Dustin Kuhns started using Buffer in 2023. Today he runs social media for a number of arts and cultural organizations and manages more than 10 social media channels. Buffer just fits the way he likes to work, so he’s sticking with it as his company expands.
At a glance
- Customer: Dustin Kuhns, founder of Kuhns, Inc.
- Based in: Pennsylvania, USA
- What he does: Advice for arts and culture organizations, linking their strategy to social media, email and the rest of their communications
- Channels in buffer: 10+
- How he uses insights: Labels campaigns by topic and theme, then reads performance over a full year to shape what its clients release and program next
The work: “Arts and culture supply chain management”
Dustin doesn’t see himself as a social media manager. He runs a consulting firm in Quakertown, Pennsylvania, and describes his role as something closer to logistics than content creation.
“I specialize in supply chain management for arts and culture,” he says. “How does content get from leadership vision to a creative team and get published on social media, email, website, or advertising?”
His clients include teams of two or three people as well as institutions including religious non-profits, film festivals, historic theaters and arts organizations.
Early in his career, he recognized that most of these organizations rarely held back from their creative work. “It wasn’t a standout brand or better creative content that most of these organizations were missing,” he says. “It was consistency. And what they needed to be consistent was a tool that grew with them and didn’t dictate their workflow.”
Dustin’s own background spans music and art. He grew up playing music in church, later produced shows for other bands, spent several years in the design and construction industry, and eventually moved into communications. He regularly curates art exhibitions and owes a large part of his business to this sense of taste.
“Customers come to me because they have confidence in what they produce,” he says. “You trust my taste.”
For Dustin, it was a no-brainer to stay at Buffer as his business grew.
He would rather use a tool that is great for a set of targeted tasks than one that tries to do everything – and complicates his workflow in the process.
“I choose a tool that has 75% of what I need and find workarounds for the other 25% before using one that has 200% of what I need,” he says, “and then I let all the extra capacity get in the way.”
Dustin serves a wide range of clients, each with their own priorities. Therefore, he values a tool that does an excellent job of fulfilling his core task and then adapts to it, rather than one that drives a single way of working.
Buffer works the way he works, allowing him to focus entirely on each client’s specific priorities and needs.
How he uses insights
One of the workarounds Dustin was previously looking for was deeper social media analysis – until Insights ended up in Buffer. Insights is Buffer’s brand new answer to analytics, tracking and reporting, and Dustin was an early adopter.
Two features changed the game for him. The first is the ability to view performance data from every channel in a single view – which is huge when you’re reporting across a dozen accounts.
The second (and the feature he relies on most) is tagging. Tags – the ability to sort your posts into different color-coded categories – flow directly into Insights. Dustin can group his posts by campaign, theme, or topic and review the performance of each post over time.
He describes an example of a nonprofit client who based much of their content on influential ideas and quotes from experts. Dustin created a series of quote graphics with different authors and topics and organized them into different tags in Buffer to quickly compare their performance.
“In a matter of minutes, across a series of campaigns over the course of a year, I can see how content from specific thinkers on specific topics resonates with an audience and how that engagement changes,” he says.
What makes this valuable is what he does with the result, because he brings it back to the customer as a recommendation. “These insights don’t just flow into social media,” he says. “I can go back and say that this really resonates with people, and that can shape the client’s programming. Maybe the client runs a webinar on a particular topic or writes a newsletter or blog that focuses on a particular thinker, driving engagement on social media.”
A day becomes a reading for the audience, and that reading shapes the client’s broader strategy and next posts.
Let the taste dictate the dates
Dustin is keen to point out that analytics alone are not enough. “We need to see what things work best so we know what to focus on,” he says
However, he believes most people overlook the taste.
“Everyone’s criticism of social media these days boils down to one central problem: Taste was never included in the conversation when we started using data to increase engagement at all costs,” he says.
For example, he says a religious nonprofit can generate a lot of engagement on social media by chasing controversy. Of course, much of this engagement is hostile.
“It’s engagement. It gets me views. But does it advance my client’s mission? Probably not.” The data tells him what works, and his judgment determines which of those outcomes are actually desirable.
For Dustin, insights are a way to understand how an audience responds to work so he can decide what to do next instead of chasing whatever is currently being performed.
For this reason, he also appreciates the way Buffer handles AI. “The one thing I love about Buffer right now is that it’s the only platform I work with that doesn’t introduce me to generative AI,” he says. “The communities my clients work with wouldn’t respond well to that anyway.”
Insights follows the same principle: its intelligence runs in the background to uncover patterns worth looking into, and without contributing to or advocating for anyone’s voice.
If that sounds like how you work
If you’re a YouTuber, social media manager, or agency owner like Dustin who trusts gut instinct as much as metrics, then Insights was designed for you.
You can zoom out and look at the big picture performance of all your channels side by side, or go in to examine each chart at the channel (or tag!) level.
Some other useful features to note:
- Insights that guide your next step. Instead of making you look at a chart, Insights reads your performance and tells you (in plain language) what’s working and what you could try next.
- Reports your customers understand. Export sophisticated PDF or CSV reports for any channel, date range, or campaign without having to manually create a single spreadsheet.
- Your data wherever you want it. Download it as a CSV or PDF, or copy the whole thing as Markdown and paste it directly into your favorite AI tool like Claude or ChatGPT.
Bonus: Most of Insights’ features are available on the free plan. Create your free account and try out insights on your own channels.
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