Why Buffer Created Pablo
An External Analysis of Buffer’s Strategic Side Project
This post was written by Jason Li and Herbert Lui. It’s a sample strategic side project teardown. Jason and Herbert will be doing monthly comprehensive teardowns of strategic side projects in this mailing list. Sign up to learn more.
Even if you don’t use Buffer, chances are you’ve read their blog or seen one of their guest posts.
For the unfamiliar, Buffer is a social media tool. It helps its users schedule posts, drive traffic, increase fan engagement, and save time on social media. Buffer built a wide, loyal, user base with content marketing. Co-founder Leo Widrich focused on guest posting in the company’s early days. (100+ blogs in two months! Jeez.)
Buffer released a program called Pablo in early 2015, after their fifth team retreat. Pablo is a tool that makes it easier for Buffer users to create images for social media sharing. Pablo isn’t quite informative enough to be considered content. It also doesn’t directly generate revenue for Buffer. It is one of Buffer’s strategic side projects.
Pablo makes it easy for its users to create simple images to share on social media. It increases Buffer usage, but might also sell more paid memberships.
Here’s our external analysis on Pablo. It starts with how the Buffer team conceived of the idea, and extends to how Buffer acquires users for Pablo. Let’s dig in:
A Primer on Pablo
Pablo’s slogan in the top left hand corner of its screen is, “Engaging social images in 30 seconds.” Simple value proposition.
Buffer UX Researcher Patrik Ward says in an Inbound AMA:
With Pablo, our main goal was to build a tool that made it easy to create awesome, engaging images quickly and in a way that fits with the overall Buffer experience.
The first few times a user goes to the Pablo website, they’ll see this 0:30 video:
We used Pablo. Buffer did a great job with it. Although it’s a bit too minimalist for our tastes, it’s intuitive. At the time of writing, it’s a little buggy. (For example, I (Herbert) can’t download custom uploaded images properly. The downloaded image seems to only feature the most recently active layer.)
More importantly, Buffer positioned Pablo well. It’s niche enough not to directly compete with Twitshot and Canva.
However, I (Herbert) wish that Buffer had more photos suited for sharing text quotes. If Pablo had a lined paper background, users could produce faux-realistic typed quotes. It might look something like this:
Anyway, on to the big existential strategic side project question…
Why does Pablo exist?
Pablo exists to help potential (and current) customers of Buffer’s paid plans. These generally tend to be social media marketers. Buffer’s paid solutions are useful for anyone who creates a lot of content for social media.
According to Buffer’s research, social media users engage more with images than text-only posts. (Our friends who work at social network companies have seen a similar positive correlation.)
So, images are clearly the ideal option for social media marketers.
Buffer’s simple and quick image editing is dead useful. Some social media marketers might not know how to use Photoshop. Even if they did, using Photoshop to create an image just for social media can be very time consuming.
Pablo removes steps from the process, which makes it simpler at the cost of less customization. Users can easily upload logos and crop photos. Pablo provides various preset crop sizes for different social networks.
Social media marketers need to create tons of micro-content and images. Pablo makes it a bit easier for users to create each of these images. This slight energy saving can add up to significant amounts of time and energy, freeing marketers up to do other things.
There are business benefits to this usefulness. Pablo exists to get marketers to pay attention to Buffer. Buffer is also integrated into Pablo (an integration demanded by existing users). If a social media marketer starts using Pablo, they might start using Buffer.
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What benefits does this bring to Buffer?
For starters, it’s a safe bet that most images created on Pablo will likely be shared via Buffer. We make this assumption because users need to create a Buffer account to use Pablo. Also, Pablo integrates with Buffer. A small subset of users might use Pablo to download the edited image, upload to a social network, and share. But that’s a lot of work. It’s a safe bet most won’t.
Pablo could convert non-users into Buffer users. Sharing an image, as well as the Sign In/Sign Up button in the top right, signs users up for Buffer. Pablo could also activate casual Buffer users and turn them into active users.
To be clear, Pablo 1.0 was a standalone app and didn’t directly integrate into Buffer. Users spoke up and asked for integration in multiple comments in this AMA. Pablo 2.0 — released in October 2015 — shares through Buffer.
As Pablo gets exposure, it also brings more awareness for Buffer.
Strategic side projects generally have the added benefit of keeping teams on their toes. When we looked at Primer, we noticed that it was really different from the rest of Google’s products. It also allowed for designers to experiment in a creative sandbox.
In contrast, Pablo 2.0 looks exactly like Buffer. It’s not particularly beautiful or glossy, but it is very intuitive — exactly like Buffer. Their design team stuck with the same principles and guidelines when creating Pablo. (It’s definitely a step up from Pablo 1.0, which was also intuitive but not quite as refined.) The consistent aesthetic makes sense because the two services complement one another.
