Marketing Trend: Demographic Segmentation

To effectively market your product or service, you need to create content that truly speaks to your defined target market.

However, your target market may be so diverse that your marketing doesn’t hit home to anybody in it. There’s one way to change that, and this technique is called “Demographic Segmentation”

Demographic segmentation groups your target market into specific groups of people based on attributes like location, age, education, occupation, and income bracket. By using information from demographic segmentation, you can create personalized marketing campaigns for each part of your target market.

These more personalized approaches can lead to a better distribution of resources and more conversions because the specific messages resonate more than a non-direct generic message to your whole audience might.

There are 5 main demographics most businesses segment their audience with. This is how to leverage each one. 

Age

Harkening back to Generational Profiling, segmenting by age allows you to change a campaign so it resonates with who you need it to. The thing about generational segmentation is that each age group, from Baby Boomers to Gen Z, have unique experiences and references that tie them together. Music, celebrities, movies and other pop culture references can help campaigns with the nostalgia factor for each generation.

Education

Segmenting by education lets you divide your target market by school, area of study, and degree. Successful campaigns that have done this generally play into the loyalty many have for their alma mater.

Occupation

Certain types of professionals have more value to certain marketing campaigns and occupations segmentation can separate your target market by job function, job title, and job seniority. This is particularly useful for B2B brands, as occupation segmentation makes it easy to target individuals with buying power at a company.

Location/Geography

Geographic location is an easy way to split your target market based on what they need and what they’re interested in. Landscape, distance from locations and climate can impact the messages you send. Advertising shorts or sandals in the middle of a Minnesota winter just doesn’t work for us here.

Income Bracket

Income segmentation divides your target market by income. Knowing how much discretionary income your base has, allows you to market to those that can afford your product or service, help you to set or your prices in accordance to how much is realistic to expect your target market to spend, and may inspire pricing levels for each segment of your target market.

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In the News: Instagram

Last night, The New York Times reported that the co-founders of Instagram, Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger have both resigned, and are planning to leave Instagram’s parent company, Facebook, within a few weeks. Systrom and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg confirmed the report in separate statements, both calling out “the next chapter” and hinting at future projects on the horizon.

Instagram was created in 2010 with a focus on image composition and photography, which is why filters and lenses have become so popular. The app was acquired by Facebook in 2012 and has since continued to see exponential growth, with the platform now boasting over a billion users.

The expansion of the user base may, however, be a large part of Krieger and Systrom’s decision to depart the platform. There were reports of tension between the founders of Facebook and Instagram over what the outlook and future of the app would be, one of the more in-depth reports came around the launch of “Instagram Stories” from Bloomberg, which you can read here.

Between Stories and other tensions surrounding the vision for Instagram in a Facebook world and the backlash Facebook continues to suffer from after it was found that user information was misused, it will be interesting to see what changes may come to Instagram after the departure of its founding fathers.

eCommerce and advertising may become a bigger focus for the photo-sharing app, as well as a push for live sharing in order to go head-to-head with competitor SnapChat. Regardless, marketers and users will be sure to keep their eyes on Instagram to see changes roll out.

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Engagement Insights For Facebook Business Pages

In January, Facebook announced a change to its news feed algorithm that would prioritize personal content from family and friends over content from Pages, which caused panic for many businesses that rely on Page engagement for growing their brand and generating new leads. Buffer and BuzzSumo collaborated to analyze 43 million posts from the pages of the top 20,000 brands on Facebook, and this is what they found.

Page Engagement has dropped

It was broadly assumed that with the algorithmic changes there would be a decrease in brand engagement, but the amount of decline was up in the air. Now, after the changes, Buffer’s study discovered that engagement on brand pages has dropped over 50%, with post engagement falling nearly two-thirds from where it had been previously.

Page types hit with a drop in engagement

The study ranked ten-page categories to determine which type of page was hit with the largest engagement drop. Artist Pages were found to be affected the most with a 70.6% drop in engagement, and retail Pages were affected the least with less than a 50% drop.

Pictures not video content

There has been a huge push for video content, and Facebook is leading the charge on that with a focus on live video and original content streaming (both live and pre-recorded) through Facebook (Watch, IGTV); but this study found that the content that received the highest engagement was not video, but images. Despite that, interaction for all content types is down, with an over 63% drop in average per post engagement.

Post volume to combat decreased engagement

In the last year, the analyzed Pages have posted more content with posts per quarter up to 8.1 million from 6.5 million, which is a 24% increase. Quantity vs quality is still a hot debate, but there is a sweet spot for getting noticed.

