LinkedIn may have started out as a simple way to build professional connections and share contact details, but more users are looking to share articles that interest them, the Digital Media Europe conference heard today.

Isabelle Roughol, France editor for LinkedIn, told delegates that, compared to five years ago, there are five times as many people coming to the site for content than for jobs searches.

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You may have RSS feeds accumulating dust over time, but that unfortunately does not mean the number of unread items will kindly reduce for you.

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Buffer is about sharing content, and now also a little about content curation. The social scheduling and sharing application announced two new features that could save you the trouble of searching for content to share.

Buffer feeds has just been introduced for users on the Awesome and Business plans. Users on the free Individual plan can try out Feeds by signing up for a trial of Buffer for Business. Users on both these paid plans can connect their preferred feeds from websites to their social accounts on Buffer and create a continuous stream of content ready to be share

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Google Glass Makeover - The company noted that the new Google Glass designs build on the Titanium Collection released this past January.
The designer collection will include five new frames and eight new shades.

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Collection of WordPress Plugins for Pinterest - complete article

In our increasingly competitive world -- one in which we clamor for the right kind of attention for our companies -- the pursuit of likes can become an obsession.

While experts work to define the return on investment, or ROI, of social-media attention and quantify the financial value of social media-fans and followers, entrepreneurs have an innate sense that there is power in gathering a following of likes for our brands.

If being liked is an important goal, and if we measure our likeability by what our social-media fans are saying, how can we effectively gather that evidence of our likeability?

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Recently, Copyblogger made a shocking announcement: they were killing their Facebook page, even though they had 38,000 fans. Interestingly, this follows their decision earlier this year to close comments on their blog as well.

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Feed Tips for the Blogging Community:

Make it easy to subscribe to your feed. Have an RSS logo near the top of your blog (you’ve seen them – the little orange and white squares?

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The summary is your hook to get readers to click on your article. Think of the summary as the hot fudge to your article titles ice cream. You can give a headline that states Ice Cream and it may be enough to turn a few heads, but not likely. Add a quick summary that describes the ice cream in more depth – such as the promise of a creamy, chocolate, mouthwatering, hot-fudge sundae – and you are far more likely to get the attraction you want and need.

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When it comes to content marketing, your results do not only come from the content you create—your blog can also help you build a haven to nurture your current and future customers. In this post, we are going to look at the benefits of having a community for your blog, the challenges blog moderators face, and how to create an engaging space for your readers.

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According to a recent social-media engagement study, Americans now spend more time on social media than any other Internet activity, including email. Social media is not going anywhere and businesses, small and large, are now recognizing their online presence is an essential part of their marketing strategy. Eight out of 10 small to medium-sized businesses now use social media to drive growth for their business, and three out of five say they have gained new customers through social media marketing.

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I write for and in a lot of places. There is my mailing list, my website, publications that require exclusive content, and even a few where my writing is regularly syndicated. Typically, although it seems like more, I write one article per week, and I write it with my mailing list in mind.

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Android 5 Lollipop has finally brought about lockscreen notifications – preview cards of the users most recent texts, emails, missed calls, and any other messages.

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So here are the best choices for the next time you want to catch up on the news while standing in line or lounging on the couch.

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Visual marketing is an integral part of reaching customers today. For brands concerned with SEO, however, it brings a wide variety of challenges. Search engine algorithms look for specific words, which makes it difficult to challenge competitors by coming up with better photos and videos to dominate search rankings.

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The Federal Trade Commission rolled out its latest truth in advertising guidelines. The last time the FTC updated its guidelines for truth in advertising was back in 2010. The new guidelines may precede a crackdown for social media marketing.

Their effect on social media marketing includes how marketers handle the use of celebrity endorsements. The FTC recommends that marketers have a proper disclosure check up to make sure that their social media marketing campaigns fall within FTC guidelines.

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Real Simple Syndication (RSS), has stayed basically static since its creation more than 15 years ago. It is time for a facelift.

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The feed now dominates online content consumption, from the news we read on our mobile devices to the social networks we check constantly throughout the day, as well as the ads that integrate onto those platforms.

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Over the past few years, social media has given rise to a number of crazes that have quickly spread across the web; with the likes of Twitter and Facebook, a trend started in Devon can reach Delaware in a matter of minutes. In the past 5 years, social media trends have got bigger and bigger, and in some cases wackier and wackier.

From the more absurd trends like Batmanning and Cinnamon Challenge, to those with an underlying charitable cause like the Ice Bucket Challenge, social media trends spread like wildfire. Chances are you will have had at least a handful of trends pop up on your social media feeds over the years.

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Facebook refused to fill its site with flashy animated banner ads for a decade. Zuckerberg thought these interrupted the user experience, and could stunt growth. But after reaching near ubiquity and acclimating users to video ads, today the company tells me it’s relaxing its standards and starting to allow businesses to post GIFs as ads and Page posts.

