Are you looking to put more emphasis on Instagram in 2020?

Now reaching over a billion active users, and with more and more business and eCommerce related tools on the way, it makes sense that all social media managers should be considering whether there's a fit on Instagram for their business, and how they might be able to utilize the various platform tools and options to connect with their audience.

If you are considering your Instagram approach, then this infographic from the team at Hootsuite might help. The below listing highlights some key usage and engagement stats to help in your planning, which could help you decide where and how to improve your focus in the app.

Top 10 Instagram Stats for 2020

With influencer marketing becoming more... um, influential, it is worth noting which online identities are generating the most attention, and considering what that means for your outreach strategies.

And while you might not necessarily be able to get PewDiePie to endorse your products, it is interesting to consider how these popular identities are building their platforms, which could provide some guidance as to where people are looking, or even just give you an indicator of which creators to look to for inspiration with your own content.

The Most Popular Social Media Influencers

Michael Bloombergs presidential campaign is hiring hundreds of workers in California to post regularly on their personal social-media accounts in support of the candidate and send text messages to their friends about him.

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None of us are getting out of this alive. With the advent of consumer tech and the internet, you can now make your wishes known in a myriad of ways. For starters, if you are wondering where’s the best place to make sure your loved ones follow your will directives and have access to your passwords, you can do this online.

Specialty sites can store all your important documents from wills, trusts and passwords to your funeral preferences. While most sites are subscription-based, there is a free option that is HIPPA-compliant with secured bank-level encryption.

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If you are a hard-core Slack user, you might find yourself spending more time within the confines of that collaboration tool than any other. If that's the case, why not get your news there as well? Sound like something you might want or need? If so, it is a good thing Slack allows the addition of RSS feeds.

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Despite what companies like Apple and Facebook claim, you do not need a giant corporation telling you what news stories you should read every morning. Nearly every website (worth reading) still operates an RSS feed. And now one of the oldest and most robust RSS readers, NetNewsWire, is back from the dead and worth your consideration again.

Over the years, NetNewsWire has changed owners a few times, but in late 2018, former owner Black Pixel returned NetNewsWires intellectual property to Brent Simmons, which he now uses as the name for an open-source Mac RSS reader he has been developing for about five years.

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Apple has announced that Shortcuts, a powerful automation app for the iPhone and iPad, will come pre-installed on iOS devices starting this fall. This is great news because it is an incredibly handy app — based on Workflow which Apple acquired in 2017 — that lets you combine multiple actions to perform a specific task.

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The method of getting your podcast out to the world might not be the way you think.

Unlike most popular forms of online content, podcasts utilize a form of forbidden arcane knowledge; an ancient method of internet distribution discussed in hushed tones and under furtive glances as really simple syndication or RSS for short.

Learning how to make your own podcast-only RSS feed is a crucial element for any successful show. Feel free to jump to a section of your choosing if you’re looking for something in particular:

What is a podcast-only RSS feed?
Why you need a podcast-only RSS feed
How to craft a podcast-only RSS feed
How to switch to a podcast-only RSS feed

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Feedly, a popular RSS feed reader with millions of users worldwide, recently announced the creation of a new AI research assistant named Leo. Their goal with Leo is to create an AI with a set of skills that will enable it to better prioritize articles from news feeds.

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Google has used links to determine the authority of websites since its early days: the idea of webpages casting votes” for other pages by linking to them is at the core of the PageRank algorithm. This led to the rise of numerous manipulative link tactics.

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Social platforms are still reporting robust growth — yes, even Facebook — despite a growing chorus of opposition. Social conversation continues to shape everything from culture to the media cycle to our most intimate relationships. And we now spend more time than ever on our phones, with endless scrolling through our social feeds being a chief reason why.

But dig a little deeper, and a more nuanced picture emerges about social media users today that has important implications for the ways in which brands reach customers. Specifically, when you look at who is — and more importantly, who is not — driving the growth and popularity of social platforms, a key demographic appears to be somewhat in retreat: young people.

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Social media trends are like friends; they come and go.

However, the best friends and trends end up sticking around and evolving into permanent parts of our lives with qualities such as integrity, dependability, trust, quality and even ROI.

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Are you looking for ways to generate more engagement on social media? Want to ensure you’re posting at the best times for your audience?

