Shortly after NYC restaurant Skirt Steak opened in 2021, @sistersnacking—a food-review TikTok account run by four sisters—posted a glowing review about their visit. The next day, its owner was surprised to find customers wrapped around the block, eager to try the place.

Their post is just one example of the enormous impact that influencers can have on restaurants. A study conducted in Portugal a few years ago found that more than 80% of nearly 400 respondents said they’d visited a restaurant because an influencer posted about it.

Many restaurants lean on the influencer set to help create buzz and keep diners coming. But for restaurants, striking deals with creators can sometimes prove difficult. “Most of them don’t have the resources to hire a big firm to handle this work for them—most of them have, like, a social media person,” Jessy Grossman, founder of the networking group Women in Influencer Marketing, told us.

In an effort to make it easier, platforms like Nibble and Inplace—both founded in 2021—have cropped up to help restaurants connect with creators who can help them get in front of their desired customers.

Read the full story here.—JS

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Meta has unveiled a slew of new features for Threads after the app’s user activity nosedived since its release.

More than half of Threads users have left the app since its July debut, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg reportedly told staff last Thursday, despite it reaching 100 million sign-ups in its first week. As of early August, the app had about 10 million daily active users, per analytics firm SimilarWeb.

On the brand side, the app has yet to announce advertising options, though marketers have used it for organic and sponsored posts. However, as Digiday recently pointed out, some marketers are questioning whether the platform is worth investing in at the moment. Earlier this summer, a survey of nearly 300 marketers conducted by Capterra found that 70% of marketers “wouldn’t invest in a Twitter alternative unless there were excellent benefits.”

According to Reuters, Zuckerberg said the usage drop is “normal” and Chief Product Officer Chris Cox said Meta is working on “retention-driving hooks” intended to help bring users back to Threads.

The addition of features comes after some users complained that the app lacked certain functions.

New features being tested include one that allows users to search posts using keywords, which is being tested in Australia and New Zealand. Meta is also piloting a carousel function that shows suggested Threads within Instagram, letting users tap and open the Threads app.

Continue reading here.—JS

When Gavyn Melgar joined hair care brand Not Your Mother’s this year as its VP of marketing, the industry vet, who has worked on premium and mass brands from Kristin Ess to Oiudad, was tasked with harnessing the buying power of the increasingly engaged curly-haired community with its 5-year-old Curl Talk product line.

This community, with wide-ranging hair types from waves to coils, are particularly open to peer-to-peer recommendations, Melgar told Retail Brew.

This year, influencer Greta Wilson mobilized these consumers with her step-by-step hair product routine TikToks, which led to a boom 1.2 billion views-strong of “wavy hair routines,” as even straight-haired consumers bought her recommended products to coax out a bit of natural kink, she added.

Keep reading on Retail Brew.—EC

There are a lot of bad marketing tips out there. These aren’t those.

You’re it: This guide explains tag management solutions and what they can do.

Messaging matters: Instagram released tips on how to DM customers.

Teamwork: What Forever 21 and Shein’s new partnership could mean for the retailers.

Our biggest tool as marketers to stay organized? Excel. Don’t miss the 1-hour live master class coming up on Sept. 13 with Miss Excel! Join the free Excel class on pivot tables, data cleaning, and more. Register today.

Influencer icons: Need to level up your influencer strategies? One brand cracked the code on influencer marketing, and we’ve got all the deets on how they did it. Read the article here, sponsored by Tagger.*

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Spotted: New job postings suggest TikTok wants to go all in on social media. According to Axios, it’s looking to hire engineers to work on a platform that “enables users to meet and interact with their real-life friends seamlessly on TikTok.”

Quote: “He has tried to be kind of a drama-free president, certainly in comparison to his predecessor, and that makes it harder to write a book, both in terms of getting information and turning his story into one that is compelling for readers.”—Reporter and author Jonathan Allen talking to Politico about how the book he wrote about President Biden has seen lackluster sales

Read: “Retailers bet wrong on America’s feelings about stores” (The Atlantic)