Victoria Chynoweth

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Be yourself and be curious, and the right people will find you. In business, who you know is everything. That means building real connections — ones you can count on, that go beyond surface-level acquaintances — should be a high priority for professionals looking to advance in their careers or business. However, just networking likely won’t get you the kind of relationships you’ll need to succeed. To build real connections, follow the 16 tips outlined by the culture and business experts of Rolling Stone Culture Council and see why being intentional about your relationships can propel you forward far faster than just networking alone.

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Building a successful brand means understanding who you are and staying true to it. In so many areas of culture, building a successful personal brand is key to getting ahead. Who you are, what you’re known for and what value you provide to others all play a role in creating your brand, and those who create positive ones are likely to find more opportunities coming their way. But creating a personal brand isn’t as simple as some may think. It requires intentionality and a deep understanding of self to get started. Here, 14 leaders of Rolling Stone Culture Council share some of the other steps you’ll need to take if you want to build a successful personal brand, in life and in business.

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To better engage with your customers, you’ll need to think like them first. As companies begin reflecting on the past year and planning for the next one, they’re likely setting goals for the new year and the steps they need to take in order to better their company and their bottom line. For many companies, that means working on customer communication and engagement. As the way companies treat their customers can have a huge impact on overall customer interest and loyalty to a brand, ensuring helpful, consistent communication and regular engagement is critical to increasing sales. But improving your communication with customers isn’t as easy as just answering their questions. Here, the business leaders of Rolling Stone Culture Council share nine tips for improving your customer communication and engagement in 2024 and why doing so can help you start your year off on a positive note.

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With these tips, you can enjoy the holidays and feel productive at the same time. During the holidays, both your personal and professional to-do lists can often feel never-ending. With gatherings to attend, shopping to do, projects to wrap up and tasks to try to complete before you take off on PTO, finding a way to get it all done can seem impossible. To help ease your work-life balance during the busy holiday season, it’s key to get organized at work and put systems into place to help you bring your workload down to a more manageable level. To help, 11 business leaders from Rolling Stone Culture Council each discuss one tip they'd offer business leaders for how to tackle a long list of competing priorities during this time of year and get a little more enjoyment out of the festive season.

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Making your clients feel seen can go a long way toward creating relationships that last. Even if you have the top product or service in your niche, nothing quite makes an impact on your bottom line like positive client relationships. A terrible experience with customer service, or just poor customer service in general, can often be enough to turn customers off your business for good — and ensure negative word-of-mouth spreads as they go.  Creating and maintaining positive client relationships, then, is vital to amassing a loyal, supportive group of customers. To get started, consider the following tips from the business leaders of Rolling Stone Culture Council. Here, they each share one tip they’d give any business leader for how to nurture positive client relationships and why.

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The key to making your business stand out lies in how well you know your viewers. Whether you’re creating a video ad or an educational "how-to" video for your business, there are just some creative tactics that seem to lend themselves well to the video format. Taking advantage of these tactics is critical in an age where getting someone to stop scrolling through their social media feed is key to getting your business noticed. So what can you do to stop the scroll? Here, 12 business leaders from Rolling Stone Culture Council discuss their best tips for creating something that will make viewers stop scrolling, engage with your video and, ultimately, become a patron of your brand.

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Before you tackle your business alone, consider this advice first. Running a business on your own comes with an abundance of benefits — the ability to determine your own schedule, the freedom to make decisions based on your own ideas and the opportunity to work on whatever projects you find interesting. However, being a solopreneur or solo creator also means you’re the only one responsible for starting and growing your company, which can be a lot of pressure for one person to handle. As business leaders, the members of Rolling Stone Culture Council are familiar with what it takes to build a brand from the ground up. Below, they each offer up one tip for solopreneurs and creators looking to start their own brands, grow them and succeed as leaders in the culture space.

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Failure can be one of life's greatest teachers. At one time or another, every leader will experience some degree of professional failure. While the experience can be disappointing or frustrating, it can also serve as a powerful teacher, imparting valuable lessons that can shape one's views or career trajectory. If you've experienced failure in your professional journey, know that you're not alone — and you're not down for the count. Below, 12 members of Rolling Stone Culture Council share the biggest lessons they've learned from professional failure and the lasting impact of that hard-earned wisdom.

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AI in the workplace could have some definite benefits — as well as some downfalls. In an era marked by the rapid evolution of artificial intelligence (AI), businesses are increasingly presented with both unprecedented opportunities and ethical dilemmas. As organizations consider integrating AI technologies into their operations, the intricate web of challenges surrounding their creation and implementation continues to spark controversy. Before taking the plunge into the realm of AI, prudent business leaders find themselves standing at a crossroads, grappling not only with the promise of innovation but also with the potential pitfalls that lie ahead. To offer their insights, Rolling Stone Culture Council members share the critical questions business leaders should ask before making AI a part of their business in any meaningful way.

