Author: Franz Malten Buemann

Last Updated on August 19, 2022 by Rakesh Gupta Big Idea or Enduring Question: How to set field-level security for a field on permission sets instead of profiles during field creation? Business Use Case Martin Jones is working as a System Administrator at Gurukul on Cloud (GoC). Martin is currently working on
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Twitter Topics makes it easier for Twitter users to sift through the roughly half billion tweets published daily and find content related to their interests. 
As a marketer, Twitter Topics can help you stay focused on audiences in your industry that fit your customer profile and join in on conversations that make the most sense for you to join. 

In this post, we’ll discuss everything you need to know about the platform’s native feature, including: 

What is Twitter Topics? 
How to Use Twitter Topics
Four Ways Marketers Can Leverage Twitter Topics

With Twitter Topics, you can follow topics as well as people that often tweet about relevant topics.
When Twitter launched the feature in 2019, it said Topics was meant to shift the platform towards conversation and away from one-off comments by influencers and celebrities: “Previously, all of the work was on you to figure out the best way to keep up with what’s happening by following certain accounts, searching for it, or looking in the Explore tab for the latest. Now, you have the option of seeing the most relevant and interesting Tweets about what you care about with a single tap, and the conversation will come to you.”
Even though Topics was primarily meant to help individual users get the most out of their experience, it can also help brands build awareness and a following on the platform. For example, posting about topics relevant to your business can expose your tweets to people who follow those topics. 
As a marketer, you can leverage the tool in a few specific ways. But, first, we’ll go over the basics of using the feature.

How to Use Twitter Topics
Twitter often suggests Topics based on your account activity, and you’ll natively come across them in your Home timeline. You can click Follow to see related tweets if it suggests a topic of interest. 
The second way to access Twitter Topics is to navigate to your feed and click More, then Topics.
If you haven’t followed any topics before, you’ll see a welcome message explaining the feature. If you already follow Topics, they’ll appear here. 

If you click Follow some Topics, you’ll see a list of the most popular Twitter Topics, like “Entertainment,” with plus signs next to them that you can click to follow. 

Clicking on the plus sign will also display a drop-down menu of more niche but related topics. 
When you follow Topics, your Twitter feed will show posts algorithmically pulled in from your Topic preferences. To follow more Topics, you can simply return to the Topics page and click “Follow more topics.”
Some tweets in your feed will sometimes offer a “See more about this Topic” pop-up, which includes a call to action to follow a related topic. 

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You can also search and follow a Topic using Twitter’s search bar, as seen in the photo below:

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To unfollow Topics, return to the Topics page, click Follow more Topics, find the Topic you’ve followed, and click unfollow.

Four Ways Marketers Can Leverage Twitter Topics
As mentioned above, there are several ways for marketers to leverage Twitter Topics. We’ll discuss these below. 
1. To follow topics related to your industry to stay informed.
Following Topics related to your industry helps you stay on top of trends that are important to your customers and might impact your business. 
The more up-to-date you are on current events and conversations, the more you’ll know about your audience’s delights, habits, work-life, and pain points. And, having this information helps you keep your buyer personas up to date. 
In addition, when you know what your market competitors are talking about, you’ll get a glimpse into possible future innovations, trends, or challenges that you should look out for, helping you stay on top of industry trends instead of falling behind.
2. To discover and follow accounts or thought leaders in your industry.
Topics helps you discover thought leaders and brands that often discuss insights and ideas about your field. 
If you monitor the Topics you follow and notice similar accounts or people having conversations, it can well serve you to check out their profile to get a sense of the content they share. By doing this, you’ll also discover trends and insights in your industry, and their content may also teach you how to optimize your Tweets so you can get in on the conversation.
3. To create content or tweets related to trendy Topics in your industry.
If there’s a Topic that’s currently buzzy that strongly relates to your business, jump in on the conversation. 
If users of one of the Topics you follow are talking about a common pain point that your product or service solves, posting about that pain point can help you draw your audience’s attention and educate them about how you can solve their needs.
4. To discover trending hashtags and optimize your own tweets with them.
Hashtags are one of the best ways to optimize your tweets and use popular keywords to gain visibility on the platform. 
You can leverage Twitter Topics to discover trending hashtags related to your brands’ offerings and use them in your own tweets to generate brand awareness and position yourself as a source of authority.
Embracing Trendy Topics on Twitter
Twitter is a solid platform for topical and trend-based discussions. Topics will help you zone in on what people are talking about on the platform so you can join in on the conversation with relevant insight and conversation. 

