Instagram vs. Snapchat, Facebook Notes, Buffer Hacks & Personal Emojis – Bonus Episode [SSM013]

Oct 26, 2016 5 min readPodcasts

We are super excited to share our second, very special bonus podcast episode with you!

Our bonus episodes offer a fun change of pace from our traditional “interview-style” episodes on The Science of Social Media. Get to know the hosts Hailley, Kevan, & Brian a bit better as they share some of the things they’re working on this week in social media – complete with actionable takeaways and useful insights.

This week we’re chatting all about Snapchat vs. Instagram Stories and how brands and people are using the platforms in very unique ways. We also discuss our Facebook Notes experiment, if it’s possible to brand your own emoji, and how to build your own content hub within Buffer!

A huge thank you to all of you for joining us every week for brand new episodes of The Science of Social Media. We appreciate you taking the time to listen and for your amazing support over the last few weeks. We’d love to hear from you on iTunes or using the hashtag #bufferpodcast on Twitter.

How to listen: iTunes | Google Play | SoundCloud | Stitcher | RSS

This episode is available on:

Here’s what we chat about in this episode:

  • Snapchat vs. Instagram Stories and how brands and individuals are using the platform in very different ways
  • Our recent experiment with Facebook Notes and how they performed in comparison to normal links
  • If it’s possible to brand your own emoji and what effect that may have on your social media
  • We play a fun game called “Top 10” – We’d love for you to tune in to play along with us!

4 Key Takeaways from the Show from Hailley, Brian, and Kevan

Quotes pulled from the show!

1. Facebook Notes experiment & learnings

Within the Facebook composer there’s a great feature called Facebook Notes which essentially looks like a Medium post directly within Facebook. There’s a cover photo, you can format the post, and it posts natively within Facebook. The hypothesis going in was that Facebook would reward a native blog post with more reach and engagement. To our surprise, it did not perform as well as we thought it would.

Although the post didn’t work, it sparked people’s curiosity. I’d highly recommend that you all give Facebook Notes a try and see how it works for you. I would love to hear how it goes in the comments below!

2. How brands and people are using Snapchat vs. Instagram Stories

“The biggest thing for me, and I’ve been experimenting with this a lot, is testing and learning about Snapchat Stories vs. Instagram Stories. I’m coming at this from a personal user perspective and what I’ve been doing is using Snapchat as a 1-to-1 communication tool. Then I take the content that I used to put on Snapchat and post that to Instagram Stories because I have a much bigger audience there. Instagram is more of that one-to-many strategy. But for many marketers and brands it is quite the opposite. It’s interesting to see how it is playing out in the social media world.”

3. Creating a hub of great content in Buffer and “can I brand an emoji?”

“I love to have some go-to Tweets and go-to Facebook posts when I’m out of content. So I’ve built myself a content repository within Buffer. What I’ve done is created a fake Twitter account for myself and connected it to Buffer. Every so often I will run through the Tweets from my main Twitter account, find the ones that are best performing, and then drag them over into the fake account. I also have a IFTTT recipe that connects my favorite Pocket reads into my fake Twitter account. From there, I can drag them from the fake account into my real account whenever I’m dry on content.”

4. Branding your own emoji

“I would like to brand my own emoji – the French Fry emoji ?. My plan to do this is three-fold. First, I’ve added it to my Twitter bio. So I tell people who I am… french fry emoji. Then the second way is that I will add it, when in doubt, to most replies on Twitter. And the third was is that I’m using it as a star rating system for a piece of content that I’ve read and like a lot. Five fries out of five!”

Show Notes and Other Memorable Moments

Thanks a million for checking out this episode! Below are the websites and other tidbits that were mentioned in today’s podcast about personal branding on social media. If you have any questions for us, feel free to drop us a line in the comments and we’ll respond right away!

Awesome Mentions in the Show

Great Quotes

 The Science of Social Media Buffer Podcast Quote, social media podcast, marketing, buffer podcast
  • “There is nothing more interesting than taking the public transportation system and watching people use social media in the wild. It’s a great learning experience.”
  • “The reason that Facebook Notes is an interesting feature and why we tried it is because it’s a hidden feature. But most of all, Mark Zuckerberg still uses this feature to this day to write posts. I think secretly they want it to do well.”
  • “There is still this pressure on Instagram of having the ‘perfect’ Instagram photo and the perfect Instagram grid. And that pressure has seeped into Instagram Stories. A lot of brands and celebrities’ Instagram Stories are very well put together.”
  • Adding emojis to your profile name is now possible within Twitter. This is a feature that was just released from them.”

How to Say Hello to Us

We would all love to say hello to you on social media – especially Twitter!

Thanks for listening! We’d love to connect with you at @buffer on Twitter or with the hashtag #bufferpodcast.

Enjoy the show? It’d mean the world to us if you’d be up for giving us a

rating and review on iTunes

!

About the Show

The Science of Social Media is a podcast for marketers and social media managers looking for inspiration, ideas, and results for their social media strategies. Each week, we interview one of the very best in social media marketing from brands in every industry. You will learn the latest tactics on social media, the best tools to use, the smartest workflows, and the best goal-setting advice. It is our hope that each episode you’ll find one or two gems to use with your social media marketing!

The Science of Social Media is proudly made by the Buffer team. Feel free to get in touch with us for any thoughts, ideas, or feedback.

Brought to you by

Try Buffer for free

140,000+ small businesses like yours use Buffer to build their brand on social media every month

Get started now

Related Articles

best podcasts
FlowFeb 14, 2024
20+ Podcasts You’ll Want in Your Feed in 2024

Check out the 25 best podcasts for creators, marketers, small business owners and anyone looking to up their social media.

podcast creator
FlowOct 5, 2023
Here’s How This Creator Has A #1 Podcast While Working Full Time (At Buffer)

In this article, we dive into podcaster and Bufferoo Phill Agnew's strategies that can help you grow an engaged audience, no matter the format.

Why Damian Fagon Wants More Black People to Become Cannabis Farmers

Damian shares his journey from hemp farmer, to teacher, to business accelerator leader, and the economics behind why he focuses so hard on encouraging people to become hemp farmers.

140,000+ people like you use Buffer to build their brand on social media every month