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Following these creative suggestions for thought leaders can help you gain the authority you need to stand out. In a crowded industry full of experts, standing out and gaining recognition as a thought leader requires a touch of creativity. While expertise and knowledge are essential, it's the ability to showcase your unique perspective and captivate audiences that sets you apart. So, how can you harness creativity to become a standout thought leader in your field? Below, Rolling Stone Culture Council members explore unconventional strategies that will help you make a lasting impact, attract attention and position yourself as a trusted authority in your industry.

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Ensure the success of your startup by following these 12 tips to build the best possible team through effective hiring practices. Building a successful startup requires assembling a team of talented individuals who can contribute to its growth and navigate the challenges of the early stages. However, hiring the right people for a startup can be a daunting task. It requires a strategic approach to identify individuals who not only possess the necessary skills but also align with the company's vision and culture. Below, Rolling Stone Culture Council members shared some essential tips for bringing on the right people to help grow a startup in its early stages. These insights will empower entrepreneurs to make informed hiring decisions that lay a solid foundation for long-term success. 

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PR is a critical component of any successful business strategy, especially during tough economic times.

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Your local community can support you in more ways than one — as long as you support them too. Especially for small businesses, embracing your local community can be vital to your ongoing success. Your local community members not only make up the large portion of your customers — if not all of them — but they also can act as key support when times are tough and help  ensure a thriving local market of small businesses, entrepreneurs and community organizations.  But to fully immerse yourself into your community, you’ll need to ensure your efforts are thoughtful and well-planned-out. For guidance, the members of Rolling Stone Culture Council offer their tips for how any business can become a valued, trusted pillar of their surrounding community and why doing so is so important.

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Being confident in who you are can go a long way toward ensuring your success. While the number of female CEOs in the U.S.—around one third of all chief executive officers—still pales in comparison to the number of male CEOs, entrepreneurship provides a great opportunity for women to get their start at the top. However, leading a business still presents challenges, especially in male-dominated industries.  To help shed some light on these obstacles—and how to overcome them—12 members of Rolling Stone Culture Council  each share one piece of advice they'd give fellow female entrepreneurs or aspiring business owners for how to be successful in business and why.

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Silos can often hamper collaboration, but with the right strategies, you can start working together more effectively. In today's fast-paced and competitive work environment, collaboration has become an essential skill for teams to succeed. While individual focus time is crucial, many projects require a diverse range of perspectives and skill sets to come to fruition. However, breaking down the silos that exist between team members and departments and often hinder this success can be challenging. Leaders must create an environment that fosters collaboration by encouraging open communication, promoting cross-functional teams and implementing collaborative tools and practices. To help you do this, a panel of Rolling Stone Culture Council members explain how leaders and their teams can break down silos and become better collaborators.

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Every business owner needs to take risks, but it's important to make sure the ones you do take are calculated. Leading a business often requires taking risks, but not all risks are created equal. Taking a calculated risk can lead to significant rewards, but blindly taking a risk without considering the consequences can lead your business down the wrong path. Asking the right questions can help you determine whether a risk is a smart one or not. By carefully considering the potential outcomes, you can then determine if the risk is worth taking.  Here are 11 important questions to ask yourself before taking a business risk, as shared by the members of Rolling Stone Culture Council.

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You can't necessarily buy brand loyalty, but you can earn it with the right customer experience and engagement tactics. Loyal customers are the cornerstone of any successful brand. They stick by a business through thick and thin and support its products or services above all others in the industry. Having this dedicated, repeat customer can be a stepping stone toward increased brand recognition and an increase in profits. However, it takes dedication and effort to convert a casual buyer into someone who sticks by your company for life. To help, a panel of experts from Rolling Stone Culture Council recommend some effective ways any business can turn everyday customers into brand loyalists.

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The end of the year is a notoriously busy time, but it's important to make room in your schedule for these key year-end to-dos. As the end of the year approaches, most businesses are wrapping up any outstanding projects and assessing what needs to be carried over into the new year. It's the perfect time for leaders to meet with employees to discuss what worked, what could be better and how teamwork can help achieve next year’s goals. Below, a panel of Rolling Stone Culture Council members share some essential items business leaders should achieve before January 1st. Here's why they believe these 13 tasks belong on your end-of-year to-do list.