While the exact right times to post will vary based on each unique audience group, the team from CoSchedule have put together a guide, based on a range of studies and reports, which highlights when brands in a range of sectors tend to see the most engagement on each of the major social platforms.

Again, there are unique variables for each business, but this overview could serve as a good starting point for planning out your social posting strategy, and maximizing engagement.

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One of the unwritten rules of Instagram management is to create a cohesive feed. The posts you upload on the platform should be logical in terms of visual concept, timing, captions, and hashtags.

But consistency isn’t something that can be accomplished overnight. You need to take time and think through each caption, the relevance of tags, the whole grid layout style and posting frequency. To streamline this process and plan your Instagram posts and stories, you can use Combin Scheduler, a tool for Instagram content planning.

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Fort Smith Mayor George McGill announced a statewide 2020 Census Social Media Challenge to increase awareness about the Census.

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A few months ago, Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales launched a new platform called WikiTribune Social – or WT:Social for short. Unlike Facebook, the Wikipedia social network isn’t designed to generate profit by leveraging user data. Thus far, it has a modest membership, but Wales doesn’t seem interested in jousting with Facebook. Instead, it sounds like he is hoping to offer a refuge from it.

Some critics have highlighted the ways certain social media sites are purposefully designed to be addictive. That can help make them successful, but it can take a toll on users.

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I also enjoy watching TED Talks to get a better understanding of the latest trends, including in digital adoption and platform usage. Social media is a constantly evolving field - it is a rare arena of marketing where the platforms may change over time (bye Vine, hello TikTok), but the overall advice seldom feels too dated. Most businesses do want their content to go viral.

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These days, your boss can be watching your Instagram stories or liking your posts. Social media blurs the line between work and personal life. While this can bring you closer to your team, it also adds pressure as any faux pas may affect your role or office dynamics. To explore the effects of ones social profiles on their career, WhoIsHostingThis, wanting to quantify what constitutes digital hoarding, the extent to which people do so, and the potential privacy risks of this behavior, asked over 900 employees, and the findings were interesting:

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Social media trends are like friends; they come and go.

However, the best friends and trends end up sticking around and evolving into permanent parts of our lives with qualities such as integrity, dependability, trust, quality and even ROI.

The bad friends and trendamies need to get weeded out before too much time, and resources get depleted.

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What are your social media goals for 2020? Tangible goals are the cornerstone of any successful social media marketing strategy, but how do you know you picked the right ones for the year ahead?

You take a look at your resources and performance throughout the previous year, as well as industry trends and social data insights. Sometimes, the goals you set lead to excellent results, other times — you learn from your mistakes and re-think the goals for the next year.

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This year is likely the last one ever in which you can say that more than half the planet is not on social media.

Hootsuite just released a massive digital state of the union report. Some of the high-level findings:

5.2 billion of us now have phones globally
4.5 billion are connected to the internet
3.8 billion are active social media users

That 3.8 billion is 49% of the planets population, and it grew 9% over the past year. That means it is extremely likely that sometime this calendar year, more than half of all of us will be active social media users.

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In your personal life, reading peoples minds is a questionable superpower; but the business benefits of being able to listen in on peoples thoughts are infinite. And while social media monitoring is not exactly about reading peoples minds, it is as close to it as it gets.

Social listening gives you access to what people are saying about your brand, industry, or competitors across social media and the web – often without them being aware of you listening. If you know how to word your queries and filter the results, you will end up with the most authentic, unbiased insights you can get as a business.

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Imagine you got a spike of traffic from Facebook amounting to hundreds of thousands of visitors — but only a trickle of them converted.

And lets assume all the moving parts in your funnel are working properly; you’ve got a fast- loading website, great conversion copy, and well-functioning sign-up or contact forms.

Yet, with all of these things, your conversion rates from that spike of traffic were nothing to write home about. And what exactly could cause that?

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The SEO landscape is very dynamic. Sure, some things stay the same: put relevant keywords in your titles, make it a priority to optimize for mobile users, etc.

But other things continue changing in a never-ending spiral. This year, Google, along with other huge platforms, is trying more and more to be the end destination of their users journeys.

This, more than anything, defines major SEO trends for 2020.