In the early days of YouTube, there weren’t a whole lot of YouTubers or brands creating content on the platform, so it was much easier for content creators to stand out. Fast forward to 2022, and there are now roughly 15 million active content creators on YouTube pumping out 500 hundred hours of content every minute.
With that in mind, you’re probably wondering how to promote your YouTube channel so that it stands out above the rest. And how much will promotion cost? Fortunately, there are many tools, tips, and tricks you can use to promote your YouTube channel without having to spend a lot of money — or any money at all.
In this blog, we’ll explore some of my favorite, no-cost methods to promote a YouTube channel.

Create compelling content.
Use keywords in your headlines, descriptions, and tags.
Use hashtags.
Customize your thumbnails.
Post regularly.
Promote your channel on social media.
Promote your channel on forums.
Build a community.
Run a contest.
Cross-promote your videos on YouTube.
Collaborate with other creators.
Create playlists for your YouTube videos.
Embed your YouTube videos.
Livestream.
Add a YouTube widget to your website.

How to Promote Your YouTube Channel for Free
I have my own YouTube channel where I talk about anime, and when I first got started I definitely did not have money to spend on expensive ads or pricey tools to grow my channel. So, I did a lot of the following to find my audience, and I saw growth pretty quickly:
1. Create compelling content.

There are many tactics you can use to attract viewers to your channel, but none of these tactics can make up for lackluster content. The fact is no one wants to get invested in content that isn’t good.
A major key to attracting an audience and encouraging them to subscribe is to create compelling content that will keep them coming back for more.
Pro-Tip: Look at other established content creators in your niche for inspiration. What do you enjoy most about their videos, and what would you do differently? Use your answers to help you figure out the kind of content you want to make.
2. Use keywords in your headlines, descriptions, and tags.

Hundreds of thousands of videos are uploaded to YouTube every day. To ensure your videos reach your target audience, you need to incorporate keywords into your headlines, descriptions, and tags.
There are free tools like Google Keyword Planner, which can be accessed from your Google Ads dashboard. Don’t worry — you don’t have to run ads to use it. All you need is a Google account.
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Pro-Tip: One of the simplest ways to find the right keywords without using any tools is to enter your video’s topic in the YouTube search bar, and use the autosuggest to find words and phrases you should incorporate into your content.
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3. Use hashtags.

You can also use the keywords you found to create hashtags for your videos’ titles and descriptions. Your video’s content may also inspire ideas for a hashtag. For example, maybe you interviewed a popular guest on your channel — that guest’s name can be used as a hashtag to attract their fans to your content.
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Pro-Tip: Look at other YouTubers in your niche to see what hashtags they are using so you can find the right ones for your content.
4. Customize your thumbnails.

The thumbnail of your video serves as your video’s first impression — and we all know you never get a second chance at a first impression. To grab viewers’ attention, create a unique, eye-catching thumbnail that will compel them to click on your content.
YouTube thumbnails that stand out typically include a combination of the following:

High-quality images
A face (humans naturally focus on faces when it comes to photos)
Bright contrasting colors
Action shots
Bold text of no more than six words

Pro-Tip: For my own YouTube videos, I use Canva’s free YouTube thumbnail tool. With Canva, the thumbnail templates are already the proper dimensions and there are tons of fun stickers, bold fonts, colors, and background images to choose from. Plus, I can upload my own images from my phone or computer to the template.

