The marketing world is on an absolute tear automating menial, mundane, yet necessary tasks.

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Looking to give your Etsy Shop a boost? Want a fast and easy way to showcase your products to your Twitter and Facebook audience? Promoting your Etsy items across social media is simple.

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Facebooks automated year in review slideshows are meant to surface highlights from the year that was, but for some the virtual scrapbook simply brings back bad memories. In the case of web designer Eric Meyer, a photo of his recently deceased daughter appeared, surrounded by confetti, illustrations of party goers dancing and the exclamation Eric, here's what your year looked like! In response, Eric wrote a blog post about what he refers to as that apps Inadvertent Algorithmic Cruelty, and pointing to the shortcomings of modern software design.

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The national Amber Alert system for missing children -- already on highway billboards, mobile phones and the Internet -- is extending its reach to Facebook, the globes biggest social site.

The Menlo Park social media giant announced Tuesday that it is partnering with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children to send geographically targeted Amber Alerts to the members of the U.S. Facebook community.

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How to Convert a Facebook Page to an RSS Feed. In 3 easy steps, convert any Facebook page into an RSS feed to share across social media, create more likes and fans.

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As an early adopter of media since the early 80s, I love everything about media, its immediacy, urgency, fluidity, and ability to impact the masses and unify people and ideas in real time, in the moment.

Social marketing continues to be a powerful force for good, but as we know it can be a dangerous platform for bad too.

Through prior careers in entertainment and broadcast radio sales, and celebrating 8 years in my current social media consultancy, social marketing clearly is the most effective way to build branding, credibility and the bottom line.

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One of the interesting qualities of freelancing work is that you may never meet your clients in real life. Perhaps more than any other job market, freelancers rely heavily on their online image- an aggregate of their resume, portfolio and personality to set themselves apart and attract new clients who may very well be located on the other side of the world.

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Content Curation is the practice of finding, organizing, annotating and sharing the best and most relevant third-party content for your audience. There is no doubt that curation is a growing trend in the world of content marketing. The number of concerns surrounding the practice, however, are putting doubts in the minds of content marketers before they are able to understand the benefits of curation done right.

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The new launch landscape levels the playing field for brands of all sizes and industries when reaching consumers–yet the ability for consumers to share their opinions freely on social media can provide huge hurdles for brand messaging. Consumers can quickly activate other like-minded consumers to rev up the online discussion to a level anywhere from highly positive to tanking a brand.

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Based on feedback, the folks in Menlo Park are changing the way it handles updates from your pals. Posts made directly by your friends will now display closer to the top of the News Feed -- things like status updates, pictures, videos and more.

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When Anil Chawla built a start-up that uses software to archive social media posts, he never imagined that his biggest clients would be government agencies.

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With more than 84% of brands carrying out social media marketing, the greatest challenge is to rise above all the clutter and establish your brands credibility. The effectiveness of social media marketing is highlighted by the fact that it is100 times more effective in sealing the lead-to-closure rate. Hence brands are vehemently using this channel to attain multiple business goals.

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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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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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It seems hard to imagine that the winner of the 2016 Presidential Election will not also win another important race… the social media race. In todays hyper-connected world, the candidate that inspires enough of the population to eventually win the election will likely also have excited enough of the public to follow her or him on their various social media networks.

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Facebook has been experiencing an uptick in terms of its intellectual property holdings in recent years. In 2014, the company was tied with Emerson Electric for 132nd overall with 279 patents issued that year by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, an increase of almost 120 percent over the companys patenting pace the previous year. Facebooks already earned 250 U.S. patents in 2015 according to Innography, making it very likely that the company will post higher patent totals this year. The text cluster provided here shows us that much of the companys recent innovation focuses on social networking, although user interfaces and computing devices were also large areas of focus.

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Google Sheets can monitor competitors prices, capture news headlines, and devour data from websites, CSV files, and more. The tool helps small business owners and marketers gain a competitive advantage.

Google Sheets, the search giant’s cloud-based spreadsheet service, does more than just make your financial statements legible. The service has many powerful functions and features. Three of these may even help your business collect competitor and industry data that could lead to better decisions.

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While there are certainly dozens of insightful takeaways that could be gleaned from Buffetts 50-year career as an investor, I think everyone can benefit from learning more about one of his core principles that have guided him through good times and bad.

Reputation matters
One of my favorite all-time pieces of advice from Buffett is this: It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you'will do things differently.

In many ways, the sheer simplicity and common-sense nature of that statement belies its profound implications for modern-day life. Throughout his career, Buffett has used his reputation sparingly to turn around a failing business or to gain a tactical advantage.

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Question for you to answer: What is YOUR goal for your business startup?

I cannot stress enough the importance of knowing the answer to that question. A defined goal helps your team plan strategic & measurable steps; while, in the process, you also keep resources in check as you strive to reach it.

It can be used as a tool to achieve either of these goals:

increased email subscribers
grow profitability
get leads
more website traffic to your website
improved customers service
increased brand awareness
…and more!

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Social media allows you to connect with the world, but many seemingly harmless quizzes and games can really be traps laid by social media hackers.

The simple and sometimes silly surveys that pop up on Facebook feeds often ask simple questions that may appear simple enough: What's your favorite color? Where did you grow up? What is your spirit animal? Where did you go to high school?

