Do 3rd-Party Social Media Tools Negatively Affect Reach and Engagement?

[Buffer Weekly Digest]( Trouble viewing? [View this email online]( Last week people using Buffer posted 4,796,194 updates to their social networks. It looks like you haven't connected an account to your Buffer yet - [connect an account now](   Our 200+ Post Experiment and Results Hi there, Putting your trust as a marketer or brand in 3rd-party social media tools to manage all of your posts can be a bit scary. You might be wondering: Are my posts getting optimal reach and engagement? Do social media platforms penalize 3rd-party tools? Are 3rd-party tools really worth the cost? These are some of the most common questions our Customer Advocates receive on a daily basis. And up until this research, we haven’t had any concrete data to say “yes” or “no” to whether or not 3rd-party tools affect the reach and engagement of posts. For an entire month, with the help of several awesome marketers and brands, we tested more than 200 posts across 35 profiles to see exactly how 3rd-party social media tools stack up vs. native posting. Today we’re excited to share the experiment setup and results in their entirety. [Read the post](   Latest from our Social blog: [10 Top Tips for Smarter Social Media Marketing with the Buffer Mobile App]( [Unsubscribe]( Buffer. 44 Tehama Street San Francisco, CA 94105 [Buffer Weekly Digest](