5. Post regularly.

Consistency is important when attracting potential subscribers to your channel. When you post frequently and consistently you’ll gain credibility with your audience because they know you’ll always keep the good content coming. To start, try posting a new video every two weeks and eventually work your way to once or twice a week.
Pro-Tip: You can also use YouTube Analytics to track the days and times your audience interacts with your content the most. For example, if you notice your videos get the most views when posted on Saturdays at 12 p.m., you’re going to want to have videos posted around that time to get the most engagement.
6. Promote your channel on social media.

The news director of a TV station I worked for would always say this about promoting content: “If it’s not on social media, then it doesn’t exist.” Keep this in mind when promoting your YouTube channel.
You can put out amazing content, have the perfect thumbnail, and use all the right keywords — but if you don’t promote your content on social media, you’re losing out on a potentially huge audience.
To attract anime fans to my channel, I started a Twitter account and started using the #anitwt and #AnimeAfterDarkCH hashtags whenever I tweeted about my videos. “Anitwt” is short for “Anime Twitter,” and is used to help anime fans connect with other fans on the platform.
#AnimeAfterDarkCH is a hashtag used for a weekly Twitter space geared toward Black anime fans. Now when I check my YouTube analytics, I often notice about 80% of my views come from Twitter users.
HubSpot’s Senior Manager of Marketing Essie Acolatse also suggests creating videos to cross-promote on different platforms.
“Make shorter bite size versions as teasers for other platforms. These teasers should fit the best video format for that platform, and should be engaging enough to make the viewer want more,” she said. “It’s often times hard to get people to leave the platform they’re already on, but taking advantage of your other social platforms can help drive views to your channel.”
Pro-Tip: Use social media to follow and connect with content creators, figureheads, and other prominent people in your niche. This will help you find online communities that correspond with your niche and can help expose your channel to the right audience.
7. Promote your channel on forums.

Online forums like Reddit are great places to promote your channel. Just remember that many forums have “no promotions” policies — but you can get around them with a little bit of tact. Make sure that you’re contributing value to the conversation and that your posts don’t come off too much like advertisements.
For example, let’s say you’re a fashion YouTuber and you notice a Reddit forum discussing thrift store fashion — a topic you’ve covered on your channel. Instead of replying with “Hey, check out my YouTube channel about fashion.” You can say:
“That’s a really cool perspective! I love thrifting and actually made a YouTube video with some great tips on how to find the best items at thrift stores. You can check it out if you’re looking for advice.”
Then you would link to your specific video.
Pro-Tip: Be an active contributor to these forums even when you don’t have new content to promote. Doing this adds value to the conversation and shows that you’re trying to be helpful instead of just plugging your channel.
8. Build a community.

Use your YouTube to establish yourself as an authoritative voice in your niche and to create a space for people with shared interests. The most effective (and free) way to do this is to simply engage with your audience. Reply to comments by sharing more valuable information.
Some YouTubers will even shout out new subscribers in their videos. You can also ask commenters for suggestions on your next topic and give them some recognition for contributing.
Pro-Tip: If you have more than 500 subscribers, you can take advantage of YouTube’s “Community” feature. This feature allows creators to engage with their audience between uploads via status updates, polls, and GIFs.

9. Run a contest.

Running a contest is an effective way to attract new subscribers, but you’ll want to make sure the contest attracts people who are genuinely interested in your niche and not just the prize.
To do this, make sure the prize is something connected to your topic. For instance, if I were to run a contest to attract anime fans, a good prize would be free anime merchandise or a gift card to anime clothing retailer Atsuko.
Pro-Tip: Be sure to promote your contest on social media and in online forums whenever possible.
10. Cross-promote your videos on YouTube.