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Customer education must be approached with the right tone and content to be effective. Sometimes, customers may be interested in your product or service, but if it seems too complicated or difficult to understand, they may not follow through with a purchase. Conveying information in a simple, concise and fun way can help educate the customer without the need for a long, complicated or boring explanation. Whether you publish an FAQ page or create a short explainer video, it's important to keep your customer interested while making sure they understand the nuances of your product or service. Below, a panel of Rolling Stone Culture Council members share 12 effective approaches to customer education any business leader can leverage.

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As the amount of e-commerce channels and online competitors increase, businesses must choose the right tactics to stand out. The e-commerce landscape has evolved rapidly in recent years as more and more "shoppable" digital platforms emerge. Instead of only being able to make online purchases on a company's website or Amazon page, consumers can also buy products directly through popular social media apps like Instagram or Facebook. Though there are more avenues than ever to get discovered by potential buyers, there may also be a smaller chance of getting noticed among a growing sea of competitors. To help businesses stand out, 10 Rolling Stone Culture Council members share their top tactics for getting the most online sales possible.

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If we loved live events before they were stripped from our lives, we appreciate them with a fiery passion now.

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Carving out your niche is only the first step in launching a successful business. Business leaders who want to scale in a niche market have a unique opportunity. Niche markets often mean less competition, but the businesses that do exist may be tougher to compete against. To help ensure success when scaling up, businesses should take certain steps to set themselves up with the best odds, whether that's by analyzing market trends first or by taking the time to develop a distinct brand identity. Below, Rolling Stone Culture Council members share this advice and more to help business leaders looking to grow in their niche.

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The key to modern employee retention really isn’t a secret at all. At a time when employees are leaving their jobs en masse, it can be challenging to maintain your top workers. Employees today are more comfortable quitting a job in search of something better, so if your business doesn't meet their expectations, you might be struggling to fill several suddenly open positions. Having committed, long-term employees helps with overall production speeds and cultivates a positive work environment. So with advice like listening to employee feedback and creating individualized success plans, 11 Rolling Stone Culture Council members share their "secrets" to employee retention and why these strategies work so well.

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There are countless lifestyle brands on the market today, so you'll need the right elements to stand out as a memorable one. Lifestyle brands have become popular with celebrities, influencers and entrepreneurs alike, with platforms like Instagram or Facebook serving as their ideal place for sharing small snippets of their lives. Whether they’re centered around everyday life or an aspirational dream, these lifestyles form the basis for marketing a business’s products or services. But to make a lifestyle brand work, entrepreneurs need to develop a strategy with all the right components in place. To that end, 12 Rolling Stone Culture Council members share the ingredients entrepreneurs will need to craft a true lifestyle brand that will help them connect with their ideal audience.

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A diverse workforce doesn't happen accidentally — you need the right recruiting strategies to bring different types of candidates in the door. Over the years, the movement for increased diversity in the workplace has picked up significant momentum. Having a diverse team offers businesses a variety of perspectives, allowing for increased innovation and problem solving, while also increasing employee engagement and brand reputation. In most cases, building a pipeline of diverse job candidates requires intentional efforts at the recruitment level. To help you achieve this goal, eight members of Rolling Stone Culture Council share their best strategies to promote a broader range of candidates in your applicant pool.

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Staying autonomous as your business scales up requires a strong understanding of yourself and your mission — and trust in your team to carry out that mission. If you're an independent creator, you may be considering scaling your business. While scaling is a great way to increase your presence and profit, it also often requires bringing other people into the mix — a significant adjustment when you're accustomed to working independently. Fortunately, it is possible to grow your brand without losing sight of your original creative vision. To help, the members of Rolling Stone Culture Council share 11 tips to help you scale your business while still maintaining your autonomy.

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If you're looking into affiliate marketing programs, make sure you understand these essential steps to success. By now, it’s likely that every social media user has seen YouTube stars, Instagram influencers and other popular content creators asking their followers to use their affiliate links when purchasing from a business. That's because an affiliate marketing program is an optimal way for businesses to usher in leads and make additional profit. With websites and a bountiful number of social media platforms, businesses can partner with influencers, celebrities and even other businesses to create a program that benefits all parties. However, this marketing strategy has to be approached the right way. Below, 11 members of Rolling Stone Culture Council share the tips they believe are key to a successful affiliate marketing program.

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There's always room for more creators and artists — you just have to know how to market yourself. With more social media platforms available than ever before, influencers, artists and content creators have multiple blank canvases ready for the taking. However, all these options may leave new creators unsure of where to begin with their brand promotion strategy. While it's easy to daydream about amassing hundreds of thousands of followers and "going viral" overnight, effectively growing your social media presence requires thoughtful planning and a strategic approach. To that end, 10 members of Rolling Stone Culture Council provide their best advice for new content creators who are ready to showcase and promote their brands on social media.