How many times to post in a day

In that same vein, there are findings related to how frequently pages post and the following per post engagement as well as overall page engagement. The study found that Pages posting less than one time a day have the highest per-post engagement, but also have the lowest overall engagement. The optimal number of posts for longterm overall Page engagement was found to be right around 5 posts per day. This is not an end all be all strategy, but might be a good thing to try if you are looking to boost long-term metrics.

Learn more about what the analysis uncovered and read the full study here.

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Marketing Tips: Keyword Research and Planning For Improved SEO

If you’re looking to improve your SEO and haven’t done much research into keyword planning, you might not realize how important it really is. Knowing how to use and find the right keywords is arguably the most important skill a marketer can hone when it comes to search effectiveness. The start of effective SEO comes from a well-built keyword map or keyword plan.

What is keyword mapping?

“Keyword mapping is the process of assigning or mapping keywords to specific pages on a website based on keyword research. Based on your mapping process you are able to then make specific on-page SEO recommendations to help make the page more relevant to the mapped keywords.” Says Adam Bate of SEO Brothers.

How to start keyword planning

Step One: Research

Put together a list of all of the words you might want your business to appear when someone searches that word. It would be nearly impossible to achieve getting your business to rank on the first page of search results for every word you choose but here you can shoot for the stars.

Tools like Moz, SEMrush and the Google keyword planner can help you expand your list and include faceted keywords you may not have initially thought of.

Step Two: Filter

Work on removing any duplicated words, as well as any that you know for a fact you won’t rank for (taking out branded terms from competitors is usually a good starting point).

Now set your keywords into sets: Priority, Secondary, and Other Terms.

1. Priority terms: Should be keywords you want to appear for right away. They need to imply that you have the answer to a question or the ability to fulfill a need; be a high volume keyword that is worth the investment, and need to be related to current and upcoming (near-future) business.
2. Secondary terms: These will come into play later on, once priority keywords are locked into optimized pages that are query-responsive. These should be keywords that relate to your site, have a decent volume and imply questions you don’t have the expertise to answer.
3. Other terms: You’ll ignore these for now, and note why you may or may not want to re-evaluate these keywords later on

Step Three: Map keywords to pages

The first thing to do when mapping is to scrape Google for your keywords and current rank. You don’t have to do this, but generally, it is useful to be able to keep things simple, rather than to manually map each page, regardless of how Google feels about scraping and rank tracking (the general consensus is not incredibly positive). Now you need to ensure that the content on the page that the clickthrough directs to actually answers what is being searched for. Sometimes your map will work perfectly, and other times, Google gets it totally wrong, so remapping is necessary to close the gap. You’ll go through this same process when you’re working with mapping URLs, starting new pages, as well as when optimizing content and existing pages.

Keyword planning is a big job, but when done right can get you noticed and moved up in the ranks of the SEO world. For a more in-depth walkthrough of keyword mapping for SEO and content creation, see this blog post from Moz that will give you a map to mapping.  

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Marketing Trend: Omni-Channel Marketing

Marketing is ever evolving, and consumers’ paths to purchasing are no longer as linear as they once were. Because marketers need to adapt to a changing climate, new techniques are constantly developed. Omni-Channel marketing is one such strategy that businesses are using to keep up with the trend of keeping things as simple as possible.

What is Omni-Channel Marketing?

“Omni-Channel”  is no doubt a marketing buzzword, but the concept adheres to a shift in the needs of both consumer and marketer. Omni-channel marketing is the answer to marketers needing to provide a consistent experience and path to purchase.

Because consumers now can engage with a brand and products on multiple platforms (physical store, app, website, catalog, social media), it is important that each experience with the product and brand complement the others.

Hubspot defines omni-channel marketing as “… a multi-channel approach to marketing, selling, and serving customers in a way that creates an integrated and cohesive customer experience no matter how or where a customer reaches out.” Read about some of their top examples of an Omni-Channel experience here.

How to implement Omni-Channel Marketing into your strategy

• Create a customer profile

Consolidating a customer profile can be a challenge, as customers are constantly interacting with a slew of different channels. By creating a broad and complete picture of your consumers, you can create a better overall customer experience. This can be done using collected data and applying it to your strategy. This article discusses how you can come up ahead of the competition by succeeding at cross-channel marketing.

• Interact on preferred channels

Consumers are moving back and forth on devices and platforms just for a single transaction. Be sure to keep all lines of communication open for a seamless experience. This includes, but is not limited to social media, email support, video chat, web chatbots, texting, and calling.

