Using Buffer as an agency

Buffer is suitable for agencies, and there are many agency teams that use Buffer! Because all companies are unique, we thought this article could be a place for our agency customers to understand more about how the different tools and features within Buffer could set them up for success. 

In this article:

1. A few features you might enjoy
2. Plans and pricing
3. Connecting your clients' channels
4. Giving your clients and staff the right permission levels
5. Managing draft approvals from clients as an account owner

A few features you might enjoy

There are a lot of fun features to dig into as you get started with Buffer. These are a few that stand out as being especially helpful for agency teams.

• Start Page: Is one of your clients running a seasonal sale or campaign? You can surprise them by creating a beautiful landing page that features their most important links and calls to action. You can learn more about Start Page here: Using Start Page with Buffer.
• Hashtag manager: Do you have a unique set of hashtags you use for each client or each social channel? The hashtag manager found in your Instagram composer allows you to customize multiple hashtag groups so that you can spend more time creating new posts and less time typing out hashtags. Click here to learn more about the hashtag manager feature: Using Buffer's hashtag manager.
• Engagement dashboard: It can take hours to get through comments for multiple clients. Your engagement dashboard serves up not only all comments made to each of your clients' Facebook and Instagram accounts, but it also highlights the comments that seem to be most urgent. Learn more about engaging with Facebook and Instagram comments here.
• Custom analytics reports: Found in your analytics dashboard under "Reports," you have the ability to compile PDF reports showcasing your client's logo and top results. This article shares more about creating custom analytics reports. If you'd rather look at your data more granularly, feel free to download a CSV file or image of that individual chart or graph within any one of your "Channels" views.

Plans and pricing

Agencies tend to connect more channels, analyze more metrics, and create more reports than other customers. So, which plan will be best for you?

• If you have up to 10 social channels, we recommend the Essentials (one user) or Team plans (unlimited users).
• If you have 11 or more social channels, our Agency plan (unlimited users) will be the most cost-effective for your team.

Learn more about our plans and pricing here.

What counts as a channel? A channel is each individual Page, group, or profile that you’d like to connect. As an example, you might be scheduling posts for 10 clients who each have five social channels (e.g. Facebook Page, Instagram account, 2 LinkedIn Pages, and Pinterest profile). This would come to 50 channels in total.

Connecting your clients' channels

There are two ways you can get your clients’ social channels set up in Buffer:

• You (the account owner) can connect them, or
• Your client can connect them if they are designated as an Admin on your Buffer account. See below for important considerations with this option.

Let’s chat about both of these options below so that you can make the best choice for your organization.

Option 1: You (the account owner) connect all social channels

To connect all of your clients’ social channels, you’ll need to have admin permissions or login credentials for each of the social channels that need to be connected.

Each social network is a little different, and the table below shares more about what is involved in obtaining admin access for each of the social networks Buffer integrates with.

When it comes to connecting multiple Instagram accounts, we do not recommend managing more than 5 Instagram accounts in total and we also recommend each Instagram account be connected to an authentic, active Facebook page. There are several considerations and reasons for these recommendations, which you can read in our Instagram best practices.

Option 2: Your client connects each of their social channels

While it’s possible for users on your account that are designated with the Admin permission to connect their own social channels, there is one important consideration to keep in mind if you decide to go this route:

When you give a user on your account Admin permission, they have the ability to manage any social channel connected to your Buffer organization. If the other social channels connected to your Buffer organization are confidential (such as if you have many clients and don’t want each to have access to one another’s social channels), you’ll want to move forward with the first option to connect social channels explained above.

Giving your clients and staff the right permission levels

There are four main permissions available on your Buffer plan:

• Organization owner/Account owner
• Admin
• Full posting access (channel specific)
• Approval required access (channel specific)

Let’s talk about when using each might be most advantageous. To see a broader explanation of all of these permissions, head to the article: Adding users and setting up permissions in your organization.

Organization owner:

The person who has access to the email address and password that the billing is under is the organization owner. There isn’t a way to designate a second owner, but we can transfer ownership to another Buffer user if needed.

The organization owner will always have Full Posting access on all channels and this cannot be changed. You can read more about Full Posting access below.

If you as the organization owner need to submit posts for approval to a client, you might consider creating a different Buffer account with a different email address and invite that user to have Admin access of the organization, but Approval Required access on the social channels you’ll need to submit for approval. With this solution, you will need to login under your owner account to access your billing information, but you should be able to do most other tasks via your new user account, such as create posts, manage users, customize posting schedules, and connect new channels (just make sure to select the correct organization).

Admin:

This permission affects access to your entire Buffer organization. You’ll give admin permission to anyone on your team who you’d like to have a full range of access, including connecting and removing social channels, creating and printing reports, viewing posting campaign success, replying to all incoming Facebook and Instagram comments, and posting to all social channels connected to your Buffer account.

Full Posting access:

This permission affects access to individual social channels. Many agencies set their clients up with Full Posting access on one or more of their social channels. This allows them to add posts, delete posts, assign posts to specific campaigns, and approve posts drafts on that specific social channel. You can also set your own team members up with Full Posting access for any social channel they have permission to create posts for. Users with Full Posting access can view analytics for those social channels, as well as respond to the comments made on the posts of those social channels (for Facebook and Instagram).

Approval Required access:

This permission affects access to individual social channels. If you don’t want your clients or team members to add posts to the active queue of a specific social channel, but instead would like them to draft posts that you can review before they are scheduled to publish, setting them up with Approval Required access for that social channel is a great move. Users with Approval Required access can view analytics, but cannot respond to the comments made on the posts of those social channels.

What if my client needs to approve the posts my agency creates?

If posts need approval from clients, you‘ll set your staff up with Approval Required access and your clients with Full Posting access for the social channels they’ll be working on. From there, the flow would be for your staff to create posts within the drafts area and then request approval. The client will be able to review, edit, and approve those posts, at which point they’ll be moved to the active queue. Learn more about managing and approving draft posts, and make sure to revisit the “Organization owner” section just above.

Managing draft approvals from clients as an account owner

Creating another profile to have your drafts approved

As the owner of the Buffer organization, your Buffer account has permanent Full Posting access, meaning that any posts you create will be added to the queue and can't be sent for approval. So as a workaround, you can create another Buffer account for yourself with a separate email address and create your drafts to be approved when signed into that user profile.

To see how this can work, watch the video below to see this in action:

Using the drafts or create area

Set up a cadence with your client (eg: every Monday) to look at the drafts area or create area to review the new posts you've created. Your client can then leave comments on the posts, approve them, or ask for revision. Learn more about creating ideas with Buffer and creating posts from the drafts area.