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A leader’s mindset can make a huge difference in how well a business succeeds during times of uncertainty. The business world can often feel like a roller coaster with unpredictable ups and downs. While it's easy for business leaders to stay positive during the good times, it can be harder to keep that same attitude when the going gets tough. Cultivating the right mindset can help leaders better navigate challenges and have a greater appreciation for the victories. If you're looking for a boost of positivity, the members of Rolling Stone Culture Council share their tried-and-true strategies for staying positive no matter the external circumstances.

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The key to differentiating yourself in the market is identifying and developing a strong brand identity. The way you position and identify your brand has a huge impact on the way you're perceived, from the business opportunities you’re offered to the type of customer who purchases your products or services. Developing this brand identity often begins by asking a series of introspective questions: What does your company stand for? What issues do you care about? What gap in the market do you fill? These are important questions to answer and reevaluate often as a business owner, but they're far from the only ways to conceptualize your brand. Below, 11 Rolling Stone Culture Council members offer their best advice for finding your brand's identity and explain why each step is so important.

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Truthful feedback from your team — both positive and negative — is essential for continued growth as a business leader. Honest and transparent teams are likely to succeed for the simple fact that they value an open dialogue. If your team isn't on the same page about your plans, projects will suffer and the business may lose the momentum it needs for growth. This is why, as a business leader, it's critical to ensure you're receiving constructive and helpful feedback from your team. To help you make this a priority for both you and your business, 12 members of Rolling Stone Culture Council discuss their best tips for leaders.

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If you are thinking about going on tour this summer or simply widening your general performance aesthetic, you might be considering creative venues, formats or guest lists for your concerts.

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Ensuring your employees are fulfilled in their work pays off in more ways than one. In their efforts to retain their employees, many companies are becoming more and more open to “talent mobility” — or letting employees completely change positions or departments in their company. This can have many benefits, such as increased fulfillment and job satisfaction for employees and higher rates of productivity and lower turnover for companies. But moving employees around the company can quickly turn into a complex mess if you don’t have the right plan in place first. To help, 10 members of Rolling Stone Culture Council offer their tips for ensuring this process goes smoothly and is a successful endeavor for all parties involved.

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Advertising isn’t the only way to get your event noticed. If you’re a new business trying to drum up awareness or an established business just trying to expand your reach, pop-up events are a great way to get your brand in front of more potential customers. Because of their temporary nature, they’re perfect for creating a sense of urgency and mystique that will draw in curious minds. But how can businesses best capitalize on these events? To help answer that question, a panel of Rolling Stone Culture Council experts weigh in with their best tips on how to run a successful pop-up event and generate buzz for your business.

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It'll take more than a little convincing to show your customers your business is the "real deal." When you start a new business, one of your greatest challenges is convincing potential customers of your credibility. They need to know that your business can be trusted and that the product or service they’re paying for will be high quality and delivered in a timely fashion. Convincing them of this is the first step toward gaining them as a potential lifelong customer. But the process for convincing a customer that you’re a credible business is not necessarily straightforward, as different customers will consider different factors, and no one element will likely be enough to change their minds. This is why the members of Rolling Stone Culture Council listed out their top strategies for proving the credibility of your business below. Implement one or all of these tips to see a change in the way your company is viewed.

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Diversity isn't always visible, but the way you support it should be. Diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) has always been a topic of concern in the world of work, but it has recently become a major priority for many organizations, with about 79% of them stating they’re planning to dedicate more of their budgets to DEI efforts in 2022. However, it’s likely that these companies will approach DEI in different ways. There are a myriad of ways to support diversity, equity and inclusion in business — especially as a business leader. To help give you some ideas of where you can start, 11 members of Rolling Stone Culture Council share the ways in which they’re working to create and encourage more diversity in their particular business niche or industry and why that’s so important to do.

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Networking can be tough, but building relationships doesn't have to be. Networking is a major way to forge new connections and find potential business opportunities when you're an entrepreneur. But once you’ve made an initial connection, keeping the momentum going with that contact afterward — whether with other professionals or brands — can be tricky as you both return to your hectic daily lives. According to the members of Rolling Stone Culture Council, however, maintaining good business relationships doesn’t have to be challenging or take up a lot of time — it’s all about doing it the right way. Below, they list a few of their top tips for keeping the networking momentum going and why they work so well.