• Use aggregated data

Compiling data is already important, but in order to use omni-channel marketing, data is everything. From creating your customer profile to understanding how to adapt to market changes and adding platforms, data will help you gain insight into how to make your marketing strategy work for you.

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Apps to Improve Your Instagram Experience

Instagram has over 500 million daily users, and you can make your profile stand out among the rest with the help of a few apps that can do everything from growing your audience to editing your photos with more than just the 24 standard filters. See how you can change up your Instagram game with a few add-on apps.

Snapseed

This app takes some of the key enhancement tools from Photoshop and allows you to selectively edit the parts of your photos that may need adjustments for color temperature, saturation, and exposure as well as the ability to edit out smaller flaws and unwanted features.

Free for iOS and Android

Followers for Instagram

Understand your Instagram audience with this app designed to show you accounts that have unfollowed you, those that don’t follow you back, and accounts that are recommended based on your following behaviors.

Free for iOS and Android

Crowdfire

Find inactive followers and boost your analytics by only having followers that interact with your page. With account automation tools like finding followers and direct messaging, you can start generating better metrics.

Free for iOS

Priime

Professional photographers have collaborated with Priime to offer more than 100 photo filters, making the editing process even more fine-tuned.  Priime even has a Smart Suggestions feature that can offer recommendations of which filters will look best for your image.

Available on iOS for $2.99

VSCO

VSCO has been around for a while, so many people are already familiar with its capabilities. Apart from offering more filters, VSCO boasts its own editing tools for color correction, cropping and more. Finished images can be shared to Instagram, or even shared in-app on VSCO’s own internal social network.

Free for iOS and Android

Social Rocket

Earn points in a “likes/followers” marketplace on Social Rocket. Though not a sufficient long-term way to keep post engagement up, the points you garner to exchange for likes and followers can help to build an initial following.

Free for iOS

Pixlr

Create your own filters with overlays and effects from Pixlr. Like other editing apps, Pixlr also contains photo-editing tools that can adjust brightness, red-eye, sharpness and an array of other options.

Free for iOS and Android

InstaTag

InstaTag gathers lists of the top trending hashtags, sorted categorically so you can use the most relevant and popular tags for your posts. You can even search across categories for a personalized list of trending tags.

Free for Android

Squarelovin

For gathering analytics including engagement, follower count, popular hashtags, post time efficiency tracking and growth, Squarelovin is a great free app for those looking to test strategies, with reports delivered in various periods; daily, weekly and monthly.

Free for iOS and Android

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Event Profile: SXSW 2018

South by Southwest (SXSW) in Austin, Texas has become a cultural mecca for music and film buffs, as well as a place for hosting interactive events that cover a range of topics from everything new in technology, to entertainment and advertising. There is always a huge amount of news coming from this week-long event, so here is a breakdown of what we’ve seen so far.

SXSW Trust Barometer

Every year, festival attendees are polled for the Trust Barometer, which measures the general feelings those attending have towards technology, business, and media. The results of this year’s poll brought up interesting discussions, as there is a very low amount of trust in emerging technology, one of SXSW’s biggest draws.

Most of the distrust comes from a shift towards a need for more human elements in technological interactions, and a distrust in blockchain technology, virtual reality, and autonomous vehicles. Discussions about smaller, more personal social media platforms were held, as well as conversations about the widespread use of bots and voice assistants and how the reactions to these technologies have become more and more personal, with users sometimes treating bots as though they were chatting with another human being. There is without a doubt a need to shift to more personal communication methods and develop an understanding of how emotional attachments can tie into interacting with these responsive communication technologies.

Experiential Exhibitions: ‘Westworld’ and ‘Ready Player One’

HBO hit-show Westworld and Steven Spielberg’s ‘Ready Player One’ both partnered with creative agency Giant Spoon to bring the worlds of the screen to life for festival attendees. These immersive exhibits allow you to step into the ‘Westworld’ town of Sweetwater and the Oasis of  ‘Ready Player One’ interacting with environments, actors in character, and becoming a character yourself. Read a review of the ‘Westworld’ exhibit on Forbes and Business Insider and see a walkthrough of Sweetwater here and the ‘Ready Player One’ exhibit here.

Speeches

SXSW is focused on cultivating the creative and entrepreneurial spirit throughout the world, and each day speakers from convergence, music, technology, and film focused paths present their take on various topics. The hope is to generate meaningful conversations about the state of the world in each of SXSW’s featured verticals. Notable speakers this year include Elon Musk, Melinda Gates, Darren Aronofsky, Sadiq Khan, and Esther Perel.

