Inspiration Fuels Growth and Quiets Doubt

Business owners and entrepreneurs, really anyone who is building her own future, always needs one thing. Inspiration.

Inspiration is an amazing ingredient. It drowns out the doubts and negative thoughts that might be rattling around our minds. Inspiration is that energetic, hard rocking sound track that gets us through a boot camp workout by muffling our screeching muscles.

Without inspiration, that hockey stick in the business plan is merely aspirational and so daunting. With inspiration, it’s an audacious goal that will be achieved with focus, drive and hard work that we love.

For those of us who run businesses and guide clients in growing theirs, inspiration is in short supply and we must demand it in all we do. Our business partners must inspire us. Our staff must inspire us. Our strategic vendors must inspire us. And, your social media and marketing agency must inspire you.

At Red Root Marketing, we consider inspiration one of our most important qualities. When we leave a meeting with our client, we hope they are energized by the possibilities of having their company, their brand, become a vibrant community hub via social media and smart strategy. The excitement we feel about our clients’ businesses reflects our optimism in their goals and we’re here to help make them happen – by connecting a client’s online presence to key community influencers, establishing a more effective pricing model, or helping a client understand what her customers think about the company’s product. Inspiration needs to be central to all of those services we provide.

What inspires you? Who inspires you? We’d love to know!

To #Hashtag or Not to Hashtag

One of the greatest questions of our time that plagues people of all ages is: “How the heck do I use hashtags?” 

Okay, so while it may not be one of the weightiest quandaries of the contemporary world, it is still an important question that boggles a lot of minds. On social media, hashtags can be instrumental in helping people find your content and helping you find others' content as well. After you hashtag a word, it enters the vast world of hashtags. This allows anyone on social media to see your content if they search for that word which gives your post the opportunity of being seen by hundreds, thousands, or even millions of people. So should you be using them? Absolutely.


Think of hashtags as a built-in search engine for you to find posts that interest you. Wondering what’s been going on in Montclair, NJ? Try searching #montclairnj on Instagram or Twitter - and users that post content relevant to Montclair may come up. Wondering where you can find a designer to do a logo for you? Try searching #logodesign. You can and should do this in your own posts as well.

Try to use a mix of both broad hashtags (i.e. #tiptuesday or #tbt for “Throwback Thursday”), local hashtags (i.e. #montclairnj #essexcounty), and hashtags that are specific to your brand that you dream up (ours is #growwithredroot). This will maximize your audience so you will attract a wider range of people and brand your biz with your list of hashtags.

When hashtagging, just make sure to use them in moderation in the body of your post or at the end of your post. For example, a tweet or caption that reads, “#Checkout our #new #newsletter on #whetherornot to #hashtag on #socialmedia” might be startling to your followers. We like to occasionally scatter a hashtag within our content and list any additional hashtags at the end. Use up to 30 hashtags on Instagram, as many as you can fit on Twitter and 2-4 on Facebook.

Questions? Call us today at 973 650 0960 or email us at redroot@maarek.com! We would love to hear from you 😀

How to Re-Post Content on Instagram

As a small business owner, you know that staying active on social media platforms like Instagram is important. However, we know it can become time consuming to create good content every day that represents your business in a positive way. This is where it can be beneficial to re-post (or re-gram) others' content-- but how do you do it? Posting other people's content can feel uncomfortable because it feels like plagiarism. It's not! And there's a way to do it correctly! Here's how: 

Scroll through Instagram and look for anything that is relevant to your brand, your message, your aesthetic. When you find something relevant, it's important to follow proper etiquette when re-posting to avoid "stealing" the content or stepping on anyone's toes. You can use an application (we like Repost It! for Instagram or Repost for Instagram) which automatically watermarks the photo with the original user's tag or you can screenshot the content and tag the account and give photo creds if possible in your caption. (Note: normally, this is all you need to do but in the event that the user reaches out to you and says that they are uncomfortable with you using their photos despite your attribution, delete the photo and search for something else to post.) Check out Red Root's Instagram account to see how we repost local businesses' content!

An important benefit of reposting content is that it puts you and your brand on someone else's radar. When you repost and tag the other account, they receive a notification and more times than not, other users will write a comment to thank you for sharing their post. This creates an interaction and increased engagement on the post and on your account, laying a foundation for a new relationship.

Re-posting content helps you to stay relevant on social media, offsets the time it takes to create all of your own graphics and also fosters and maintains good relations with other users. While it is important to create your own content frequently, re-posting should be a welcomed practice on your social media.

Questions? Call us today at 973 650 0960 or email us at redroot@maarek.com!