In every YouTube video I post, I always take advantage of the platform’s “cards” feature. This feature allows you to promote a video across different videos on your platform. This works by posting a small icon at the corner of your video that links to another video or playlist. You can set the duration for how long you want the card to appear. Below is an example of what a card looks like:
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Another way to cross-promote your videos is to include an end screen. Have you ever watched a YouTube video and saw clickable ads for other videos appear in the final 10 seconds? That’s an end screen, and it encourages viewers to explore more of your content and subscribe.
Acolatse also suggests using YouTube Shorts.
“Those bite size video versions for other platforms can also be used as YT shorts,” she said. “YT is investing a lot of money into shorts and because that feed reaches a different audience, it’s a great way to boost engagement on your overall channel. Make sure these shorts hook viewers in within the first couple of seconds and make them very compelling.”
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Pro-Tip: Whenever I upload a new video, I always use cards and the end screen to link back to my previous video. This can give your older content a second life and a chance to gain new views.
11. Collaborate with other creators.
This is another form of cross-promotion that is helpful to all parties involved and can help expand your reach. For a successful collaboration, find a YouTuber whose audience overlaps with yours.
For example, if you’re a fitness expert, you can collaborate with a content creator who also focuses on exercise or nutrition. Once you know who you want to work with, reach out to that person, and you two can plan on how you’re going to make a unique video for both of your channels.
“This is one of the best organic ways to grow. Their audience will get a chance to see you and your audience can see them,” Acolatse said. “Creating content with other creators that have a similar niche and following size as you can help you get additional views on your content.”
Pro-Tip: Now is the time to use the connections you’ve made on social media to scope out the best collaborator.
12. Create playlists for your YouTube videos.
The more videos you create, the harder it will be for viewers to navigate your channel. Creating playlists organizes your content into specific categories, and allows viewers to binge your work. Playlists will help viewers find the relevant content they are looking for on your channel, and they’ll be more likely to subscribe when they finish binge-watching your videos.
Pro-Tip: Keep in mind your playlists when creating content. Ask yourself how you’d categorize the video and what playlist it would fit into.
13. Embed your YouTube videos.
If you have a blog or website, embedding your YouTube videos in your blog content or product page is a great way to boost conversions and attract subscribers to your channel. Having an article or webpage connected to your video can also help it rank higher in search engine results.
Pro-Tip: Make sure to use keywords in your blog or webpage’s content as well to help people find your site and, in turn, your YouTube video.
14. Livestream.
With the rise in popularity of livestream platforms like Twitch, livestreaming content is a trend that doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook have all incorporated live-streams into their platforms — and YouTube is no different. Some ways you can use YouTube Live include:

Q&As
Webinars
Live tutorials
Product demonstrations

Gamers will often livestream themselves playing the latest video games and artists will sometimes livestream themselves completing a project.
Pro-Tip: Don’t be too concerned about perfection when it comes to your livestream. One of the biggest draw-ins of livestreams is that no one knows what’s going to happen live. It all just adds to the fun and creates a more personal relationship with your followers.
15. Add a YouTube widget to your website.
By adding a YouTube widget to the footer or sidebar of your website, anyone who visits your site will be able to see and engage with your videos. This can turn site clicks into views for your content. It will also encourage interested visitors to subscribe to your channel.
Pro-Tip: Many website-hosting platforms have their own free YouTube widgets you can easily embed onto your website.
Promoting your YouTube channel doesn’t have to be a financial liability. As you can see, there are many ways to expand your audience reach, find your niche, and promote your content without spending a dime. Now that you have some free promotional ideas, you’re ready to craft the perfect marketing plan to grow your channel.

The right B2B website makes all the difference when it comes to converting visitors into buyers. In this post, we’ll share the best B2B website examples we’ve ever seen, then dive into three tips for building your site.

By the end, you’ll be able to create a site that drives conversions and keeps buyers coming back. Let’s get started.

With a host of great B2B website examples out there, we’ve curated a list of sites that stand out.
1. Blake Envelopes

Are envelopes exciting? Not really, but you wouldn’t know it from the Blake Envelope website. The colors are vibrant, the envelopes are everywhere, and the site manages to convey a sense of movement that makes you want to click through and see exactly what they have to offer. That’s exactly what you want from a B2B website.
2. Pixelgrade
Pixelgrade makes it clear up front what they’re about: Offering simple WordPress themes to help anyone get their website up and running quickly. There’s no extraneous information here — they state their value proposition and offer a direct link to browse the themes they offer.
3. Reputation Squad