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A new service called Mailbrew is live that lets you created automated email newsletters. You can set them up from multiple sources including Twitter, Reddit, YouTube, RSS feeds, and more.

Mailbrew aims to save you time by rounding up the news and updates you care about from a variety of sources and popping it in a daily, weekly, or monthly automated email newsletter.

To start, you can create custom brews, choose from pre-made ones, or make use of both. You even get to choose the layout you’d like to use for the newsletters.

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Web based feed readers are kind of a pain to use. They often implement changes that you do not want, while taking away features that you like.  Local readers are much better when it comes to this, because you can revert to an older version in case of adverse changes.

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The offices of the Network Science Institute at Northeastern University sit 10 floors above Bostons Back Bay. Wraparound windows offer a floating panorama of the city, from Boston Common to Fenway Park, as a half-dozen young analysts toil quietly at computers.

At 10 a.m. on a recent morning, with the early calls to the World Health Organization and European doctors complete and the check-in with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention scheduled for later, Alessandro Vespignani, the institute’s director, had some time to work the room. In a black blazer and jeans, he moved from cubicle to cubicle, giving each member of his team the latest updates on the coronavirus pandemic.

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As the coronavirus pandemic sweeps the world, more and more governments are imposing lockdowns on their citizens. As a result, reliance on digital tools has increased significantly to maintain social and professional relationships. Notably, usage of video conferencing app Zoom has spiked, and not just for professional purposes.

But what about the social media tools we were already using to connect with people on a daily basis? How has their popularity changed so far in these trying times?

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Latest added Global Social Network Marketing Market research study by HTF MI offers detailed product outlook and elaborates market review till 2025. The market Study is segmented by key regions that is accelerating the marketization. At present, the market is sharping its presence and some of the key players in the study are Facebook, Instagram, Google, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest & Tumblr etc. The study is a perfect mix of qualitative and quantitative Market data collected and validated majorly through primary data and secondary sources.

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Now that you have moved your work life to your home space you may find yourself overwhelmed with social networking distractions. I get it. I have been dealing with the constant beep, chirp, and tweet of social networking while working from home for 30 years. Dealing with all the interruptions is not easy.

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The total number of social network users in China will grow 4.8% to 859.1 million in 2020, and by 2023, nearly all internet users (96.8%) will be social network users, according to our forecast. Though the growth rate of social network users in China is slowing, there will be at least 30 million more social network users added annually between 2020 and 2023.

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A 2019 study by the Pew Research Center showed that 51% of the people surveyed said they were uncomfortable with being tracked and categorized by Facebook.

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If you are not seeing results from your social media efforts, have you asked yourself why you are doing all of that—other than because everyone else is doing it?

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For many beginners (and, heck, some mid-level and even advanced SEOs), the line between search engine optimization and social media can sometimes blur.

~ Does your social media support or even help your search engine rankings?
~ How does optimizing for search on social media affect your profiles chance of showing up to new users?
~ And what does it mean that my tweets show up in search results?

In the past, the difference between SEO and social was fairly stark.

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Due to the coronavirus pandemic think tanks around the world are working under quarantine and have cancelled all events in the coming months. They will have to rely more on social media to get their messages across. How successful are free-market think tanks today in trying to attract traffic to their websites, as well as views and followers on other platforms?

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Self-quarantining during COVID-19 has caused some, especially those in the travel industry, to take a bigger hit than others. Those who usually work from home have had to make less of an adjustment, though booking paid partnerships is a struggle industry-wide.

As a result, many influencers are getting creative with their social strategies. Those who are multiplatform and have more than one revenue stream are coming out on top.

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If you are a hard-core Slack user, you might find yourself spending more time within the confines of that collaboration tool than any other. If thats the case, why not get your news there as well? Sound like something you might want or need? If so, it is a good thing Slack allows the addition of RSS feeds.

With this feature, you can always be up to date on your favorite topic-specific RSS feed from within your favorite Slack workspace. It is a one-two punch of efficiency. If that sounds like something you might want, lets see how it is done.


The only things you will need to make this work are: An RSS feed to follow and a Slack workspace that allows you to install apps. If your workspace doesn't allow the installation of apps, reach out to the Slack admin for your company or team and see if they can install the app for you.