SXSW ends this Saturday, so there is bound to be more excitement in the last few days of the festival. For more SXSW news and live streams of keynotes and other events, visit sxsw.com.

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Business Podcasts to Subscribe to in 2018

Continued education doesn’t have to come in the form of classrooms and textbooks, you can glean knowledge from many sources. One of the most popular ways to continue learning is listening to podcasts. Podcasts can cover a wide range of subjects from pop culture to politics to business practices. The following podcast recommendations cover topics from entrepreneurship, marketing, and business.

School of Greatness

Host Lewis Howes has overcome his share of adversity. This podcast launched in 2013 and has grown to be one of iTunes’ top-rated Business and Self-Development podcasts. The mission on ‘School of Greatness’ is to empowerer listeners to achieve success in the face of adversity, and he shares not only his story but the stories of the guests that come on the show.

Cool Things Entrepreneurs Do

Thom Singer started this podcast hoping to enable a new generation of leaders to use his knowledge of business relationships, sales, networking and more, including fitness, trends, and entrepreneurial spirit.

Product Hunt Radio

Product Hunt is great for the B2C business person, and those interested in current product trends. It focuses on physical products and how they’re created, the marketing behind them that turns them into global brands, and guests’ takes on productivity, management and investment.

Rocketship.fm

With big-name guests, this weekly podcast covers everything about building a startup from developing a product to finding and converting a customer base. This show is great for anyone in the B2B or B2C world.

The Influencer Podcast

Julie Solomon, marketing strategist, publisher and influencer hosts this show and brings in guests to talk about their experiences in the world of influencer marketing, as well as sharing insights into how to grow, engage with and persuade an audience.

Smart Passive Income

Learn how Pat Flynn author of The Smart Passive Income Blog uses all of his online blog and business strategies, as well as marketing tips and income sources which will help you take the next steps forward with your online businesses, blogs and more.

Copyblogger FM

In a world where content is king, it never hurts to strive for an improved approach to writing and content marketing. Host Sonia Simone and a rotating panel of experts discuss news, trends, and updates in copywriting, email marketing, conversion, content marketing and more.

The Science of Social Media

Buffer has a great blog, and the podcast they produce is just as influential. The content presented covers everything from the state of social media marketing, new algorithms, and third-party tools to maximize your social media management. This is a great podcast for everyone from beginners to the well seasoned social media practitioner.

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Vero: The “New Instagram”?

Social media platforms come and go as we have seen with Yik Yak, Bebo, Vine, and Ello. But there is a platform making waves right now that many are calling the “new Instagram”.  Vero was launched in 2015, and the app is quickly gaining popularity, recently seeing a flood of users starting to download and use the app, as many influencers have posted about their move to the platform.

Vero has positioned itself as the “True Social” social media platform, aimed towards those looking for “a safe, genuine reflection of their real-life relationships in an online setting”.  This is what you need to know about the “Instagram Killer”.

No paid or boosted ads

Vero has no paid advertisements, which clears up users’ feeds for posts from their connections and community. “You see what has been shared with you when it’s been shared with you. You won’t have to pay to ‘boost your post’, or ‘reach your audience’,” says Vero. That doesn’t mean that there are no ads, though. Companies can link to external sites, unlike the Instagram model, and there is an integrated “Buy now” button that can be purchased. Part of Vero’s revenue will come from a portion of every sale made on the platform.

First million users- free access for life

Currently, Vero is being offered for free to the first million members, but once that threshold has been reached, anyone that joins will have to pay an annual fee. This is pretty much common knowledge, but is perhaps the fear of missing out on this opportunity driving the platform’s spike in popularity? When the free accounts are spoken for and those late to the game must pay, there will no doubt be more news to be heard about this platform.

Connection types

Vero’s commitment to an authentic social experience is based on the argument that other social media platforms leave users with a false sense of connection with followers and friends that causes more intrinsic loneliness. The app has implemented controls that allow you to segment your connections so that users can share posts and interact with one another in a way the platform calls more natural. In the app, you can segment your connections into the following groups: “close friends”, “friends”, “acquaintances”, and “followers”. Each post you make can be shared to all or to a portion of these groups.

Chronological feed

In a world of algorithmic feeds, Vero breaks the mold by showing all posts chronologically. There is nothing that will cause one post to be promoted over another. Vero says, “We don’t curate it, manipulate it, insert advertising in it, or hold back posts. You see what has been shared with you when it’s been shared with you.”