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Facebook has released a new application called Notify that will allow its users to receive push notifications about breaking news, new movie trailers, and more.

The move into real-time news is significant because could help Facebook achieve two goals: It could make the company more important to the media, and it could increase the traffic it sends to publishers. Now, whether the app will be successful or just something that clogs up your phones notifications feed is another set of questions all together.

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You are definitely not alone in feeling the RSS information overload. As wonderful as it is to be able to tap into all the information in the world, there are only so many hours in the day to spend consuming it all. Not to worry: With a little pruning, filtering and prioritizing, we can turn the deluge of data into a nice, manageable stream of content.

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Nothing motivates me to clean up like having to move. When I move house, which I do more often than I like, I see it as a time to purge junk and scrub the new place from corner to corner before moving in any of my stuff.

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Social media has become a popular (and profitable) marketing tool for new and experienced entrepreneurs. Establishing an account and building an audience organically costs only time, and most platforms offer reasonably priced advertising options for those who want a little extra push.

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The raw simplicity of RSS is its beauty, so any upgrades need to maintain that simplicity. But we can create additional function without sacrificing RSS’s usefulness.

Can an old dog learn new tricks?

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Even though legal publishers, both law firms and traditional media, put a lot of time and effort into publishing, their publishing platforms are often outdated, deficient or broken. Worst of all, the publishers have no idea.

Like many people I use Feedly, a news aggregator, to stay abreast of news, information, developments and commentary. Others use Manzama, Zama, Flipboard or corporate-installed news aggregators. I liberally share what I read directly from Feedly to Twitter, and to a lesser extent Facebook and LinkedIn.

Social sharing like this is how news moves today, lots of people read and share. We call it social media.

Most of the items shared are shared by a select group within particular industries. They are called the influencers.

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If a blogger falls in a forest, and there’s no one around to see it…will Google still pick up the feed?

Ha! I crack myself up.

For those of us who spend time blogging, one of the more critical questions is: “How do I get people to read my blog?” After all, if we’re out there hustling to write content for the blogosphere, how valuable is it if no one reads it?

Have no fear. Here are eight great ways to get (and keep) blog readers:

1. Identify your audience. What are you blogging about, and what kinds of people would benefit from reading it?

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One click on social media can reach hundreds of people. But the wrong post could reach your boss and cost you your job.

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It is difficult to get real-time alerts about articles with specific headlines on specific subjects from specific websites.

News reader applications like Feedly or Flipboard are great for browsing and even searching through news items, but they lack the ability to send notifications proactively.  Emails from Google Alerts can be tardy, and at other times, articles can slip by completely.

Never fear!  Used together, two web applications, IFTTT and Feed Rinse,  solve this problem easily.

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Get the most out of Facebooks Fan Pages despite Facebook doing its best to limit what posts you see on your timeline
            
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I was interviewing Antonio Lucio, the CMO for HP, for my CMO Insight series (see article here), when we started talking about social media. For perspective, Lucio has over 33,000 Twitter followers, has a 62 Klout score, and is the 4th most influential CMO on Twitter (see list here). I asked him why he is so personally involved in Twitter. Very few CMOs tweet and of those who have a lot of followers, few tweet themselves, instead delegating the task to somebody on their marketing team. His response to my question was fascinating, and an important one for any CMO or aspiring CMO to hear.

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Twitter has eradicated RSS feeds from its web interface once and for all, following an update to the sites search page today.

When Twitter launched its redesign late last year it subtly removed RSS feeds for users tweets. And while RSS feeds are still available, you have to be willing to jump through some extra hoops to access them.

Of course, there was some suggestion that their removal was accidental, but some 10 months  later this seems not to be the case.

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The former Top Gear crew seem to be embracing the internet in a whole new way. Jeremy Clarkson, James May, and Richard Hammond have announced that their new social network, DriveTribe, will be launching this autumn.

Details are scarce, but each of the founders shared a quote of what they would like to see from this new venture.

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Almost all news sites have RSS feeds, but many make it difficult to find them. Twitter and Facebook icons are everywhere, but it's rare to see the RSS icon prominently displayed. It's a dot with two quarter-circles fanning out to the top right, usually on an orange background.
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The best blogs and feeds are those that contain unique, fresh, compelling, content. So where do these prolific posters get their ideas? I talked to a handful of bloggers to determine where their inspiration originated for their content.

Not surprisingly, ideas for blog posts or RSS feed items originate or are influenced by other web content. The following are venues for finding your online muse:

How to Get Ideas for RSS Feeds

The results of an interesting survey by FindLaw came out recently that should have all lawyers paying attention. According to the survey, the majority of consumers, at least 54 percent, say they are more likely to hire an attorney who has an active presence on social media than a lawyer who isn’t. This is especially true for consumers between the ages of 18 and 44 – at least 69 percent said they would hire a lawyer who is active on social media.

