At Ripl, we want to provide you with the best knowledge to take your business & marketing to the next level. With that in mind, our staff found ten interesting articles from around the web that may be helpful to you. Here are some of our favorites this week:
1. “Managing millennials the path to success for your small business” by Rhonda Abrams, USA Today
Recap: If you’re a small business owner managing millennials, you may feel a generation gap with your employees. To motivate millennial employees, management experts recommend that you: provide positive feedback, highlight the positive social goals of your business, and provide updated technology to unlock your employee’s full potential.
2. “From hobby to business: The unfiltered truth & how to prepare” by Kat Boogard, MSN
Recap: Although turning your hobby into your full-time job may sound like a dream, there are important factors to consider first. Top things to know: It’s possible to turn your hobby into a full-time income, but working to succeed full time may drain some of the love you feel for it. Your personal time may feel more limited. While you’ll love your product, you’ll also want a return for the money you’ll sink into it.
3. “Fake followers in influencer marketing will cost brands $1.3 billion this year, reports says” by Megan Graham, CNBC
Recap: As influencer marketing has grown, the rise of “fake influencers” with fake followers has increased as well. A new report estimates fake influencers will cost advertisers $1.3 billion this year. The main thing to look at when checking out an influencer: engagements. A huge red flag of fake influencers is the lack of engagements on a post, despite their high follower count.
4. “5 Easy Ways to Incorporate Facebook Stories into Your Social Media Marketing” by Tabitha Jean Naylor, Business 2 Community
Recap: Video is taking off – partially due to the rise of Instagram and Facebook stories. The author’s top tips to use Facebook stories: use them to create a sense of urgency to try your product with online offers, to connect with your customers by documenting your business events as they happen, to feature your brand’s look, to tell personal stories about your business, and to showcase your employees.
5. “Twitter tests letting users follow topics in the same way they follow accounts” by Casey Newton, The Verge
Recap: Twitter will soon allow users to be able to follow a topic of interest, instead of just Twitter users. Topics can range from current events, to celebrities, to sports. Topics will be curated by Twitter, using machine learning to select the tweets displayed. The move represents Twitter’s latest effort to help users find the best content on the platform even if they don’t know which accounts to follow. Using hashtags can help get your business noticed by potential customers – thankfully Ripl recommends hashtags for all of your posts.
6. “How to Rock Your Back to School Marketing Campaign [Infographic]” by Andrew Hutchinson, Social Media Today
Recap: As September approaches, some small businesses are focused on their back-to-school marketing campaigns. Article highlights: 52% of back-to-school shoppers shop in July, dads spend more on average than moms, a majority of supplies are purchased in stores, and 25% of parents use Facebook to research back-to-school clothes.
7. “6 Brands That Expertly Tap Into Humor in Their Marketing” by Samuel Dunsiger, AdWeek
Recap: Humor is a great way to make your advertising more memorable and to attract more attention. The article shows how these six brands use humor successfully to grab attention: Dollar Shave Club, Oreos, Charmin, MailChimp, Moosejaw, and MoonPie. Click the article to watch their hilarious commercials!
8. “7 Biggest Social Media Mistakes Businesses Make That Damage Their Reputation” by Jonas Sickler, Neal Schaffer
Recap: Although social media is a valuable tool to market your business, mishandling social media can hurt your business’s reputation. Some of the main mistakes businesses can make with social media: putting the wrong person in charge of social media accounts, not having a crisis communication plan, failing to monitor complaints, not engaging with your audience, being unprofessional, misjudging your audience, and not drafting an employee social media policy.
9. “5 Data Backed Social Media Trends of 2019” by Pavel Demidchick, Awario
Recap: The team at Awario dived into the latest social media research to create an infographic of the hottest social media trends of 2019. Some interesting findings: 78% of people posting complaining tweets expect to be replied to within an hour, 64% of brands plan to use Instagram stories, and micro-influencers are 6.7 times more effective than large influencers.
10. “10 Killer Real Estate Marketing Ideas that Won’t Break the Bank” by Izabelle Hundrev, G2
Recap: If you’re a real estate agent, here are some approaches to market your real estate business: try to be active in online forums, use direct mail, leverage SEO, produce blog posts about your local community, and get featured in local publications.
