With the widespread use of major social media platforms, it can be hard to understand why new ones keep being created. Could this be because each social network actually only fills one or two specific niches for users?

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Decide how you intend to use social media and to whom you will allow access, especially on Facebook. You do not necessarily need to completely sanitise all your social media profiles — because companies want to hire real people, and some companies specifically look for creativity and personality.

However, if you want to ensure a potential employer does not reject you on those grounds, make sure your online social profile depicts the type of employee a company would want to hire.

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What if you want to see a particular news feed on your home screen... say, one that does not connect with the built-in news feed tools?

You turn to RSS. That is right, we are going old school.

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Social media has become an integrated layer in our lives, available at almost every point in your day and even in space. It is this level of integration in our lives which has also made social media so powerful as a marketing tool and why just about every business has integrated it into their overall marketing strategies.

One important element of social media, if you really want to get the eyes, ears, and mouths of the people really making an impact, is to connect and engage with the influencers of each social platform.

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An RSS feed is a means to distribute changing web content including blog posts, podcasts, news releases and site updates to related sites, blogs, online publishers and feed subscribers. It allows busy people to get the information they want without having to use email, which prevents the publisher from selling or otherwise providing their contract information to other parties.

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1. Plan around the online and social hit.
Craft your pitches to include elements that readers will want to share on social media. Think about a creative way consumers can engage with your product along with a campaign hashtag. Just as when you include a storyline in a pitch, including decorations on your product’s theme can help editors imagine how to photograph them. This reduces one step of the design process for the publication and gives you additional influence on how your product is presented to the world.

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If you have noticed the apparent omnipresence of cell phones, as most of us surely have, it likely will not surprise you that about 86% of the worlds roughly seven billion people have access to a mobile phone, or that 80% of cell phone owners use their devices to send and receive text messages. You may also be unsurprised to learn that the vast majority of texts are sent by teenagers under eighteen, and that the average teen from this group sends over 3,300 texts each month.

Is Text Messaging Ruining our Youth?

RSS has never been fashionable — it is always been a news gathering tool for nerds, not norms. But now, more than two years after the untimely demise of Google Reader, RSS almost feels cool — like listening to vinyl or hating things on Twitter. RSS is a stealthy way to obtain news thats fast, friendly, and free from both ads and trackers. Its ubiquity makes me wonder why anyone bothers with browsers and adblockers at all, especially when mobile.

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In this article, I am going to cover four of the best tools to deliver RSS feed updates directly to your desktop, either through RSS tickers, or from alert boxes that display feed information right inside and scroll automatically. This way, during your workday, you can just glance over at the streaming updates and if a topic catches your eye, you can click on it and bookmark the article to read later, during your lunch break or after work.

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Social media is a big part of many peoples lives, and it can be a great tool to help build and maintain relationships, and for general self-expression. LinkedIn has 396 million users, Twitter has 307 million active users and Facebook almost 1.5 billion active users, according to Statista.com.

However, social media can easily lend itself to blurring the line between users’ personal and professional lives. And any information — good or bad — posted to social media can be difficult to delete once it’s out there. Fortunately, there are steps you can take to become a more responsible social media user. Read on to find out how social media can hurt your career, and how to avoid social media mistakes.

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Android does not have a built-in RSS widget for your home screen. For that, we have to turn to the Google Play Store. The widget I happen to prefer for this is called RSS Widget. This app is free, does not have any ads, and does a great job of presenting your RSS feeds cleanly.

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If you want to have mastery of all the news, information and updates about yourself, your business, your industry and your areas of specialty, then this may be the most important column you will read all year.  I'm going to show you how to build the ultimate information dashboard that will sit on your desktop or live in your mobile app and will update you in real time whenever anything of interest happens anywhere on the Internet.

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The end of the year is drawing near, which means its time for fresh starts and new beginnings. While that does apply to whichever New Year’s resolution you plan to make in 2016 (and, in all likelihood, abandon by February), it applies to social media sites as well.

Unfriend and Unfollow
The new year is the perfect time to go through your friends list with a fine-toothed comb. Here is a quick guide for whether you should be friends with someone online: Do you know who this person is? Have you seen him or her in the last year? Do you honestly think you’ll need to talk to him or her in the future?

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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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The social network is testing multiple News Feeds inside its mobile app, as the feature is live for select users. In addition to the main feed, tabs for specific topics like Style, Travel and Headlines line the top of the interface. When you select one, the feed is distilled down to relevant posts from your friends and Pages you follow. Facebook says the feature is in the testing phase, so it could be a bit before it is open to all users.

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Social media is driving our lives right now. You may say that is untrue, but I say you are in denial unless you are one of those emasculated men who share a Facebook account with your wife or you are part of the 1 percent who spends little to no time online. This is 2016 and Facebook has more than one billion daily active users. One billion. Daily. Active. Users. Amazing.