However, Pablo 2.0 does explore different ways of engaging users. It allows them to create images tailored for social media more easily. It also enables users to explore new behavior on Buffer.
Controlling the micro content stack
For the longest time, Buffer has been a place to share content. In order to increase user engagement, Buffer would have to encourage users to create more content as well. Creating content takes work. It takes thinking, which is stimulated by curating, reading, and consuming.
That’s why Buffer introduced a previous experimental feature called Suggestions. Suggestions made thinking easier. Users could easily populate their Buffer feeds with quotes at the click of a button. That was Buffer’s first attempt at moving down the content stack. It already owned sharing, but expanded into creating and thinking.
Unfortunately, Buffer axed the Suggestions feature shortly after launching Pablo 1.0.
It makes sense for Buffer to simplify the content stack as much as possible. Buffer’s core product finds better posting times, and tracks each posts’ impact. It makes sharing much more effective for users.
Pablo obviously makes creating easier, as it takes some of the work out of sharing images. Shortly before this post was published, Buffer launched a browser extension for Pablo (originally suggested in their Uservoice). The extension enables users to pull selected text and images from any website to Pablo. Buffer made content even easier to create.
However, Pablo also makes thinking easier. Buffer built a random quote generator in Pablo, reminiscent of its old Suggestions feature. You can shuffle through quotes until you find one that you like. Rather than wondering, “What would I like to say?” all you have to do is wonder, “Would I like to share this?” If yes, you make an image. If no, you just generate another quote. Rinse and repeat till you find one you like.
In the future, perhaps Buffer could create quotes for specific audience segments. (e.g., Quotes for marketers, quotes for designers, quotes for founders, etc.) Or maybe even a “fun” segment which includes memes and emojis to capture a more general market.
Changing mental triggers
Pablo also offers Buffer an opportunity to reposition itself in a user’s mind. The typical trigger for sharing an image might have been, “Oh, I should open up Photoshop.” Now, it’s, “Hey, I can just quickly crop and edit this in Pablo.”
This trigger offers a new way for a user to enter Buffer’s engagement loop.
Validating their customer development process
One of Buffer’s values, and their strengths, is their listening. Their attention to customers is actually how the concept for Pablo came about. Buffer UX Researcher Patrik Ward writes at an Inbound AMA:
In November of 2014 I did some customer development calls to see how people were finding the experience of choosing and sharing images through out browser extension. It was a super interesting and we were able to validate quite a few assumptions we had, as well as confirm that sharing great images was a big pain point that people were feeling.
…
We had existing validation for this one from the previous customer development work that had been done, so we knew also that customers might find a tool like this useful as well. One of our internal yardsticks for the product early on was to create something that would fit Kevan’s use case really well.
So, at the very least, Pablo proves that their process was working.
Going beyond content marketing
Pablo enables their company to explore different ways of capturing audience attention. Buffer has done a great job with content already. Pablo is an experiment in diversifying their user acquisition.
Amplification: How do they connect with new audiences and acquire users for their strategic side project?
Buffer’s method for acquiring users for Pablo is pretty standard. They do an announcement on Product Hunt (1.0, 2.0). It’s great exposure for Pablo, but also reminds people of Buffer’s core sharing service. Version launches become their own press coverage micro-events.
Buffer’s content and editorial connections enable them to get press coverage of Pablo’s launch. Here are articles on The Next Web, MakeUseOf, and Entrepreneur. Not bad reach for a strategic side project.
They also leverage their relationships in marketing. Pablo got covered on trade publications like Business2Community, Digital Insights, and The Content Strategist.
The Proof is in the Project
Pablo seems to have contributed, at least in a small part, to Buffer’s user engagement and growth. Existing users have found it useful. Although it doesn’t generate direct revenue, it is aligned well with the interests of Buffer’s market segment. Most importantly, Buffer’s strategic side project fits in very well for its core sharing product. The more useful Pablo is, the more attention Buffer’s core product will earn.
Being useful pays off.
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Jason Li is a self-taught designer from Toronto, Canada. He currently works as a UI/UX Designer for Thanx in San Francisco. You can see more of his work here.
Herbert Lui works with businesses to tell compelling stories at his marketing agency, Wonder Shuttle. He was previously a staff writer for Lifehacker, and his work has appeared in TIME, The Huffington Post, and Fast Company. He writes a newsletter that explores media, information, and marketing.
If you liked this post, you might also like our breakdown of Google’s strategic side project, Primer:
