Post every day but make sure you’re posting quality over quantity. Be consistent, but don’t be boring. Jump on trends early because that will help with engagement but make sure you’re on brand. Boost your posts to further your reach, but don’t waste money unless you’re doing proper ads. Test your ads to see what works best but don’t waste your ad budgets on experiments. Follow best practices, but make sure you stand out.
Welcome to marketing in 2026. The volume of contradictory digital marketing advice and marketing growth hacks are confusing and overwhelming, so I’m going to help cut through some of the noise. Here some current Ripple recommendations to get you started.
Posting daily is not going to make the algorithm reward you, it may just annoy your followers. While staying top of mind is essential, flooding the feed without clear strategy is just spam. Consistency is important, but strategy beats volume.
Attention spans are decreasing (thank you, short form video) so instead of tasking your audience with an essay, figure out what resonates with your audience and stops the scroll.
Does every post need to be perfect? Does every post need your logo on it? Does every post need imagery in 4k. Probably not. Sometimes standing out is just posting a screenshot from your notes app.
It’s not about what’s trending online, it’s about what actually works for your account. Look at your data, look at the statistics and decide what formats work best for your content. There’s value in including all content formats, but don’t focus on one particular format just because you think it’s what you should be doing.
This may be a personal thing, but I don’t see value in hashtags. With threads limiting hashtags to just one, Instagram is reducing hashtags to 5; it’s more apparent that hashtags are dying. Previously, they were used extensively. Actually I don’t remember the last time I clicked a hashtag to look for similar content… do you?
AI and ChatGPT can be helpful with marketing and yes there are valid use cases for it. BUT. Please. Stop. Using. It. To. Write. Every. Caption. It sticks out like a small thumb and you lose authenticity. You want to sound like a real person!
Please don’t spend hours on creative assets to only use them for two weeks. You should be consistently testing your ad creative and refining it, but once you see positive results from the ad creative you’re running, it’s probably not the best idea to completely change the creative. Running the same ad again can help with retargeting people who scrolled last time.
No! Immediately no! Being everywhere doesn’t automatically equal a bigger audience. Think about it, if you’re trying to target an older generation, is TikTok your best option? Probably not. Yes, you may still reach a portion of your audience but to be successful on TikTok will waste resources you could be applying elsewhere.
Again, no. Date helps you to form decisions, but you still need to factor in creativity, experience and your best judgement. Review the data, then decide what works best for your brand!
Here’s the thing about marketing in 2026, it’s not one-size-fits-all. The best marketing won’t be following every hack or jumping on every trend. It’s about understanding your audience, staying true to your brand and at times, experimenting and learning from those experiments.
At Ripple, we believe in being smart with your strategy. We test, iterate and sometimes we break the ‘rules’ that everyone swears by. Because sometimes the only rule that matters to us is: will this work for your brand and your audience? So, the next time you see a post claiming ‘You’re missing out unless you’re doing X’, take a minute and decide if its valuable for your brand and your audience.
If you’re ready to cut through the marketing ‘hacks’ and build a strategy that works, lets chat and see what Ripple can do for your brand.
Written by Lauren Redfern