The easiest way of installing apps on Slack is either via the desktop app or the web-based interface. The good news is that, no matter which route you take for installation, the RSS feed will show up on your workspace, no matter if you're using the desktop app, the web-based interface, or the mobile app.

1. Open the Slack desktop app
2. Click the + button under Apps
3. In the resulting window, type RSS and hit Enter on your keyboard.
4. Click the Install button associated with the resulting RSS app listing.
5. When your default browser opens, click Add To Slack and then click Allow.

Feedly, a popular RSS feed reader with millions of users worldwide, recently announced the creation of a new AI research assistant named Leo. Their goal with Leo is to create an AI with a set of skills that will enable it to better prioritize articles from news feeds.

Social media has been one of only a handful of sectors that is benefiting from the stay-at-home environment. Social distancing has forced social interactions online for the time being, but investors looking to capitalize on the surge in social media usage be surprised at the big winner.

On Friday, DataTrek Research co-founder Nicholas Colas said the biggest social media winner from the COVID-19 era is not Facebook, Inc.
FB , its subsidiary Instagram, Snap Inc  SNAP 0.06% or Twitter Inc TWTR 0.02%
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Instead, teen-oriented video platform TikTok has seen the biggest surge in Google search volume over the last 90 days. TikTok is owned by the private Chinese company ByteDance.

Social Media Search Numbers
Colas said Facebook and Twitter saw only a small bounce in worldwide Google search volume since global lockdowns went into effect. In the chart below, searches for Snapchat have demonstrated a similar trend, while searches for TikTok have steadily risen over the last 90 days.

Our stress levels are at an all-time high right now, which means our attentiveness to our own self-care should be, too—especially those of us with wanderlust. Traveling from the living room to the kitchen and back is no one’s ideal of a vacation, yet here we are. On top of that, our social media platforms seem determined to remind us of better days: Hey, look where you were a year ago today! blares Facebook, serving up a photo of a gorgeous beach or other getaway spot much more alluring than the permanent butt-groove you have formed in your couch.

For many of us, looking back on our travels past is not doing us much good at the moment. Luckily, there are a few methods to keep them from showing up in your social media feeds.

When most people talk about social media, they are usually referring to platforms like Facebook or Instagram, but rarely think of LinkedIn as part of the vast array of social media platforms available.

We tend to assume that LinkedIn is not such a valuable place to be and often, even businesses make this mistake, assuming that it would be far more beneficial to focus on their presence on Twitter, for example. There is a logic behind this – LinkedIn is a place for businesses, but I’m looking to advertise to real people, and they are going to be on other, more laid-back platforms, so I might as well go there, too.

This logic is flawed. Why? We are just about to show you.

On LinkedIn, you can build your brand.
This is true both for individuals looking to expand their job potential, and for businesses wanting to grow their brand. As an individual, where can a possible employer find you? On Facebook or Instagram. But do you really want them to see that snapshot of you in your undies at the beach, or the dirty joke you posted last night?

Probably not. These are personal details about you that chip away at your professional brand.

With most Americans under orders to stay at home due to the coronavirus pandemic, many people are turning to social media for a fun distraction. Taking a Facebook quiz about how well you know a friend or what character from your favorite TV show best matches your personality may seem like a harmless way to pass the time while quarantined, but it could also give scammers your personal information for nefarious purposes.

Not all social media quizzes are data collection scams, but some quizzes collect personal information by asking questions like: What is your mothers maiden name? or What is the name of the street you grew up on? These are common security questions for banking and credit card accounts. Sharing this information can lead to your accounts being hacked and your personal and financial information being stolen. It also can enable a scammer to impersonate you to your friends and family.

Tips to avoid social media scams:

• Be skeptical. Before you take a quiz, figure out who created it. Is it a brand you trust? Just because something appears to be fun and innocent, doesn’t mean there isn’t an inherent risk.

• Adjust privacy settings. Review your social media accounts privacy settings and be strict about what information you share — and with whom you are sharing it.

In Instagram: Visual Social Media Cultures, Tama Leaver, Tim Highfield and Crystal Abidin elaborate on why Instagram is more than just a social media platform: instead, it has become an icon that has altered understandings of visual social media cultures. By doing so, they focus on different aspects of Instagram, such as its aesthetics, cultures, ecologies and economics, supported with real-life examples and cases.

Instagram has tried to keep itself distinct from Facebook and other social platforms.

