Buffer - How we launch new product features 🚀

Hi there, 

This week, we introduced analytics for LinkedIn Pages to Buffer. With the latest LinkedIn analytics integration, we now offer a more complete social media analytics and reporting solution.

It takes a village to bring a new feature to life... and to spread the word. ⚡️🛠 This was a true Buffer team effort with folks from many teams involved, from our Product and Engineering teams to our Customer Advocacy and Marketing teams.

In the words of Philipp Miguet, one of our Senior Product Engineers:

"A successful launch is much more than just getting the feature deployed. It needs awareness, and great onboarding and support too, which require different teams to be involved."

Will you join us in celebrating these amazing folks by replying to this tweet with a celebratory emoji? 👏🥳💃🕺

Ready to try analytics for LinkedIn Pages? Head here to learn more →

P.S. The graphics above were made with Remix, an iOS and Android app that transforms links, tweets, and product pages into beautiful Instagram content. Head here to try it out →

In today’s newsletter:

• How to set smarter social strategies with our newest feature, LinkedIn Pages analytics

• A Product Marketer's main takeaways from launching a new product feature
• Facebook and Instagram trends you need to know in 2021
• And much more!

Let’s get started! 👇

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Alfred Lua, our Product Marketer for Analyze, shared some of his main takeaways and learnings from managing the entire LinkedIn analytics marketing launch. Here's what he had to say:

"Now that the hectic launch period is over, I want to share a few decisions I made for this launch. Hope fellow marketers would find this useful! 

Align the launch goal with business objectives.

I used to set a bunch of goals for product launches (e.g. impressions, signups, etc.) because they all seem relevant and important. But it's more important to align the goal with the company's objectives.

One of our key marketing objectives is to shift the perception of Buffer from being simply a social media scheduler to a complete social media management platform. So I set impressions as the main goal—to reach as many people as possible and tell them about our analytics.

Think beyond the feature itself.

While we added a new feature (analytics for LinkedIn Pages), the story is more than that. It isn't about analyzing LinkedIn Pages in Buffer. It's about being able to analyze social media performance across FB, IG, TW, and LI in a single tool.

The value is it being all-in-one now. So I chose to focus on that rather than simply the LinkedIn analytics feature. And this matches the marketing objective. We want people to know Buffer has robust social media analytics, not just LinkedIn analytics.

Simplify the messaging.

I like having slogans for my campaigns because it helps to summarize the message and makes it easier to spread. I went with:

"More data. Better results. [New] Analytics for LinkedIn Pages."

I'm not sure that's the best slogan but I'm quite happy with it. I guess only our audience can tell us if it is good. 

Create campaign briefs.

I worked with several people (internally and externally) for this launch. One thing I realized I could do better is to create a succinct brief with:

• Campaign objective
• Campaign messaging
• Feature value props to highlight
• Copy suggestions

Plan all the things.

We recently moved our project management to Notion, and for someone who loves to organize things, it has been great! Look at those tables!

Make it easy to share.

@sophienicolegil and @juliaajaskolska prepared some copy and graphics for the team to share the news. I let the company know in Slack when our social media posts were published.

There are probably a few things I'm missing because it's 12:30am now... Happy to answer any questions regarding the launch!" 

If you have any questions for Alfred, feel free to reply to this tweet!

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You can now analyze and report your results on LinkedIn, on top of Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. This makes Buffer's analytics an all-in-one solution for these four popular social networks for businesses.

LinkedIn is a unique social channel. A successful LinkedIn strategy combines the power of company pages with employees’ personal profiles. And in this post, you'll find out how to leverage LinkedIn for your business.

Woohoo, you made it to the end! 

Thanks for reading this far. If you ever come across a neat article or a cool trend, I'd love to hear about it. Feel free to reply to this email directly to get in touch or DM me on Twitter.

Stay safe!

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