we see coming in every day from you and all the raving Buffer fans.

The number of supportive Tweets that reach us on the @bufferapp Twitter account day in day out. The amazing wall posts on our Buffer wall. Or the incredible number of friendly emails sent to us, it’s what makes it fun and well worth getting out of bed every day.

So, if anything, please keep doing that! :) Hit us up @bufferapp whenever you have a problem or even if you just want to chat on a rainy Saturday afternoon. Email us with whatever you have in mind to hello@bufferapp.com and we will be right on it replying to you.

Or if you want to get in touch more directly with the Buffer team, just Tweet us. Joel is at @joelgascoigne, Tom is @tommoor and I’m @leowid.

Really, I would want to go through the whole of our userbase, each and every one and send you a personal thank you note, if only I could get days to have more than 24 hours!

Adding awesomeness to Buffer daily – Tom Ashworth is on board

As things are going well and we are scaling out our daily production, we have also added an awesome new person to our team.

Tom Ashworth has joined us last week. Tom is a full stack developer from the UK, studying at Cardiff University right now.

And Tom is just amazing, he hacks away on the latest Buffer features and at the same time also works on helping out users via support. He also writes a very cool blog I enjoy reading.

Say hello to Tom @phuunet on Twitter and sneak in some feature suggestions, he might just be the one building them for you!

Buffer’s Happiness Hero – Alyssa Aldersley

Someone you have probably already been in touch with lots on Twitter or via email is Alyssa Aldersley. She is our official Happiness Hero, delivering happiness all day long for you.

Alyssa is also very vocal on her personal Twitter account @alyssaaldersley, not just on the @bufferapp account.

It’s really amazing to have her on board, the way she is able to handle requests either via email or Twitter is beyond awesome. Try for yourself, shoot us a note via email and get a super nice response from Alyssa yourself! (In fact, I myself sometimes email our support, just to hear some nice words from Alyssa.)

We’re really lucky to have you all on board. The best thank you we can probably give you is to make sharing content on the web even easier, more awesome and efficient with Buffer. And that’s what we committed to do, keep an eye out!

Over to you now, since really, this post is all about you. Is there anything you would like to see in Buffer in the future? Or any other thoughts you just feel like sharing with us?

The internet is a big place. For a long time, I found the task of organizing and remembering all the articles, images, videos, posts, tweets, and sites to be formidable. The mass of information only continues to grow, but I have latched on to 10 free tools that help me organize my online journey. 5 are common, and 5 are just getting big on the scene. I hope you can find some that help you as well.

The Famous 5

1.) Evernote

I have been using Evernote on and off for a couple years now, intensively since January. It is the single most useful tool I’ve used for organizing and remembering online activity, notes, and ideas.

I use the Evernote web clipper to send pages directly to my account, which syncs easily between web, desktop, and iPhone. In fact, I’m writing this post on Evernote!

Coolest feature? – Evernote recognizes written text.

2.) Buffer

I’m a pretty new Buffer user, but so far I love the service. It makes your Twitter usage much more efficient and valuable. Buffer allows you to schedule your Tweets and Facebook posts at important times throughout the day. I don’t want to sit on twitter all day, but I also don’t want to only send tweets out 5 at a time in the morning and at night.

With Buffer, your problems are solved! Use the Chrome extension to grab web pages and convert them to tweets.

Coolest feature? – The main one, an ability to schedule your social media output.

3.) Flipboard

My brother turned me on to Flipboard, and it’s been my news and information source ever since. It connects your social media accounts and interests in to a customized e-zine layout.

Flipboard is easy to use, navigate, and share. Star your favorite tweets, instagram pics, and email news sites to remember.

Coolest feature? – Beautiful layout and navigation. Disclaimer: For now, only available on iPhone and iPad.

4.) Google Reader

This is the best tool I’ve found for consolidating all your RSS feeds in one place. For Gmail users, the layout is similar and easier to navigate. There are days where I will read 50+ articles in under 15 minutes, scanning through and picking out the ones that stand out to me. Great articles are starred for later reference.