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Slow Feeds organizes your subscriptions into different lists. Theres a stream for low-volume sites that do not update terribly often (sites that update, weekly, for example, but when they do, you want to read them), a stream for the remaining high-volume sites that you can check more regularly, a stream specifically of the most-linked webpages in your feeds, and even a special feed just for articles you have starred to save for later, or review in order which is great if you are starring a bunch of articles on a specific topic, for example..

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The greatest change over the last few years in promotion and advertising is the use of the Internet.

Our websites are a platform to blog and promote our business. In addition links to social media are vitally important.

The use of Twitter and Facebook has grown considerably – every business, no matter what size, can enjoy the benefits of social media.

We have focussed on Twitter and Facebook a lot over the last 12 months. Gradually we have increased our activity and developed what we think works best for us.

On Facebook we have a business page. We regularly post technical articles about current accounts and taxation topics. These prove popular and often result in questions and contact from current clients.

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Whether you’re new to social media or a pro, an effective social media program can broadcast   both your company and employment brand. It may also help stock your sales funnel.

Tackle these four fundamentals and you’ll be off and running.

#1: Start with a clear-cut strategy.

A clear social media strategy can help maximize your efforts from the outset. Start with your goals:

Identify your top priority and focus on it.
Who do you want to reach? How do they use social media?
Do you want to drive traffic to your website or store -- or both?
How can community engagement help support these goals?

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Social media narcissism is on the rise. The team behind Psychology Today compiled research to show that millennials could be the most narcissistic generation in history. Social media is one of the exemplifications of the problem. That is not to say that everyone on social media is a narcissist, but it is where these people tend to hang out.

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After you have you social media profiles up and running, you may forget to pay attention to your profiles. It is easy to do as you are focused on posting, tweeting, and uploading videos. However, in order to maintain a positive image on social media networks a bit of maintenance is required. You need to make sure that you keep your social media profiles up to date at all times.

The social media profile is extremely important, so here are some things that you can do to make sure that you are getting the most out of your profile.

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Social media is a blessing for small business entrepreneurs to spread the word about their business without spending a huge amount of advertising dollars. Nevertheless, a majority of small businesses are not able to capitalize on this opportunity.

A recent ProOpinion poll found that many small business professionals don’t use social media or a social media calendar on a regular basis. Only 31 percent post frequently on social media, and whats even worse, just 15 percent interact with their audience.

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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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You turn to RSS. That is right, we are going old school. For those who don't know, RSS stands for Rich Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication. It's a very easy protocol that allows feeds to be pulled from websites to serve up a collection of story summations that the reader can then click on and enjoy the full read.

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Although consumers want brands to use social media as a two-way communication channel, the vast majority of businesses are not adhering to those desires, according to a study from social media management software provider Sprout Social. On average, businesses send out 23 promotional messages for every one consumer response.

Social media is now the No. 1 way consumers interact with businesses. The research revealed that 34.5 percent of consumers turn to social media first when they have a problem, compared with just 16 percent who call and 5 percent who visit a store in person.

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The federal government has confirmed that it will start targeting social media posts by prospective employees as part of its review process for security clearance.

The new policy, which will allow investigators to scan an applicant’s history on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and other similar sites, will be adopted soon, according to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI).

The guidelines make clear that agencies can target publicly available social media posts, if they deem it necessary, but cannot force individuals to hand over their passwords for private accounts, or provide pseudonyms for any profiles.

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For news, sports, entertainment, online publications and blogs, the benefits of implementing an RSS feed is obvious: Deliver information to your visitors even when they are not actively surfing your site, and they will be sure to come back when an item piques their interest. For other types of businesses, an RSS feed can keep you top-of-mind with your past customers.

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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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If you are a news junkie, you probably depend on various and sundry RSS feeds—so you most likely need a handy app to curate them into a single, easy-to-use location. Fortunately, plenty of Android apps are available to handle all your RSS needs.

What is RSS?
For those who are new to RSS, here's a quick overview. RSS stands for rich site summary (or really simple syndication). It enables sites to publish frequently updated information in a format that is easy to consume (by both apps and humans). The format of RSS tends to be a title and a one-sentence or one-paragraph blurb. Readers can click on the title, which will take them to the original piece.

Different apps offer different features for RSS feeds. I have found five apps in the Google Play Store that I believe represent the best features and the most user-friendly interfaces.

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Facebook has 1.6 billion users. Inevitably, a sizable portion of those people pass away, leaving behind a number of inactive social media accounts.

Last year Facebook took a major step forward in how to deal with the 8000 plus deceased accounts that appear on the social network each day.

Its Legacy contact scheme helped make dealing with the death of a loved one easier on the world's largest social network.

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I had never heard of Nextdoor when I lived in New York City. Social media services catering to individual neighborhoods weren’t useful in an apartment building where most tenants lasted a year, and longtime residents kept to themselves.