Reputation management is key to online success for organizations. If companies can’t see what customers are saying about them, they could miss critical opportunities to improve.
Reputation Squad helps companies track their reputation online with a responsive monitoring system. Scrolling through their website gives the feeling they’re operating in the future; backgrounds move and shift as you head down the page and the content is set up in a way that’s easy to view, read, and contextualize.
4. Evernote

Evernote isn’t new to the B2B space, but their site continues to make it abundantly clear what they’re good at: Taming your work and organizing your life by making it easy for you to take notes and keep schedules. Even more telling is their aim to help you “remember everything”, which suggests this isn’t just a single-function solution but a multipronged performance tool.
5. Dropbox

The five “S’s” here quickly communicate what Dropbox is all about. Not only can you store and sync files but easily share them and even add eSignatures. That’s it. That’s the value proposition. No fancy graphics, no beating around the bush — just getting straight to the point about how they can help.
6. Shepper

Shepper is all about collecting data. And not just any data — the data you tell them you need to collect and analyze. This could be product or advertising information, or data about the overall customer experience. No matter what data you need or where it’s stored worldwide, Shepper can help.
7. HubSpot

We’ll admit it. We’re also pretty great at this B2B stuff. We’re also modest — you’ll notice HubSpot isn’t first on the list — but our site makes it clear what we offer: An easy-to-use CRM than can streamline your current processes and revolutionize the way you work. With both free and premium options, you’re in good hands with HubSpot.
8. Orbital Sidekick

Orbital Sidekick delivers information from space to help government and commercial organizations meet their goals around environmental, social, and governance objectives. Using what’s known as “hyperspectral analysis” from a fleet of satellites, Orbital Sidekick gives companies the data they need to make decisions on-demand.
9. Trello

Trello is a collaboration tool designed to streamline operations. Given the increasing number of these tools on the market — and the fact that some hinder more than help — Trello makes it clear that no matter where or how teams prefer to work, the solution can help teams move forward.
10. Hootsuite

Hootsuite’s tagline is simple: “Social is your superpower”. Combined with an image of a woman seemingly taking off into the air and backed by familiar social images and icons, it’s clear right away that Hootsuite is all about helping you get the most of your social media channels.
11. Yapstone

It’s a funny name with a great B2B angle: Local payment for global businesses. Not only does this tagline provide a sense of confidence and familiarity, but also manages to simultaneously suggest that Yapstone can help businesses anywhere power their payment platform.
12. Grammarly

Grammarly cuts right to the chase to showcase what it does best: Detecting and correcting grammar and spelling mistakes. An animated image takes users through a quick demonstration of what Grammarly has to offer, making it clear what users will get when they download and install the app.
13. Acme

Acme automates industrial warehouse operations. The sepia tones of its website combined with warehouse images and a clear message about what Acme does leave no room for misinterpretation. If you’re their target audience, you’ll click through. If not, you’ll leave.
14. Mailchimp

Email platform Mailchimp is well-known for its work in marketing emails, and its website makes it clear that the goal of the platform is to grow both business audience and revenues with the help of automated tools and expert advice. With the goal of outperforming your last campaign, it’s a solid pitch for B2B sales.
15. Packlane

Consumers don’t just want great products. They want great packaging that is interesting to look at, fun to open, and (ideally) environmentally sustainable. Packlane lets companies create custom packaging and boxes that best suit their products, and provides instant quoting to help companies quickly make a decision.
16. HireLevel

Aside from making a great pun (higher level — get it?), HireLevel also does a great job of clearly defining what they do. Need a job? They can help. Looking to improve workplace management? They’ve got services to bridge the gap.
17. Netbase Quid

Netbase Quid is all about consumer and market intelligence. The seven colored tabs on the homepage make it clear exactly how they can help, from tracking brand health to delivering trend analytics to improving crisis management.
18. Square