FYI, Buffer connects seamlessly with reader, making it easy to re-tweet articles and connect with authors. Who doesn’t like to be re-tweeted?

Coolest feature? – All the sharing options you’d want, e.g. Buffer, Twitter, Facebook, Google+, email, etc.

5.) Amazon Wish List

Specifically, the browser extension. As you travel the internet, you find products and gifts for yourself or others. You think, “Hey this would be nice for so and so”.

Click the wish list button on your browser, and it’s automatically added to your Amazon Wish List, which can be shared with anyone. Never forget a gift or future purchase again.

Coolest feature? – Create multiple lists for organizing the goods.

The 5 New Tools You Need To Know About

6.) IFTTT

I joined a couple weeks ago, and this is my new best friend on the internet! IFTT stands for IF THIS THEN THAT, and you can create application tasks centered around answering IFTT.

For instance, IF THIS (happens) e.g. I take an Instagram photo, THEN THAT (happens), e.g. said photo is automatically saved to my Dropbox account. I set one up that will automatically sends a thank you tweet when someone follows me.

Coolest feature? – There are literally hundreds of ready-made “recipes” for you to initiate right now.

7.) BlissControl

This handy site allows you to control all of your social settings in one place. Change your profile pictures, bio, recover passwords, and more. You can use the service for 13 social media sites, including all your favorites (Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and Pinterest).

Coolest feature? – The streamlined nature of the application makes it a huge time-saver.

8.) SocialBro

This provides incredibly (almost overwhelming) statistics for your Twitter account. From the beginning, Social Bro syncs your followers and provides up-to-the-minute stats, custom searches, insights, and more.

Like I said, it’s a ton of useful information, and I’m still wading through it myself!

Coolest feature? – Shows the best times to tweet based on your followers! So sync that up with Buffer and you’re in business.

9.) Pocket (formerly Read It Later)

This is a wonderful tool for simply grabbing an article or web clip that you want to read later (see what they did there?!), but don’t want to add the entire site to your RSS reader. Pocket, which has just launched yesterday, provides a clean, easy to read layout, and also can link up with your smartphone. All your future reading items in place, ready when you’re waiting at the DMV.

Coolest feature? – Pocket also directly integrates with Buffer, Evernote, Box.net and lots of other great sharing options.

10.) WorkFlowy

If you are the kind of person that always wants to be in on the next cool app, consider WorkFlowy for your list-making, note-taking, project management, and brainstorming.

The layout and flow has a clean, undisturbed look that will allow you to focus on what you actually want to be working on. You can also use it to collaborate with others.

Coolest feature? – Use Twitter-esque commands, i.e. hashtags and @co-worker, to search and communicate within your WorkFlowy.

What do you think?

I hope this helps you find a few (or 10) new tools for navigating the glut of information online. Do you use any of these tools already? What tools do you love that we didn’t list? Share your thoughts in the comments!

About the author: 

Matt Ragland is a writer who ranges on topics from productivity, social media, spirituality, creativity, and outdoor adventure. He is the Assistant Director at Camp Rockmont, and enjoys trail running, football, and coffee. Check out his blog, then follow him on Twitter and/or Google+.

Instagram, Pinterest, 9GAG are the top sites who have embraced this and made it super simple to work with pictures in an enjoyable way.

At the same time, pictures on Facebook for example, continue to drive the most engagement. And frankly, we can’t blame anyone.

Pictures are just awesome!

They carry a message over to you in just a second, this is certainly a very welcome development I feel.

So today, we have added Buffering of pictures for all of your Social Media profiles in Buffer. You can easily add them in, for Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn and share the picture awesomeness with your friends and followers.

Adding pictures to your Buffer queue with one click

Whenever you are adding a new update for your Buffer, all you have to do is click the little photo icon on the bottom left. This works of course for both the Buffer browser extensions and the web interface.

