Social media marketing is no longer just about posting, say, twice a day, five days a week. Top marketers plan their social media content in terms of campaigns. These campaigns usually have a goal (e.g. to promote your Christmas sales) and stretch across multiple social media channels. Once you have created your campaigns in Buffer, you can pop over to the analytics tab to see the performance of your campaigns.
This guide outlines how to create and manage campaigns in Buffer. For guidance on tracking the performance of your campaigns in Buffer, please head over to this guide.
⭐️ Campaigns is available on paid plans. Learn more about our plans and pricing here.
This article contains the following sections:
- Video walkthrough
- Creating a new campaign
- Adding posts to a campaign
- Viewing, editing, and deleting campaigns
- Tracking the performance of your campaigns
Video walkthrough
In the video below, Katie, from our Customer Advocacy team, will walk you through the steps to manage your social campaigns within Buffer, and track the performance of them under the analytics tab.
Creating a new campaign
📝 Please note, only the account owner and users with Admin access are able to create new campaigns.
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Start by clicking the Publishing tab in your Buffer dashboard, then click on Campaigns at the top left.
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If this is the first campaign you're creating, click the Create a Campaign button in the center of the page. If you've already created one or more campaigns, click Create Campaign in the upper right corner.
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Enter a name for your campaign, choose a color, and click Save Campaign.
Adding posts to a campaign
Notes
- An important note on campaigns visibility: All users within an organization are able to view all campaigns, including all posts belonging to those campaigns, regardless of whether or not they have access to the social channel a post belongs to. Let’s say a user has access to three of five channels that are connected to the organization. They will have visibility of all campaigns, and all posts belonging to those campaigns, even if some of those posts are scheduled for the two channels they don’t have access to. However, they will not be able to click on the channel avatar and will not be able to access the queue for that channel.
- Only the account owner and users with Full Posting Access are able to add posts to campaigns. If you are approving a draft post from a user with Approval Required Access, that you’d like to add to a campaign, you’ll first need to approve the post, and then edit it from the queue and select a campaign.
- While it's possible to create posts within a campaign for Facebook groups, LinkedIn profiles, and Pinterest boards, it won't be possible to track the metrics for those within the analytics area. You'll be able to view campaign analytics for posts shared to Facebook Pages, Instagram business accounts, Twitter profiles, and LinkedIn Pages. Instagram posts that are scheduled as reminders also won't appear in campaign analytics.
- Forget to add a post to a campaign before publishing it? Navigate over to the Sent Posts tab, find the post you want to add to a campaign, and then use the Add Campaign button to choose a campaign.
The next step is to create posts for your campaign. This can be done from the campaign itself, or by creating posts in your queue as you usually would, and selecting the campaign they should belong to.
When viewing a campaign, click Create Post.
Alternatively, create your post within your queue as you usually would, and select the campaign you'd like to add the post to at the top right of the composer. Posts can only be added to one campaign.
Create your post as you usually would. Guidance on media and scheduling options can be found here.
Any posts scheduled for your campaign will be shown within the campaign itself.
Posts scheduled for a campaign will also be shown in your queue(s). The name of the campaign a post belongs to will be displayed on the post within the queue. You can click on the name of the campaign to be taken to it.
To add an existing post to a campaign, edit the post in the queue and then select the campaign you'd like it to belong to at the top right of the composer.
Viewing, editing, and deleting campaigns
In the Campaigns area, you’ll see a list of your campaigns, with the following details:
- Campaign name (with when it was last updated displayed below).
- Start and end dates of the campaign. This is dictated by the posts you have scheduled within the campaign.
- Number of posts scheduled within the campaign.
- Number of posts that have been sent as part of this campaign
Click on a campaign to view more details. In this view, you'll be able to toggle between the "Scheduled" tab, which shows any posts waiting to be published, and the "Sent" tab, which shows any posts that have already been sent. Sent posts will display basic engagement metrics such as clicks, likes, and comments (depending on social network).
Editing a campaign
To change the name and/or color of a campaign, head to your list of campaigns, click on the drop down arrow on the right hand side, and click Edit Campaign. Change the name and/or color of the campaign as needed and click Save Campaign.
Deleting a campaign
To delete a campaign, head to your list of campaigns, click on the drop down arrow on the right hand side, click Delete Campaign, and then click Yes, Delete Campaign to confirm.
📝 Please note, deleting a campaign will not delete the posts associated to that campaign. If you’d like to stop those posts from being published, you will need to delete those individually, either from within the campaign before you delete it, or from your queue(s).
Tracking the performance of your campaigns
Campaign tracking is available in Buffer under the analytics tab. You can access your campaign report by clicking View Report either from the campaigns list, or from the campaign itself. For guidance on tracking your campaigns in Buffer, please head over to this guide.