Square is a payment platform that immediately prompt customers to get started as a first step to entering the site. It’s the first — and nearly only — thing a visitor encounters upon landing on the home page. That information allows Square to offer customers what feels like a much more customized web experience.
1. Make your website about the customer — not about you.
After reviewing hundreds of B2B websites across every major industry, we found only a handful that purposefully invite customers into a conversation. To do that, suppliers need to stop talking so much about themselves.
Rather, they should provide customers with an opportunity to share something about who they are and what they’re looking to do.
Really, it’s no different than common courtesy at a cocktail party. No one wants to be stuck talking to the person droning on about who they are and what they do. Yet that’s precisely what the vast majority of B2B websites do.
Not only is that kind of self-centered approach disengaging, but it also leaves the buyer wondering, “Do they even know who I am? Or what I actually do?” Or worse, “Do they even care?” It’s impersonal at best, and off-putting at worst — fostering questions rather than connections, and distance rather than assistance.
That said, we found a handful of websites that do, in fact, actively invite customers to engage on their terms. One example is vAuto.com. A division of Cox Automotive, vAuto sells enterprise software to auto dealers around world. Among those dealers are both used and new car sellers, along with wholesalers — some franchise-based, and some independent.

Those distinctions matter — not only for finding the appropriate vAuto solution, but they help to identify how that customer thinks about themselves.
vAuto has designed the front page of its website to allow buyers to self-identify along the dimensions most important to them, prior to going any deeper. The customer’s first choice upon landing at vauto.com is declaring, “I manage new vehicles,” “I manage used vehicles,” “I buy wholesale,” or “I manage reconditioning.”
Notice that even the pronouns are specifically chosen to position the website as a learning and buying tool for customers, rather than a broadcasting tool for the supplier.
Questions to ask yourself:

How do our customers define themselves?
In their minds, which aspects of their identity most affect the way they look at suppliers like us?

2. Emphasize your customers’ outcomes.
Just as the best websites invite customers into a conversation, they also guide buyers to supplier solutions using the language of customer outcomes — rather than supplier capabilities.
The best companies take the time to understand the specific business objectives customers are seeking to achieve, then organize their sites using language immediately recognizable to customers along those particular outcomes. That way, customers don’t have to translate.
Here’s another place where vAuto excels. The company employs actual customer-articulated business problems as the organizing framework for diving deeper into their broad solution set. It organizes this information around headings like, “Show me how to beat the competition,” and, “Show me to source more profitably.”
At every step, the goal is to make online learning and buying as easy and as resonant as possible — all through an easy-to-follow path of breadcrumbs leading directly to vAuto’s unique solutions.
Questions to ask yourself:

What help are customers seeking from a supplier in your category?
What specific language would best resonate with your customers to describe that help?

3. Help customers do what they are on your site to do.
Finally, the best websites identify and then facilitate the specific tasks that customers come to your website to complete.
Take something like a cost calculator embedded directly into a website. A tool like that enables customers to independently calculate the costs of (in)action, rather than relying on sales reps to make the case for change. It’s a simple, practical idea, but it’s deployed with single-minded purpose: to allow the buyer to easily progress along the journey, while remaining in her preferred channel of choice.
Questions to ask yourself:

What specific buying tasks are your customers coming to your website to complete?
How easy is it to find support for those tasks on your site right now?

Building a Better B2B Website
There’s a great deal to be learned from the handful of world-class websites we found. When it comes to building a better B2B site, it’s all about giving buyers an easy entry point, communicating your solutions in language they understand, and making it simple for them to do what they want to do.
Not sure where to get started? Check out the examples above for inspiration and then grab HubSpot’s free ultimate workbook for redesigning your B2B site.
Editor’s note: This post was originally published in January 2018 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.    

https://digitalthoughtz.com/top-6-ways-to-grow-your-linkedin-network/ submitted by /u/digitalthoughtz [link] [comments]

