Never scheduled Tweets? Don’t do it – Start Buffering instead

April 1, 2011 - Last Modified: April 1, 2011 by Leo Widrich 1,966

Being consistent on Twitter is one of the hardest parts of social media marketing to achieve, I’ve found. In order to accomplish it, some swap to full automation software. Instead of that, let me introduce you to a new App which will keep you well on the genuine side of things AND increase your efficiency and your time management on Twitter.

It’s called Buffer.

Super Short Description

With Buffer, all you do is throw a few tweets in your Buffer. In return, the App schedules these tweets for you. To make it even simpler, you can add tweets to Buffer from any page you are on with browser extensions. (Chrome, Safari, Firefox)

What is new about Buffer?

You don’t need to schedule each tweet individually, you simply add to Buffer.
You can do this super fast from any page you are on, by using a browser extension (Chrome, Firefox, Safari)
You receive full analytics for your buffered tweets to track your impact. (Clicks, Retweets, Avatars of who retweeted and Reach)

Full Details:

Step 1: Add Tweets to your Buffer

The easiest way to add tweets is right there from any page you are reading by using the right browser extension for you (Chrome, Firefox or Safari). Or of course, you can add tweets via your Buffer tweet panel on your home account.

See the browser extension in action with Hesham’s post below:

Step 2: When should your tweets go out?

As a default option Buffer gives you peak Twitter times at which your Buffered tweets will reach your followers. Of course you can go back to your account and change these times. You can add more to increase the daily frequency or block them at your personal peak times. Here are my daily tweeting times:

Step 3: Full analytics for your Buffered Tweets

For every one of your Buffered Tweets you will receive detailed analytics in order to measure your impact. Buffer gives you the amount of Clicks on your links, the number of Retweets, Avatars of who retweeted you and the Reach of this tweet. Simply click on “analytics,” and this is what you will see:

Clicks on your Links

Number of Retweets

Who Retweeted you?

How many followers did you reach?

How can Buffer help you?

If you have similar habits to me, reading many great blogposts you want to share with your followers every day, Buffer is a must have tool for you. You can add all the great reads you had during the day without flooding your followers with too many updates at once.

If you simply want to get your consistency up on Twitter, Buffer will also be very handy. Get a stable number of tweets out every day and keep your followers up to date with the great articles, quotes, or blogs you have come across.

I feel that simply hitting the Buffer icon whenever I like something is super simple and makes my life on Twitter way more efficient. I can breathe a little easier.

What do you think about Buffer? Let me know below, I would love to hear it.

About Leo Widrich

Follow @leowid

I love to blog about Social Media and particularly Twitter. Every week I share Twitter Tips at Blog.Bufferapp.com. Say Hi anytime.

{ 36 Responses }

Samuel says:

Ohh, how I love buffer! I think this the best twitter tool I have ever used! I have been able to get so much more interaction on twitter and gain more followers through it. Thanks!
Aritra Roy says:

Thanks a lot for this wonderful app, now i can make full use of my twitter account...this is the app that i was trying to find for days and now i ultimately got it here...
Nick says:

Great tool in fact - thanks for sharing!
Extreme John says:

Nice find Leo I can't wait to give this a try, right now and for a very long time I've been using HootSuite to handle my schedule and buffering of retweets. Thank you.
- Leo Widrich says:
  
  Hi John, Awesome, so great to hear you find it useful John, definitely give it a go, would love to hear how it compares for you with Hootsuite. Thanks for your comment, heading over to connect on Twitter too :).
Paula Lee Bright says:

Whoa, this sounds very, very tempting! I'm going to think it over for a couple days. I'll be back! I've found that the decisions I make instantaneously about Twitter may or may not be good, but always I should have thought them through first!
- Leo Widrich says:
  
  Hi Paula, Thanks a lot for the kind words, really glad you are finding Buffer interesting! Yep, that is a very intelligent decision I think. It happened to me many times too to jump into some things too quickly. Yep, definitely give it a spin and see for yourself, I would love to hear what you think about it :)
Deborah says:

