Buffer review

• Comprehensive social media management platform
• Save time managing all of your social media accounts from the same dashboard
• Schedule posts, review campaigns with built-in analytics and manage team members access levels

 

What is Buffer?

One of the first tools to make use of Twitter's API and allow marketers to schedule posts and track their effectiveness, Buffer has grown into one of the major social media management platforms - used by brands and agencies around the world.

It has a limited but very effective set of tools and a wide range of pricing plans to suit everyone from bloggers and small businesses all the way up to huge brands and agencies handling multiple social accounts.

What does Buffer do?

The main features of Buffer are broken down into three areas:

• Buffer Publish
• Buffer Reply
• Buffer Analyze

Buffer Publish

The main feature of Buffer is the ability to manage all of your social media accounts in one place, including Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and LinkedIn.

You can create posts and schedule it across all of these different networks directly from the Buffer platform, eliminating the need for your team to be constantly bouncing around and logging in to different social accounts.

Buffer Reply

As well as creating and scheduling posts, Buffer also helps you to engage with your audience across all of your social channels.

The Reply feature makes it easier for your team to respond to social interactions from one central inbox - so no more hopping between accounts to respond to customer queries and replies.

The team management aspect allows you to assign conversations to different team members, so you can organise your engagement and make sure the right person is replying. Buffer also has what it calls 'collision detection', which notifies team members if another member is replying - reducing the chances of conflicting and confusing replies.

Buffer Analyze

Although still in its early stages, Buffer Analyze is a built-in social analytics dashboard to help you measure your social media campaigns.

This produces actionable insights such as which types of content perform best on each channel against specific engagement metrics (likes, replies, shares etc.) and allows you to create reports for internal use.

How much does Buffer cost?

Buffer has a range of packages, organised into Starter and Business plans.

Starter plans

There are two Starter plans for Buffer: the Free and Pro options.

Free

With the Free plan, you can manage three social accounts and store 10 scheduled posts per social account.

Pro - $15 per month

The Buffer Pro account allows you to manage up to eight social accounts and store up to 100 scheduled posts per account at any one time.

Business plans

There are three separate Business plans: Small, Medium and Large:

Small - $99 per month

With the Small Business plan, you can manage up to 25 social media accounts, have an additional five team members and schedule up to 2,000 posts.

Medium - $199 per month

The Medium plan allows you to manage up to 50 social accounts, have ten team members and queue up to 2,000 scheduled posts.

Large - $399 per month

This package gives you the greatest management options - up to 150 social accounts, 25 team members and 2,000 scheduled posts in the queue.