You can then either drag and drop a picture in or click and find the picture from your computer. It works just like you would expect or how you upload a picture to Facebook already.

Adding your comment and links to photos

Now, you can of course easily add a description and links to your pictures, to make it more engaging for your friends and followers. Any added link will still show up, it obviously just won’t expand into thumbnail and preview:

Adding a bunch of pictures for your week is very easy, here is how this then looks like:

Why should you Buffer pictures?

Whilst we have been testing this Buffer picture feature internally here at Buffer HQ, we found something quite stunning and surprising.

Posting pictures alongside a link, instead of thumbnails and preview gets us a lot more engagement. Of course, this appears to be obvious, yet at the same time, it isn’t something I tended to do.

Now, whenever I see a blogpost with a compelling picture, I rather go and share the picture itself alongside the link, just because this attracts a lot more engagement, clicks and shares.

Here is an example of when this worked very well with a blogpost:

That’s it again, I hope this feature will make sharing for you a little easier and smarter again. We have lots of plans to make picture sharing even easier for the future, I think this will be huge.

Over to you now. Have you been sharing more pictures lately than a few years ago? How do you think this can help with your Twitter and Facebook results?

Photocredit: owenbrown

“When is the best time for me to Tweet?”

To get an awesome and accurate answer for this question isn’t always easy. So I am very excited to tell you about an awesome new partnership we have done recently.

Teaming up Tweriod & Buffer is one of those matches you have probably already thought about once.

Tweriod analyses your Twitter followers, past Tweets and the people you follow and gives you the best times to Tweet.

Buffer lets you easily share Tweets, Facebook posts and LinkedIn updates at set times. All you do is click “add to Buffer” and one more update is in the queue.

A lot of people have already told us this: “You know, I first go and get my Tweriod report, then I take those times and set them up inside Buffer.”

And now, you can do this with one click in Tweriod, you are able to start Tweeting at optimal times inside Buffer.

How to get your best Tweeting times in Tweriod

Tweriod is one of those one-click setup apps. All you have to do is clicks “sign-in” with Twitter and you are done.

The app will automatically generate a report for you and show you the best times to Tweet. What I really love is that it gives you different results for different days of the week. Just like you would expect.

Click on “My account analysis” and you will immediately get the all your results displayed on one page:

Setting up your optimal posting times inside Buffer

This always felt very natural. Now you know your best times to Tweet. Why not start Tweeting then? By integrating Buffer right into Tweriod, this is now just one button away:

You can now see your existing Buffer schedule on the left and then your new Tweriod times on the right. By clicking “send to Buffer”, your times will be updated with the new, optimized Tweriod times.

In case you have a different Buffering pattern setup for your weekend, as you can see below, Tweriod also allows you to setup those times.

And that’s it, you are done. Of  course, as your followers grow, your optimal posting times will change. You can just go into Tweriod and request a new analysis anytime for this.

The Tweriod algorithm – why it rocks & what you need to know about it

Although there exist other algorithms out there, I am a big fan of how Tweriod approaches the problem. They have designed one of the most transparent and effective algorithms to come up with your optimal timings.

Here is a quick breakdown of the key components:

• Analyse the performance of your past 200 Tweets: This is pretty standard for most timing optimization apps. Getting your past 200 Tweets and see at what times they performed best, is a great start I believe.

• Analyse your followers and their past Tweets: Now this is where it gets interesting. Tweriod, also goes ahead and looks at the performance of your followers past Tweets. Whenever they Tweet the most and are therefore online, will be a major aspect of your optimal Tweeting times.

• Exclude automation apps such as Twitterfeed, dlvr.it, etc.: Here is where it gets even more interesting. Tweriod, on top of analyzing your and your followers past Tweets, excludes any Tweets coming automation apps. The reason is very simple, a user isn’t online if a Tweet goes out via this app, so any results would be very deceiving.

• Get different suggested schedules for different days: As already pointed out, your best Tweeting times are different for each day. And Tweriod is one of the few apps, who both shows you this and lets you schedule the different days in inside Buffer.