Thanks! I can see this must be getting on in popularity - I have had to try over 10 times to get through time-outs trying to access your site! Server overload I take it - but this is a killer idea, I wrote my own, but it is tedious uploading a new CSV file everyday. This will be ultra-handy, can't wait to get in and sign up.
- Leo Widrich says:
  
  Hi Deborah, Thanks a lot for your comment, yes indeed there was a lot of buzz recently and it is really going great. Yep, the site was a bit slow recently, but it should all run smoothly again now. Hope you get a chance to give it a full spin. Also just connected with you on Twitter Deborah, hope to talk to you some more soon.
Shamis says:

This is by far the best Twitter tool I heard about! It is time consuming when you have to shorten links and schedule them each time you find a great post or site. With a browser extension, this makes life even more easier. I'm going to sign up just after this comment. Thanks Leo!
- Leo Widrich says:
  
  Hi Shamis, thanks a lot for your kind words. Yes it is just like you say there exist different tools already, but Buffer simply takes this to a new level of simplicity. Throw tweets in from wherever you are and that's it :). Glad you find it useful, yep, give it a spin and take a look if you like it. Thanks again for stopping by Shamis, heading over to connect with you on Twitter too :).
  - Shamis says:
    
    Hi Leo, you're welcome! Signed up yesterday and added the bookmarklet and I'm all set to go :) Thanks again for this great tool!And thank you for following me on Twitter. I just followed you back :)
Murray says:

I heard a few of my online friends talk about this just recently; looks really cool because I've been so busy lately that I haven't been able to jump on Twitter all that much. A bit of automation would greatly help so that I don't have these long stretches of time where I'm inactive :)
- Leo Widrich says:
  
  Hi Murray, many thanks for stopping by. Wow, that is so great to hear you are finding Buffer interesting to help with a little automation so you can be more efficient. Especially Buffer comes in quite handy as you can simply throw a few tweets in your Buffer and the app then schedules these tweets for you at the fixed times. This will, just like you say, bring your consistency up and you can easily get rid of these long stretches of being inactive. I hope you will give it a go, I would love to hear what you think about it :)
Brittany Rubinstein says:

I just started scheduling my tweets with TweetDeck, which has been great, but it can get a little tedious. This looks like it might be worth trying. Thanks for sharing!
- Leo Widrich says:
  
  Brittany, many thanks for your comment. Yes, indeed I am an avid Tweetdeck user myself too and I always found individual scheduling quite tedious. Simply throwing tweets into your Buffer makes it a whole lot easier, just like you say. Definitely give it a go Brittany, I would love to hear how you get on with it :)
Alex says:

Hello Leo, I think a read all your guest posts about buffer :), oh boy and there are some, you really went all out and promote your app exactly were it matter, to the blogging world. I like your app, it's pretty useful and this can take the stress of having to be up throughout the day in order to send your tweets. This can also be used to avoid those spammy looking 10 tweets in just a few seconds, while getting the attention for the tweets you want to share.
- Leo Widrich says:
  
  Alex, many thanks for stopping by even though you have read so many already! :) Indeed, I tried my best to get the word out about Buffer, because I think it really makes everyone's life a lot easier. So glad you find it useful yourself too. It is just like you said, it saves you a lot of time on the one hand and on the other allows you to stop annoying your followers with these floods of tweets. Thanks for your comment Alex, it is much appreciated you took the time to :).
Kavita says:

I do use socialoomph often to schedule my tweets but this seems worth trying. The main difference is that the free version of buffer has a limit of 10 tweets.
- Leo Widrich says:
  
  Hi Kavita, Many thanks for your comment. Indeed Buffer is quite different to Social Oomph, I have been a Social Oomph user for a long time. I feel Buffer, with it'S browser extensions makes it just super simple to add tweets, without worrying about scheduling like you do with Social Oomph. Indeed the 10 tweets limit is there, but you can easily get more by inviting a few friends in a very dropbox-esque manner. Hope you give it a go, would love to hear your views on it :)
karan says:

Buffering your tweets seem to be a relatively new concept for me. BTW I actually never scheduled my tweets, so I guess I will be getting started in a better environment.
- Leo Widrich says:
  