Hi guys – have a bit of a unique case and looking to get some advice on our startup’s situation. We’re working in a developing country. Outbound marketing with SMS/Whatsapp We’re trying to do outbound marketing with SMS or whatsapp – we have a list of phone numbers we’re targeting – somewhere in the 10k range of phone numbers. These are very tiny SMB customers We want to mass message them, and if they don’t answer, prod them to sign up through mass follow ups, based on templates. If they do answer, they will respond manually through SMS or chat, and we want our customer service reps to answer them manually through a chat function – and integrate a CRM here. We want to be able to keep slight tabs on them – drip them a message every once in a while if they don’t respond and want to sign up. Customer Success We also want to use this function for Customer success as well. We want to use it as a channel to disseminate product updates and push our customers to take on more of our products. What would be the best way to accomplish this? We were thinking a mixture of AmoCRM and Messagebird, but we don’t know if we can actually do outbound marketing on Whatsapp. If we do our outbound on SMS, we also don’t know how we can do any sort of response to them – we can’t have a sms conversation overall. How do we solve this? What kind of stack would you use? submitted by /u/twinshk2 [link] [comments]

We’ve dedicated the week of August 22nd to a brand new internal initiative called Build Week. We’ll all be putting aside our regular work for a single week to come together in small groups and work on ideas that can benefit customers or us as a company, ideally with something of value shipped or in place by the end.The inspiration for Build WeekBefore building Buffer, I had several formative experiences attending “build a startup in a weekend”-type events. Two I attended were run by Launch48, and another was Startup Weekend. Anyone could sign up to attend no matter what skill set or experience level they would bring. As long as you were willing to roll up your sleeves, build something, and contribute in any way, you’d be very welcome.The focus was on building something rapidly from end to end, within the space of a weekend. Teams would be capped to a small number, around three to five people per team, so the groups could move quickly with decision making. Once the teams were formed, you’d get to work and start doing research, building, and marketing (often all in parallel) to move as fast as possible in building a minimum viable product and achieving a level of validation.At the end of the weekend, teams would present what they achieved, what they validated, and what they learned.Through these events, I met people, formed strong bonds, and stayed in contact for years with them afterward. Some teams even became startups. It felt like highly accelerated learning, and it was intense but fun, very energizing and inspiring.I’ve been thinking about how this could translate to Buffer and why it would be so powerful for us in our current season, which is where Build Week comes in. What is Build Week? Build Week is a week at Buffer where we’ll form teams, work with people we don’t typically work with, and work together on an idea we feel called towards. The highest level goals of Build Week are to inject into the company and team a spirit of shipping, creativity, and innovation, making progress and decisions rapidly, comfort with uncertainty, and ultimately going from idea to usable value out in the world in the space of a week.When it comes to the type of projects we’ll work on and the skill sets required to accomplish them, the goal is for those to be far-reaching. While it may seem like Build Week would be more suited to engineers specifically, our goal is to achieve the outcome that everyone realizes they are and can be a Builder. Ultimately, being a Builder in Buffer Build Week will mean that you are part of a team that successfully makes a change that brings value, and it happens in the short period of a week. Everyone on the team has something to bring to this goal, and I’m excited by the various projects that will be worked on.How we’re approaching Build WeekWith our high-level vision and ideas for Build Week, several months ago we got to work to bring this concept to life and make it happen.The first thing we did was form a team to plan and design Build Week itself. Staying true to our vision for Build Week itself, where we want to have small teams of people who don’t normally work together, this is also how we approached forming the Build Week Planning team. With this team in place, we started meeting weekly. Overall, it has been a small time commitment of 45 minutes per week to plan and design Build Week. As we got closer to the actual week, we started meeting for longer and having real working sessions.Our final design for Build Week consisted of three key stages: Idea Gathering, Team Formation and Build Week.For the Idea Gathering stage, we created a Trello board where anyone in the team could contribute an idea. We used voting and commenting on the cards, which helped narrow the ideas to those that would be worked on during Build Week. We gave people a few days to submit ideas and received 78 total contributions. This was a big win and a clear indication of a big appetite for Build Week within the company.The Team Formation stage was a trickier problem to solve and determine the process for. Initially, we had hoped that this could be entirely organic, with people gravitating towards an idea and joining up with people who are also excited to work on that idea. Ultimately, we realized that if we approached it this way, we would likely struggle with our goal of having