Ok, that’s it. I have to say, I am very excited about this integration. I believe it will help lots of Twitter user out there to get more engagement on their Tweets – with just one smart click.

What about you? What do you think of this integration and optimal timing of your Tweets? Let me know your thoughts below.

Here is how it all started. I was super excited, when I opened my inbox one day and discovered this:

Gilt, a website with accessories for only the classiest of gents, was giving a huge discount to people based on their Klout score.

Over the years, I’ve built up a following because World of Warcraft machinima and music. With over 125 thousand subscribers and 55 million video views, I figured my Klout score would be high enough to nab myself a sick discount. I logged into Klout for the first time in months to discover, to my horror, that my Klout score had dropped significantly during my absence. I still got a pretty sweet discount (I used it to buy the classy shoes on the right), but not as much as if I had kept up with social media over the past few years.

How Refined Gentleman’s Shoes Led Me to Buffer

Not so different from you probably, my day job keeps my pretty busy. Unfortunately I just don’t have the time anymore to make time-consuming movies and keep fans up-to-speed with the latest and greatest gaming news. My Facebook and Twitter interactions were strong but had significantly declined over the past year and a half, specifically because I just wasn’t posting as much.

And then I discovered Buffer. The concept knocked my classy socks off. You mean I can get home from work, enjoy my dinner and then queue a few dozen posts while enjoying a gentlemanly cigar? Sold! I’ve been using Buffer religiously for the past few weeks and already I’m seeing significant improvements.

How to Increase Facebook Fan Engagement

My formula was simple—find or create focused news I knew my fans would enjoy, then share it with them at the times they want to enjoy it. I did a bit of research on the best times to post updates to Twitter and Facebook (KISSmetrics has a handy infographic on this) and then created unique schedules for both networks that published my posts at those exact times. Then I simply added my news to my buffer queue before bed.

As you can see from my Facebook Insights, I went from about 150 interactions per day to well over 700—that an increase of over 200%. What’s more, my weekly total reach grew by over 10%, and my constant updates actually increased my fan count and number of likes (I was afraid my techniques would be considered spammy, but I realized just the opposite).

How to Increase Twitter Followers with Buffer

I’m even enjoying significant improvements with Twitter @oxhorn, and Buffer is the only step I have changed in my social strategy. Buffer’s handy analytics shows me the exact number of clicks my tweets enjoy, allowing me to discern which type of content my fans like best. Now, I don’t have to stay up until 1:00 AM to take advantage of what is apparently a great time of day to tweet.

In the short space of time I’ve started with Buffer, my Klout score has increased an entire point and is steadily improving, which means the next time they offer a gentlemanly perk, perhaps a single malt bottle of Glenfiddich, well hey, I’m golden.

After experimenting on my personal networks, I’ve implemented this strategy at work. I’m the marketing manager at buuteeq, purveyor of hotel web design and digital marketing, and am in charge of their social strategy. After using Buffer at work for just one week, we’ve seen an increase in everything—likes, fans, followers, mentions and retweets. Also, our company’s Klout score has jumped 2 whole points.

You might say that I’m experiencing these results simply because I’m more active. And that’s true. But I’m not just more active, I’m selectively active. If I tweeted 6 times in 60 seconds, I would get little benefit from those tweets, direct far less traffic, and probably annoy my followers enough to unfollow me.

Instead, by using Buffer to spread out my news over the course of the day, and at the exact moment my fans check Facebook when they wake up in the morning, check Twitter during a lunch break or get home from school or work, I optimize my CTR and encourage more interaction.

Oh, and since you asked, here’s another pair of shoes I bought with my Klout perk. Ron Burgundy has nothing on me.

—

Brandon “Oxhorn” Dennis is the marketing manager at buuteeq during the day, WoW enthusiast and cigar savant at night, and professional beard and suspender model on the weekends. You can see him live every Thursday night at 7:00 PM Pacific during his show, Scotch & Smoke Rings. Track his class on Facebook at facebook.com/OxhornPage and on Twitter @Oxhorn and be sure to subscribe to his classy blog.