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Did you know that there are thousands of people out there earning incredible amounts of money through social media? That s right, social media stars can make thousands, even millions of dollars per year through sponsored posts, original content, and consistent engagement with their followers. Here are five social media celebs who might make you want to quit your job to go full-time on Instagram!

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From solo entrepreneurs to Main Street businesses and multinational brands, marketers at all levels struggle with finding new ways to keep their followers’ attention. I often see brands fall into the habit of posting repetitive types of content. This usually leads to a sharp drop in engagement.

Your followers need variety. If you don’t mix it up a little bit, you’ll risk losing their attention permanently. To inject some diversity, start working these 10 social post structures into your daily content calendar.

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Use a Conversational tone On Facebook
Facebook is probably the only site that still holds that perfect mix of business and pleasure. In order to not upset that balance and lose followers, your posts and updates should blend in perfectly with your fans and encourage more click-through. While repurposing Facebook for marketing, make sure to use a conversational tone to sound less spammy.

Follow the 80/20 Rule
Just making your presence felt over social media is not enough, it has to be worth following in the first place. Make sure to post valuable, productive and useful content instead of just promoting your company. The most useful tip to keep in mind is the 80/20 rule, where 80 percent of all your posts should be of value to your audience and 20 percent will be self-promotional.

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You read all the social media guru blogs, post religiously across your social media channels, and even publish your content at peak times of the day to capture more views. Despite all of this, you still see competitors gaining ground while your social media influence remains stagnant.

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A report yesterday revealed that Amazon might open up its Alexa ecosystem to allow push notifications, so that it could interrupt to warn you about a traffic jam, for instance.

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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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Despite the huge popularity of social networking among teens, more respondents reported using Gmail than Snapchat or Facebook, June 2016 research uncovered. The only site used more than Gmail was YouTube, which is not surprising given the plethora of content and influencers available on the video-sharing site.

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RSS offers an efficient way to stay in the know, but the right newsreader can make a big difference. Here are five outstanding Android apps that should do the trick.

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Ladies, gentlemen and all overly anxious Jewish mothers, I recently had a date that was NOT set up via a dating app. Hey, you have to start somewhere, right? Even better, it was a great date.

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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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No matter how popular your blog is, it won't make money if you do not monetize it. And even a well-designed and monetized blog can not make money if you do not know how to promote it. Too many recent posts on this topic have failed to point out that what works for the rich and famous is unlikely to work for your small business.

When Neil Patel writes about how to create a blog and mentions that his site earns over $1 million dollars a year, I hope people realize that even when he did this with a brand-new blog, he is still the well-respected, world-famous Neil Patel.

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Nowadays, creating a blog is a really easy thing to do, as there are services for all tastes and objectives. In addition, today’s major platforms offer numerous features, giving users the options to provide any kind of service.

Among the many tips necessary to launch a successful blog, choosing the right platform is important. WordPress, Medium and other platforms are quite well-known, but there are several other free options you should know about.

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Podcasting is hard, time-consuming work, and it can be incredibly frustrating when your shiny new episode only gets a handful of downloads.

There are many different strategies you can use to build your audience, but today we're going to focus on guest podcasting, which I will lovingly refer to as guesting.

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If you have ever tried your hand at blogging then you are already aware it can be more challenging than others may assume. Between all of the brainstorming, research, writing, and editing, you are devoting a lot of time to just one piece of content. While that content is extremely useful, there just may be times when you can’t find the time to create amazing blog posts on a daily basis. This is where content syndication comes into play.

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If you are a news junkie, you probably depend on various and sundry RSS feeds—so you most likely need a handy app to curate them into a single, easy-to-use location. Fortunately, plenty of Android apps are available to handle all your RSS needs.

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Twitter is one of the foremost platforms for gaining information quickly as all the major news publications and companies are breaking news about new happening around the world on Twitter.

Scratch that, even influencers, athletes and other celebrities are constantly divulging information on Twitter and many of you might be interested in not missing out on their tweets.

And for those of you who are in a habit of maintaining an RSS reader to consume information from worldwide publications, authors and people you’re interested in hearing from, here is a tool to help you do so on Twitter.

How to Add a Twitter Feed to Your RSS Reader

As of this year, about 81% of the United States population uses at least one social media platform. That number is growing by roughly 5% per year. At this rate, 100% of the United States will have a social media profile on at least one platform by 2021.  

Businesspeople searching for the ideal marketing channel to engage prospects should look no further than social networks. Social media provides companies with ample information to create messages targeted to valuable niche audiences, and given the statistics, it is inevitable that the audience you are trying to reach is on at least one social network.

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Google loves XML Sitemaps, it gives their bots an easy way to discover all your content. Even better, it gives webmasters a way to see how many of their URLs in their sitemap file were indexed and which URLs were not. But when it comes to how you should structure your XML sitemap file, that is totally up to you.

Structure Your XML Sitemap As You Like