Buffer might seem like a biased scientist when it comes to an experiment like this, but their well-executed study shows they were no joke when finding the capital t Truth. They answer questions we ourselves ask every day. Chances are if you use 3rd-party social media tools like Buffer, CoSchedule, or Hootsuite, you’ve asked these questions too.
Are my posts getting optimal reach and engagement? Do social media platforms penalize 3rd-party tools? Are 3rd-party tools really worth the cost?
So, for an entire month, Buffer tested more than 200 posts across 35 profiles to see exactly how 3rd-party social media tools stack up vs. native posting on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
Show notes below:
- (01:50) The 3 factors used in the experiment: account variation (multiple 3rd party tools and platforms), content quality, and posting consistency
- (02:25) How they used 11 different brands and marketers, creating for wide-breadth of variation
- (03:40) Rest easy… The experiment did not find a significant difference in reach their engagement
- (04:25) You can find the full study on buffer’s blog with a downloadable spreadsheet if you want to run your own experiment
- (04:45) Comparing numbers of tools vs. native performance with regards to reach and impressions
- (05:00) 3rd-party posting won on Facebook with a total reach 81,600 vs. 79,400 with native
- (05:15) Native posts did slightly better on Twitter reaching 975,000 vs. 950,000
- (05:25) 3rd-party posting beat out native posts on LinkedIn with 63,000 vs. 54,600
- (05:40) What does this all mean? That there’s not a huge difference concerning native vs. posts using 3-party tools. Win!
- (07:10) #1 takeaway? Content is the most important factor
- (08:10) What else did their study uncover? That video content outperformed link content and image and gifs content by more than 72%
- (09:30) Planning and uploading natively to social is a huge challenge, so utilize those social media tools! It’s how you’re able to ship great content consistently and on time