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Facebooks News Feed for mobile will become much friendlier to vertical videos in the near future, according to Marketing Land. It will not exactly be optimized for the orientation the way Snapchat is, but it will apparently stop cropping and showing them as tiny squares. The publication says when the update rolls out for Android and iOS, you'll start seeing vertical videos with a 2:3 aspect ratio (as opposed to 1:1) on your News Feed without having to expand them.

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Threats to humiliate an intimate partner by sharing explicit photos or video is an old problem with a new digital twist, a new study finds.

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Social media nurturing has to be a requirement for all businesses. Businesses have turned social media automation into something that seems to resemble broadcast radio by posting large volumes of tweets and updates occurs fast with automation tools. Now imagine every business, regardless of their industry, doing the exact same thing.

Automated postings have inundated social communities to a point that no one is listening anymore.

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As we wind down the year and look back on 2016, we find that social media is on everyones lips–but perhaps for different reasons than we social media marketers would imagine or prefer. The discussion happening around social media at the end of the year is about responsibility and control.

The outcomes of the EU Referendum in Great Britain and the American presidential election were no doubt influenced to a greater or lesser degree by social media, from President-elect Donald Trump’s insistence on using Twitter as an unfiltered direct communication channel with his followers and critics, to the soul-searching happening in some quarters about the role social media played in serving up news stories to the American electorate.

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Most of us think of Search Engine Optimization as a feat of technical wizardry, and it can be. From using proper keywords to using tools to automate publishing to social media, being tech savvy plays a big role in getting traffic. The mistake is forgetting that readers do not just have favorite blogs; they have their specific interests. Taking your content and commentary beyond your blog can help build authority and drive a lot of traffic your way. Thats where guest blog posts can be an effective tool. In 2014, Googles Matt Cutts declared guest blogging dead because it had become too spammy. So why do it? Because Google rewards quality, and a comprehensive, high-quality guest post that links back to your site is at least equally good for SEO as a great post on your own site.

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Although Facebook is the most popular social network across generations, it is not as dominant with younger people as it is with older ones, according to recent research from Sprout Social.

The report was based on data from a survey conducted in January 2017 of 1,000 Millennials (age 18-34), Gen Xers (age 34-54), and Baby Boomers (age 55+) in the United States.

Some of 65% of Gen Xers as well as Baby Boomers say Facebook is their favorite social network.

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What was once a world of snail mail, magazines, and newspapers is now a world of cell phones, email and social media. There is no mistaking the up rise and importance of new technology in what is now a digital age. In the past, advertising was a more simplified process. You could advertise in a newspaper or magazine, or leave flyers on someone’s doorstep or mailbox. You could buy air time for a commercial or buy space on a billboard. However, as technology grew and evolved, so did our methods of advertising.

What should I do to advertise my business?

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Currently, the world’s population is 7.5 billion, 3.8 billion are internet users and 2.8 billion of them are social media users. 1.8 billion of the entire world population is made up by teenagers from the ages of 13-19 years old. Instagram alone has 500 million active monthly users. Instagram users have shared over 40 billion photos to date and share an average of 95 million photos and videos per day. Snapchat has 166 million daily users. Although adults do also use some social media, teenagers are the majority of users.

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For a growing number of people, their activities online have become their real jobs. Achieving influencer status on Instagram or YouTube can help a onetime enthusiast who filmed videos from his childhood bedroom earn a legitimate six-figure salary. Today, social-media stardom is no longer a springboard to a mainstream career but a career in and of itself. For these tech-savvy self-promoters, there’s a lucrative world of freebies, sponsorships and other moneymaking opportunities at their fingertips.

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For retailers, the line between online and offline shopping experiences no longer exists. Todays consumers expect consistent branding and service across all platforms, whether they are physically in a store, browsing products on a website or reaching out on social media.

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Just how dominant a business tool was social media in 2017? Despite being involved in an investigation by Congress, Facebook reported its highest earnings ever in Q3, up nearly 50% from a year ago.

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Sure, we all get information from Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

But a growing trend of law enforcement using social media to communicate with the public has led to growing concerns that they are not responding to questions from journalists or not being fully transparent with the public.

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Earlier this week, we endured another school shooting. This time, in Parkland, Florida, where at least 17 students were killed. During the shooting's aftermath, hoaxes and disinformation spread on Twitter. It is a phenomenon that happens after every tragedy, and it doesn't seem to be going away.

As is common in these cases, many of the initial fake tweets misidentified the gunman.

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Have you ever seen someone on social media, maybe someone in your profession, with a hundred thousand followers and wondered, how the heck did they get so popular?

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