Read more opinions about Vero here and here, and the Vero manifesto, then let me know what you think of this new platform.

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Essential Guide to Instagram for Business

Instagram is a valuable marketing tool for any business, which many marketers have known since the app was released. We’ve seen brands leverage the community to build their influence and brand awareness as well as increasing sales. But in early 2016, a new feature was released just for these businesses. Instagram for business allows marketers to leverage real data and account insights as well as create ads and targeted posts.These tips and tricks will help you leverage your Instagram business page today.

Get creative

Show off what your business does by creating content that isn’t expected. Focus on the solutions your products can provide for your customers, not just the products themselves. Sharing insider views of how your business functions on a day to day basis, and keeping up with what’s going on in the world and relating it back to what you’re doing is key, as well as keeping in mind that Instagram is a primarily visual platform. That means you need to keep your posts clean and well composed.  

Instagram Stories

If you aren’t already using Instagram Stories to further your content, you need to re-evaluate and work them into your marketing strategy. Stories are a great way to share things that are going on in your company that may not be worth creating a full post for but are also great for showcasing events, going more in-depth about what your posts are about.

Create consistent and authentic content

The content you create can and should be beautiful on its own, but it also needs to be consistent. Consistency means making sure you’re posting on regular basis or on a pre-set schedule, but also that each individual post fits in with the rest of your content. Paying close attention to your color palette is key to this, as well as posting content that is consistent with your brand’s image and communication style.

Respond to your followers

Customer service is a huge part of owning a business. You wouldn’t leave a customer to sit with an unanswered question in person, so making sure you’re engaging with your followers and people commenting on your posts or sending you direct messages. Communicating outside of just the posts you make is huge for projecting a good public image of your business to the outside world. Let your followers know that you are invested in them, so they feel they should invest their time caring about you.

Targeting Ads

If you’re familiar with Facebook ads and targeting through the Facebook ad management platform, you’re in luck. Instagram ads (specifically for business accounts) are managed in the same place and are set up in the same way. This includes location, demographics, and interests targeting, which ensures that your ads are being seen by exactly who you want.  

User-generated content or contests

Engage with your customers by hosting contests, giveaways or other incentive-based “events”. If you have customers post photos with your specific contest hashtags, you can easily track engagement and participation. Another great way to include your user base is to post user-generated content, either by reposting (and crediting) others’ posts or by having a channel “takeover” where an influencer or other user is able to post on your profile as themselves as sponsored by you.

Instagram is a valuable tool for marketers, and it’s easy to get started today. See how this always expanding social media platform can help you grow your business.

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Conferences For Entrepreneurs, Marketers & More in 2018

One of the best ways to learn and get involved in a community built around your work is to attend a conference, summit or keynote.  Whether your work is marketing, content creation, entrepreneurship or technology focused, there will be an event that fits your list of needs. Check some of these events out to get started exploring the world of conferences.

No Longer Virtual– Denver, February 22-23

This conference focused on improving your personal communication, sales, and leadership skills is one of the most exclusive events this year, as there is a registration limit of 50 people. NLV is being called a “can’t miss” by Forbes. Because attendance is limited, those who participate are able to work more one on one with other attendees, make more meaningful connections, and attendees contribute to sessions rather than keynote speakers being the main focus.

Forbes Under 30 Summit– Boston, October TBD

The 30 Under 30 Summit is Forbes showcase event of their “Under 30” listmakers. With over 6,000 in attendance and participants that work in fields that range from tech to content marketing, this event is heralded as “the greatest gathering of world changers and entrepreneurs ever.” Complete with musical performances and a food festival, this summit is more than just inspiring speakers. Listmakers are always welcome, but if you haven’t found your name on one just yet, you can request a premium pass to attend this event.

GrowthHackers– San Diego, February 6

For those looking to grow their businesses, a great way to “Kickstart your growth” is to attend the GrowthHackers Conference, hosted by Sean Ellis and Dani Hart of GrowthHackers. With speakers from LinkedIn to ClassPass and everything in between, GrowthHackers can help push your business to the next level. Past speakers have included Larry Kim of Wordstream, Eleana Verna of Survey Monkey, and Chris More of Mozilla, to name a few.

