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 our paid plans. Learn more about our plans and pricing here.
📝 This article is designed to help users with the Buffer mobile app. All instructions and screenshots are taken from the iOS app, and any steps that are different on Android are noted. You can find the desktop version of this article here.
This article contains the following sections:
- Creating a new campaign
- Adding posts to a campaign
- Viewing, editing, and deleting campaigns
- Tracking the performance of your campaigns
Creating a new campaign
There are two ways you can create a new campaign within the Buffer mobile app
- Within your Campaign settings,
- Within the composer itself as you're creating a post that needs a new campaign.
Creating a new campaign within your Campaign settings
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Tap the round avatar icon at the top left of your screen.
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Tap View to the right of Campaigns (at the top of the list).
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Tap the + icon at the top right corner of your screen (or the blue pencil icon at the bottom right of your screen on Android). Alternatively, tap Create a Campaign if you don't have any active campaigns.
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Enter a name for your campaign, choose a color, and tap Create.
Creating a new campaign within the composer
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Tap the blue + icon at the bottom middle of your screen. This will open up the composer. On Android, you'll need to tap the blue pencil icon at the bottom right of your screen to open the composer.
- Tap Select a Campaign at the top of the composer.
- Tap Create a Campaign.
4. Enter a name for your campaign, choose a color, and tap Create.
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.
- Buffer's analytics tools currently support Facebook Pages, Instagram business accounts, Twitter profiles, and LinkedIn Pages. While it's possible to create posts for Pinterest within a campaign, it won't be possible to track the metrics for those within your campaign analytics. This is also true of Instagram posts that are scheduled as reminders.
- 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, tap the + icon at the top right of your screen (or the blue pencil icon at the bottom right of your screen on Android) to create a new post. Alternatively, tap Create Posts if you don't have any scheduled posts within the campaign already.
Alternatively, create your post within your queue as you usually would, and tap the Select a Campaign option at the top right of the composer and then tap the campaign you'd like to add the post to. On Android, your existing campaigns will be listed along the top of the composer. You can scroll along and tap on the campaign you'd like to add the post to.
Create your post as you usually would. Guidance on media and scheduling options can be found here. Once saved, the name of the campaign a post belongs to will be displayed on the post within the queue.
Viewing, editing, and deleting campaigns
In the Campaigns area, you'll be able to toggle between the "Active" tab, which shows campaigns that have posts waiting to be published, and the "Completed" tab, which shows campaigns where all the posts have been sent. The following details will be shown for each campaign:
- 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 ("Queued").
- Number of posts that have been sent as part of this campaign ("Published").
The order of campaigns listed is determined by which one was most recently edited. The most recently edited campaign will sit at the top of the list.
Tap on a campaign to view more details. In this view, you'll be able to toggle between the "Queued" tab, which shows any posts waiting to be published, and the "Published" 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, tap the three horizontal dots at the top right of the campaign, and then tap Edit Campaign. Change the name and/or color of the campaign as needed and tap Save.
Deleting a campaign
To delete a campaign, head to your list of campaigns, tap the three horizontal dots at the top right of the campaign, and then tap Delete Campaign.
📝 Please note, deleting a campaign will not delete the posts linked 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
For guidance on tracking your campaigns with Buffer's analytics, please head over to this guide.