While usage of most mobile apps has remained neutral during the coronavirus pandemic, social media app usage has exploded during the lockdown, according to new data from Nielsen.

Why it matters: Prior to the pandemic, consumers and tech companies were both becoming more aware of the overuse of social media and actively trying to limit it. In a time when people can not connect with friends and family in person, companies have put these efforts on pause.

By the numbers: Prior to the pandemic, social media usage for most of January, February and early March remained relatively flat at around 20% of total mobile app usage, according to Nielsens data.

But beginning in mid-March, when statewide stay-at-home orders went into effect, social media app usage began to increase significantly, and now consumes around 25% of all mobile app usage for U.S. adults.

Other media app usage, like video, lifestyle, and finance apps have mostly remained the same, in part because consumers are now leveraging other devices, like desktops and television screens, for more activities while home.

An Italian-based artificial intelligence company is regularly analyzing social media posts about the coronavirus for their emotional content.

Why it matters: Classifying tens of thousands of posts by their emotional tone provides a snapshot of how people feel about the pandemic. Spoiler alert: not great!

How it works: Expert System specializes in semantics and natural language reading, a branch of AI involving computer systems that attempt to make sense of written language.

In doing so, a computer can rapidly analyze vast amounts of the written word — like, for example, a day's worth of social media posts about the COVID-19 pandemic.
For the past few weeks, Expert System has been collecting English language social media posts each day that feature frequently used hashtags like #coronalockdown and #covid19. Its AI can extract the emotional content of those posts, which is then analyzed and interpreted by Sociometrica.

Web based feed readers are kind of a pain to use. They often implement changes that you don't want, while taking away features that you like.  Local readers are much better when it comes to this, because you can revert to an older version in case of adverse changes.

Smart RSS Reader is a feed reader extension for Firefox and Chrome that I have been using for a week; I am quite impressed by it so far.

Install the add-on and click its toolbar icon to open a new tab with the extension's RSS reader. It has three panes, each of which has a toolbar at the top. The left pane is the feeds pane and lists all RSS feeds that you're subscribed too. Selecting a feed displays the title of the articles published by the site in the center pane. It also displays the author's name and the date when the article went live.

Apple has announced that Shortcuts, a powerful automation app for the iPhone and iPad, will come pre-installed on iOS devices starting this fall. This is great news because its an incredibly handy app — based on Workflow which Apple acquired in 2017 — that lets you combine multiple actions to perform a specific task.

What kind of things, you ask? Well, you can for example make it easier to open your favorite Apple Music playlist, find travel times to an address, create GIFs, and more. But one of its best uses in my opinion is use it as an RSS reader.

The method of getting your podcast out to the world might not be the way you think.

Unlike most popular forms of online content, podcasts utilize a form of forbidden arcane knowledge; an ancient method of internet distribution discussed in hushed tones and under furtive glances as really simple syndication or RSS for short.

First of all, we need to draw a critical distinction between traditional RSS feeds and podcast-only RSS feeds. An RSS feed is a format of internet file that can contain any sort of content, while the podcast-only variety is, unsurprisingly restricted to only podcasts.

A podcast-only RSS feed is a subtype of the internet file type known as RSS. This file can be easily distributed to a variety of different directories that updates the displayed content in real time alongside changes made by the creator.

This format restriction is what allows podcast directories to so easily display and showcase new content; everything that is submitted is, from a technical standpoint, completely identical!

Social media has become one of the most important instruments of hybrid warfare which is named the new generation warfare method, said a Turkish digital media researcher.

According to the general definition, hybrid warfare is one of the war strategies that combine political warfare, conventional warfare, irregular warfare, and cyber warfare methods, including fake news, diplomacy, lawfare, and foreign electoral intervention.

In an exclusive interview with Anadolu Agency, Ali Murat Kirik, an academician and expert digital media researcher at Marmara University in Istanbul, increasing activities of perception management and social engineering in social media proves that it is used as a warfare tool.

The Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) has issued a warning about sharing too much information on social media while being at home.

The FBI specifically is warning about trends such as posting your senior picture and graduation year.Officials also say beware of social media games that require you to tag a parent or post a picture of your first car.

They say these are often the answers to security questions and hackers can use the information to reset your passwords and get into your accounts.