  Hi Karan, Thanks for your comment. Yep, it is indeed a very new concept, good you can be starting with the better environment right from the start ;). Buffering tweets is just way simpler than scheduling. Hope you give it a go :).
  - karan says:
    
    Will surely try it friend and get back to you with my experience.:D
Mani Viswanathan says:

I like to use my Buffer Chrome Addon at times to Schedule my tweets & tweet effectively :)
- Leo Widrich says:
  
  Mani, so good to see you here too. Many thanks for stopping by. Yep indeed the Chrome Addon is Buffer's "Killer" Functionality as I like to call it. Really makes scheduling super simple, just like you say :).
Khalid Hosein says:

Ok, that is *very* cool. I just wish they had this functionality in HootSuite and/or Tweetdeck so I didn't have to log into yet another app and enter my (multiple) Twitter credentials. Thanks for pointing this app out Leo. Cheers! _Khalid .
- Leo Widrich says:
  
  Hi Khalid, Many thanks for your comment. Yep, I see this would definitely increase the convenience of Buffer still to have it integrated in one of the bigger tools. I can also reassure you that it really is a one of thing that will not take longer than a few seconds for you to set up. So a real fire and forget situation applies. With the browser extensions there is also no need to ever go back to your Buffer account, as you can do everything right from the page you are on. I hope you will get around to give it a spin, would love to hear your views on it :).
  - Khalid Hosein says:
    
    Hi Leo - thanks for your quick reply. So I signed up to check it out in more detail. Yep, it was easy to sign up, but that wasn't really a concern. I like using HootSuite, Tweetdeck, etc because they allow me to manage multiple Twitter accounts. It's not like I have hundreds or even dozens of accounts, but even when you have just 2, logging in and out is a pain, which is why I made my suggestion. I'm a little disappointed by the pricing plan. $5/mo to have more than 1 Twitter account is enough to put someone off from paying and just use a built-in scheduler in some other (free) tool. Perhaps, it should be on a per usage basis. For example, and this is just a random #, but say you get 100 tweets per month spread out over up to 5 Twitter accounts, and then beyond that, you pay a penny per scheduled tweet. If someone is a low-usage Twitter user, it's a bit pricey to spend $5 to auto-schedule. I'll check out the feedback forum. PS> That is a slick Web2.0 site.
    - Leo Widrich says:
      
      Hi Khalid, many thanks for following up. Oh right, yeah I totally understand your point with the pricing. It really might be that one would rather stick to the free options if you are used to free versions, totally with you here. If one is just a casual Twitter user, just like you say, I wouldn't suggest to pay for the service. Thanks for stopping by :)
Jitendra Singh says:

Wow, this is great. I was looking for something like that. So it means that we can buffer our most important posts to Buffer and it will flush them out slowly which will looks like a natural tweeting for the end user. I will give it a try today. Leo, Thanks again for this information.
- Jitendra Singh says:
  
  I just tried it for my blog. There is only ten tweet limit for the free version.
  - Leo Widrich says:
    
    Hi Jitendra, Many thanks for your comment, it is exactly like you said. You can Buffer all the great findings you have and it will tweet them evenly spread out over the day without flooding your followers. Oh, yes that is true, on the free version you can put up to 10 tweets in your Buffer, however you can easily get more slots by simply referring some friends in a very hassle-free dropbox-esque manner. I hope that helps to bump up the limit. Many thanks for stopping by.
    - Jitendra Singh says:
      
      Oh great so we can increase the limit by referring the friends. Let me refer it to some of my friend :) Thanks again.
Elle B says:

Glad I ran across your tweet! I have a cubicle job, so I do most of my online stuff once a day. I often refrain from tweeting things I really like so as not to overwhelm my stream. I think this might be made for us nube cubicle bees! :)
- Leo Widrich says:
  
  Hi Elle, Many thanks for your comment. That is so great to hear. Exactly, if you want to do your online stuff once a day, Buffer will definitely help you. Simply throw all your tweets in at once and they will be spread out. It's just the way I use it myself too. Oh yes, totally get that. I flooded my followers way to often, not anymore I told myself and Buffer really comes in handy here. Awesome news that this is helpful for the nube cubicle bees :). Many thanks for stopping by Elle! :)

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