One thing I learnt: People don’t share your articles simply because of the great content. Unless you already have a following of passionate readers, the “post it and forget it” strategy tends not to work. If you feel your post is “tweet-worthy,” you need to take whatever actions you can to get it in front of as many people as possible.

It starts by optimizing your post for sharing.

With MyTweetLinks, a WordPress plugin that lets you provide for your readers short one line phrases pre-set for quick sharing. It helps you queue up bite-size content (excerpts from your post) that visitors can easily tweet or add to Buffer.

Download the plugin here: MyTweetLinks

You have probably already added instant sharing to your blog via social buttons (if you’re smart, you’ve installed Buffer’s DiggDigg. But even then your readers are forced to either share the post’s headline or write their own recommendation. MyTweetLinks makes the experience of sharing your content very easy.

With sample tweets are already displayed, the reader picks their favorite and easily posts to Twitter.

You’re creating a new reason to share – without them having to write something from scratch. The goal should be to reduce any friction before the share.

1.) How to set up MyTweetLinks on your WordPress blog

Installing MyTweetLinks couldn’t be easier. Just go to Plugins > Add New in your WordPress admin and search for “MyTweetLinks”. From there you can install and activate the plugin in just a few clicks.

Alternatively, you can download it right from the WordPress plugin database.

2.) Customize your version of MyTweetLinks

MyTweetLinks was designed to fit the design of any blog. From the Options screen you can customize the heading text, the background color, and whether or not you want to include Buffer buttons (highly recommended).

From the options page you can also choose your method of implementation. When set to “Show below post content” the box of tweet links automatically appears at the bottom of your post (above comments).

Alternatively, you can choose “Shortcode” as your method of implementation. Now you can place the list of tweet links anywhere in your post or the theme itself.

Your mileage may vary, but I recommend displaying the tweet links at the bottom of your posts. After reading, your readers are ready to take action and it makes it easy where they don’t have to scroll up to the top to share.

However, when you post the tweet links at the top of your post, you’re presenting your readers with a summary of the content to come.

3.) Adding tweet links to your articles

With MyTweetLinks installed, your post-entry screen has an extra box below the main body content text area. After you’ve written your blog post, scroll down and start entering your tweet links. Just enter a sentence or phrase you want your readers sharing (see tweet recommendations below) and press “Add New” to lock it in. Rinse and repeat for as many links as you need.

That’s it, you’re done! You’ve primed the pump. Your readers are now much more likely to share your content.

As a blogger, you know how to optimize the message. Don’t rely completely on the reader to craft an effective tweet. You know what will work. You know what keywords help you build social SEO. Below are a few suggestions on crafting quality tweet links.

4.) How to create winning tweets with MyTweetLinks

• Choose your words carefully. Use keywords that encourage clicks.
• Resist the temptation to spam.  Stick with key quotes from (or descriptions of) your posts.
• Mention others. Does your post quote or link to another source? Give them a shout out with one of your tweet links.
• Use hashtags.
• Test. Test. Then test again.

Pro Tip: Eat your own dog food and share your top quotes

• After publishing your post, click the “Buffer” button on each link to add it to your own queue.
• The tweet half-life is roughly 3 hours. Get them with a different hook on the second chance tweet (and third, fourth, and fifth chances).

And as we’ve discovered with DiggDigg, the more visible the sharing buttons, the more likes and tweets your posts will receive. Couple that with pre-packaged, sharable sound-bites and you can imagine how many more people would share your content.

I hope you find the plugin useful in promoting your blog. I’d love to hear any feedback, or ideas for improvement in the comments below. Thanks!

About the author:

This is a guest post by Jordan Lyall from Twin River Labs. He also created the above MyTweetLinks plugin.

Jordan is a super friendly guy, be sure to hit him up @jordanlyall any time on Twitter.