people work with folks they don’t normally work with, and we wouldn’t have enough control over other aspects, such as the time zones within each team. All of this could jeopardize the success of Build Week itself. So we arrived at a hybrid, where we created a Google Form for people to submit their top 3 choices of ideas they’d like to work on. With that information, we determined the teams and made every effort to put people in a team they had put down as a choice.And the final stage is, of course, Build Week itself! The teams have now been formed, and we created a Slack channel for each team to start organizing themselves. We are providing some very lightweight guidance, and we will have a few required deliverables, but other than that, we are leaving it to each team to determine the best way to work together to create value during the week.If you’re a Buffer customer, one small note that as we embrace this company-wide event and time together, we will be shifting our focus slightly away from the support inbox. We will still be responding to your questions and problems with Buffer; however, we may be slightly slower than usual. We also won’t be publishing any new content on the blog. We’re confident that this time for the team to bond and build various projects of value will ultimately benefit all Buffer customers.Why right now is the time for Build Week at Buffer2022 has been a different year for Buffer. We’re in a position of flatter to declining revenue, and we’ve been working hard to find our path back to healthy, sustainable growth. One key element of this effort has been actively embracing being a smaller company. We’re still a small company, and we serve small businesses. Unless we lean into this, we will lose many of our advantages.We want to drive more connection across the team in a time where we’ve felt it lacking for the past couple of years. While we’ve been remote for most of our 11+ years of existence, we’ve always found a ton of value from company retreats where we all meet in person, and we’ve suffered during the pandemic where we’ve not been able to have these events. Build Week is an opportunity for us to do that with a whole new concept and event rather than trying to do it with something like a virtual retreat which would likely never be able to live up to our previous retreat experiences.There’s a big opportunity for exchanging context and ideas of current Buffer challenges within teams where the teams are cross-functional and with people who don’t normally work together. This could help us for months afterward.Build Week can also be a time where strong bonds, both in work and personally, are formed. My dream would be that after Build Week, people within their teams hit each other up in Slack and jump on a spontaneous catch-up call once in a while because they’ve become close during the week.We’ve had engineering hack weeks for a long time now. Those have been awesome in their way, but they have been very contained to engineering. And while those events created a lot of value, they often lacked perspectives that would have enhanced the work, such as customer advocacy, design, culture, or operational perspectives. As a company, we want to challenge some of the processes we have built up over the past few years. Build Week is like a blank canvas – we clear out a whole week and then diligently decide what we need in terms of structure and process to make this concept thrive and no more. This can act as inspiration for us going forward, where we can use the week as an example of rethinking process and questioning the ways we do things.The opportunity that comes with Build Week If we are successful with Build Week, I am confident that we will surprise ourselves with just how much value is created by the whole company in that one week alone. In embracing being a small company, we’re currently striving to challenge ourselves by moving at a faster pace without over-working. I think this is possible, and the completely different nature of how we work together in Build Week could give us ideas for what we can adjust to work more effectively and productively together in our regular flow of work.The opportunity for value creation within Build Week goes far beyond product features or improvements. Build Week will be a time for us to build anything that serves either customers or the team in pursuit of our vision and mission, or strengthens and upholds our values. We can stretch ourselves in the possibilities – there could be a marketing campaign, a data report, improving an existing process in the company, rethinking our tools, creating a new element of transparency, bringing our customers together, etc.Wish us luck!I believe Build Week can be one of the most fun, high-energy weeks we’ve had in years. I expect we can come out of the week on a high that can fuel us with motivation and enjoyment of our work for months. That is a worthy goal and something I think we can achieve with a little creativity and the right group of people designing and planning the event.Of course, part of the beauty of Build Week itself is that just like all the ideas and the freedom to choose how you work in a team, we don’t know everything we’ll learn as a company by doing this. It could be chaotic, there could be challenges, and there will undoubtedly be many insights, but we will be better off for having gone through the process. Please wish us all luck as we head into next week. There’s a lot of excitement in the company to create value. We hope to have new features to share with you in the coming weeks, and we’ll be back soon with a post sharing how it went.Have you tried something like Build Week before? If so, how did it go? I’d love to hear from you on Twitter.