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Managing expectations and trust are key to resolving baggage from a previous business partnership. Going into business with a new partner is an opportunity to explore fresh perspectives and exciting ideas. However, if your new business partner is still toting baggage from a previous partnership, it could derail your collaborative journey.  To keep past experiences from standing in the way of future success, business partners must learn how to manage expectations. Below, 10 Rolling Stone Culture Council members offer fellow business leaders their best advice for building trust with their new partners, especially if those partners are wary of getting burned again.

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There’s nothing stopping you but yourself.

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Grabbing your audience’s attention starts with an intentional strategy. Since the advent of platforms like Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and others like them, companies have been trying to find the secret behind some of the internet’s most viral content in order to reproduce it for themselves and garner some major attention. While at times what content sparks such engagement may seem totally random, deeper study indicates there may be similarities after all. To shed some light on the “recipe” behind most viral content, a panel of Rolling Stone Culture Council members share 10 characteristic elements of this type of content and what businesses need to focus on if they want to “go viral” themselves.

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For these business leaders, hindsight is 20/20. Starting a business can be an intimidating undertaking, especially when it’s your first one. You’re often feeling imposter syndrome in full force, and no matter how much planning and research you do ahead of time, rarely does any aspect of business go how you’d expect.  Because of this fact, for many entrepreneurs, hindsight is 20/20. Now with established careers and businesses, they can better reflect on what may have gone wrong or what they could have done better when they first started out. Below, a panel of 14 Rolling Stone Culture Council members share the lessons they wish they had known when starting their businesses and how that knowledge may have helped them grow along the way.

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By using tech intentionally, you can improve your business and the niche in which it operates. Technology at its best serves as a helpful aid to businesses, entrepreneurs and everyday people looking to improve the way they function day to day. But simply using technology won’t affect much change. Those who really succeed are those who know how to leverage technology intentionally, incorporating it into thoughtful practices that could eventually turn into innovation for their business or even their industry as a whole.  Below, a panel of Rolling Stone Culture Council members share some of the ways in which they’re leveraging technology to improve the success of their businesses in their space.

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Before you hit the road, you have to make sure you plan your tour carefully. 

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Innovation across industries often signals big changes for our everyday culture. Continuous innovation is a hallmark of the modern business world. It can happen anywhere and in any industry, and it often results in a positive transformation of business processes and workflows. The culture space specifically has experienced a lot of transformation in recent years. As leaders in their respective fields, the members of Rolling Stone Culture Council are constantly looking for ways to leverage new innovations to improve their companies and bring value to their customers. Below, 11 of them share which upcoming industry innovations and subsequent changes they're most excited about and why.

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The demand for content has never been higher, but to stand out, you need to provide real value to your audience. The adage "content is king" exists for a reason, and nearly every modern business has taken it to heart. It's easier than ever to publish your thoughts and perspectives on multiple online channels. However, with the sheer volume of content, it's hard to break through the noise and get your voice heard. So how do you accomplish this feat as a business? Follow the advice of these Rolling Stone Culture Council members who shared their tips for creating content that stands out from the crowd.

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Free apps, tools and products still need to be highly appealing to entice users to keep coming back. When a platform is free, you might assume everyone will want to take advantage of it. However, if a customer isn't spending their hard-earned money on that tool or app, it can also be just as easy for them to forget about it. It can be difficult to encourage repeat engagement in the era of app overload, but there are a number of ways you can get users to engage with your business’s free platform. Below 11, members of Rolling Stone Culture Council shared the techniques that have worked for them. Follow their recommendations to build a loyal base of repeat users.

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The culture space is nuanced and unique and entering it doesn't always turn out exactly how you think. It’s easy to come into any business with preconceived ideas about that particular industry; however, many industries in the culture space are complex and ever-changing. Once you start to build a company, you’ll likely learn there’s much more to each industry than meets the eye.  Realizing you had misconceptions about your industry may lead you to rethink certain strategies and decisions about your business. Fortunately, it's rarely too late to change course based on the knowledge you learn from experience. Below, a panel of Rolling Stone Culture Council members shared some myths and misconceptions they had about their specific industries when they started out, and how those assumptions were later proven false.

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Scaling your business is a good goal, but it's important to approach growth smartly and sustainably. For many smaller or newer businesses, one of their greatest long-term goals is to scale their operations. As eager as they may be, however, acting too rashly or hiring talent just to fill spots might have unintended negative consequences. Instead, it’s crucial that companies thoughtfully consider their scaling process and go about it in a sustainable manner. This is especially true in the culture space, an industry filled with potential up-and-coming competitors. If you’re looking to scale your business the “right” way, follow these top tips from the members of Rolling Stone Culture Council.

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