Social Media Marketing World– San Diego, February 28- March 2

Social Media Examiner is presenting a three-day conference this year that will help you to master social media for your business this year. With over 120 training sessions from some of the world’s leaders in social media and content creation, you can learn everything you need to succeed with social media while connecting with influencers, customers, and other marketers. Join speakers Mari Smith, Gary Vaynerchuk, Jay Baer and more in sessions tailored to the needs of both marketers and content creators.

This is only a handful of the great events that you can take advantage of this year, and there are more that are yet to be announced. Keep your eyes open for more conferences that suit the needs of your business.

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Books to Read in 2018

As the new year begins and New Year’s resolutions are made, one that many people bring up each year is that of wanting to read more books in the year to come. These are some top picks for books about business, technology, personal growth, leadership and more.

Business

Rise and Grind  by Daymond John

The Shark Tank panelist and entrepreneur uses his own life experiences to tell readers how to succeed in their lives with inspiration to use persistence, grit, and spectacular work ethic.

Crushing It  by Gary Vaynerchuk

VaynerMedia CEO Gary Vaynerchuk is known for his no downtime approach to life and business, as well as for building a brand that is solid and highly successful. Vaynerchuk outlines what you need to know to do the same for your brand.

The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups by Daniel Coyle and Will Damron

Learn how successful groups are built and strengthened, with Coyle’s in-depth look into how group culture can be cultivated.

Technology

The One Device: The Secret History of the iPhone  by Brian Merchant

The introduction of the iPhone changed the course of history, for technology, social trends and more. This national bestseller takes readers through the history of the development and release of the influential Apple device.

Surviving the Tech Storm: Strategy in Times of Technological Uncertainty by Nicklas Bergman

The technological changes that we have gone through have entered us into a new era that is filled with questions and challenges. Bergman offers insight into how to make decisions and find insights into an uncertain world.

What To Do When Machines Do Everything: How to Get Ahead in a World of AI, Algorithms, Bots and Big Data by Malcolm Frank, Paul Roehrig, and Ben Pring

The digital economy is changing the future of work and how business is done. The authors provide a roadmap to take steps to move ahead in a world that is moving more quickly than we can.

Leadership

Brave Leadership: Unleash Your Most Confident, Powerful and Authentic Self to Get the Results You Need by Kimberly Davis

Learn how to get results and become the leader you want to be in this guide for all leadership journeys. Davis dives into the essential tools and tips that anyone can use to reach their full potential and help feel more confident, satisfied and purposeful.  

The CEO Next Door: The 4 Behaviors That Transform Ordinary People into World Class Leaders  by Elena L. Botelho and Kim R. Powell

Botelho and Powell’s in-depth look at CEOs and executives uncovers what makes these leaders successful. Though this book may be more research intensive, the messages that it delivers with the conclusions can help you rise to the top as well.

A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership by James Comey

Former FBI director James Comey reveals never before told stories of his time in the government sharing insights into what makes an effective leader.

Money

The Millionaire Next Door by Thomas J. Stanley and William D. Danko

First released in 1996, this exposé about wealthy Americans has now been updated for the context of the current state of the world. Learn how the truly wealthy demographic behaves and how you can modify your life and spending habits to fit within this exclusive group.

Cold Hard Truth On Men, Women, and Money by Kevin O’Leary

Shark Tank’s Mr. Wonderful, Kevin O’Leary presents a new take on finance in a witty and funny way that presents advice to someone at any stage in their life. It’s not too late to take control of your finance, and O’Leary presents this in a well rounded and personable way.

The Total Money Makeover  by Dave Ramsey

Taking a fitness type stab at revamping personal finance, Ramsey presents a plan that can help you pay off debts, build a strong financial safety net and create a budget without sacrificing your personal relationships.

Personal Growth

Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness -Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler

Nudge opens the eyes of the reader up to the fact that nothing we have to decide on is presented in a neutral way. By acknowledging bias, and understanding how the human brain perceives choice you can influence others to make decisions that are better for everyone in your life.

Your Best Year Ever by Michael Hyatt

Hyatt dives into how you can achieve your goals instead of letting them get pushed back only to regret ignoring them. Whether your goals are centered around relationships, financial, or educational, this book can help you to reset your life and achieve the goals you set.

Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience, and Finding Joy by Sheryl Sandberg

After her husband’s sudden death, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg fell into a vast depression. But with hard work, she was able to build resilience and find her way towards recovery. Option B houses Sandberg’s journal excerpts, research and other contributors’ personal stories that showcase peak levels of perseverance. Learn how to develop compassion, appreciation, and resilience as well as the ability help others find the same qualities within themselves.

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