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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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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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Are you tired of Facebooks trending section in your News Feed? Celebrity news getting annoying? Would you rather have legitimate news? Introducing Fluffblocker.

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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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Lately, Facebook newsfeeds have been seeing a new page pop up asking for assistance from the community, and the response has been abundant.

Jessica Williams, chief probation officer and program director of the Ross County Probation Department, created a Facebook page for the agency a few weeks ago. She started posting names of people wanted on warrants after violating the terms of their probation, along with their pictures.

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Are you tired of Facebooks trending section in your News Feed? Celebrity news getting annoying? Would you rather have legitimate news? Introducing Fluffblocker.

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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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Most people with a smartphone are constantly tapped into some form of social media. Sharing cute pictures of kids and pets is simply a routine part of life these days. Some people even use social media to vent frustrations or look for advice.

In a divorce case, however, shares on social media can create ample evidence that can be used against one or both parties to affect alimony, child support, child custody, and more.

Email and Text Messages
Email and text messages are admissible in court and can even be subpoenaed. If one party in the marriage reveals something about a new job or an upcoming bonus that has not been revealed in court, this can be used as evidence that the person is not being honest in his or her financial declarations.

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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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With Lines IPO, I thought this would be a good time to ask about the role that new social networks will play in the larger social network ecosystem. Will they cannibalize Facebook’s usage? Or can we expect to see the biggest players continue to be dominant in social networking?

For those of you who don’t know, social networking has a special place in my heart. In 1997, I launched the world’s first online social network called sixdegrees. And as part of that, we wrote a patent that defined a social network as the ability to index multiple relationships in a single database. It gives you the ability to see the people you don’t know through the people you do know.

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On June 29, Facebooks algorithm change rocked the content world. The social media giant announced it would start prioritizing posts shared by friends and family over content from publishers and brands. That’s bad news for brands that have come to rely on social media sites like Facebook as a major web traffic driver.

Facebook accounts for 41.4 percent of referral traffic to news sites, according to Parse.lys April 2016 Authority Report. But not all is lost. While brands may be in trouble, content published and shared by individuals could gain even greater traction. That’s good news for industry influencers and budding thought leaders.

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Last week, a prominent feminist writer left Twitter after a rape and death threat was directed at her 5-year-old daughter. Online violent threats are not uncommon, especially for women and minorities, but when they are reported, police are often not responsive.

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While you may be tempted to check out a job candidate's social media presence before hiring, doing so might not be worth the risk.

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There was once a time when companies could only see the negative side of social media and as a result many banned the use of it within company hours. However, in more recent years I have witnessed companies becoming increasingly savvy about how to leverage the potential benefits of their employees’ extensive social networks. I have worked with several clients (ranging from blue chip multinationals to smaller more boutique affairs) on how to do just that. Today I want to share with you the ins and outs of implementing your own company-wide social media advocacy program.

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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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This might be the last article I ever write. I’ve built up a substantial portfolio over the past few years, championing the use of video marketing via carefully considered words of wisdom, offering my two cents on subjects such as why emotive storytelling works in content marketing and how to sell yourself in six seconds.

And now it seems that companies all over world are actually paying attention, practicing what I preach and putting video at the heart of their marketing mantra. Pretty soon, nobody will bother reading or writing anything online as the internet becomes totally submerged by the medium of moving pictures.

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According to Mashable, some affected users see an icon on videos that you can tap to toggle sounds or or off. That sounds manageable, and we can imagine people liking the feature. However, other testers are reporting that sounds automatically start up when videos play on their News Feed, so long as their devices aren't on silent mode.

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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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Social media monitoring services such as Geofeedia rely on bulk data access to be able to search far larger volumes of social media posts, and more efficiently, than the average user.

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The Internet is a big place. Really big. With more than a billion existing pages and thousands more being created each day, there is a wealth of great sites offering fantastic content free of charge. But with such a massive torrent of media being produced each and every day, it can often be tough to keep up with all your favorite websites. So, how do we alleviate this problem? Easy. Here’s a really simple explanation of Really Simple Syndication (RSS).

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Specifically, all three companies granted access to a developer tool called Geofeedia which allows users to see the geographic origin of social media posts and has been employed by more than 500 law enforcement organizations to track protesters in real time.

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The risks are significant for listed companies, in particular, and blowback can be hard when you get it wrong.

At a minimum, CEOs should be having an ongoing dialogue with their Chief Communications Officers and marketing leaders about social media and how it’s being leveraged by their firms.

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Facebook, the worlds largest social networking site, has decided to crack down on fake news items after users complained a surge in the number of ill-verified news articles and hoaxes on its network.

Adam Mosseri, VP, News Feed, in a new post, said: We believe in giving people a voice and that we cannot become arbiters of truth ourselves, so we are approaching this problem carefully.

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The US government has begun requesting foreign travelers to submit their social media information to Customs and Border Protection (CBP) before traveling into the country. The practice is claimed to be part of broader efforts to identify potential terrorist threats.

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Writing a blog can be a rewarding way to reach out to your audience, and share your thoughts and knowledge on issues that are relevant to them. When used correctly, your blog posts can increase traffic to your website, and ultimately result in customer conversions.

Of course, this all depends on your ability to get new people interested in your blog each day. If you can do this, your success is all but guaranteed.

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With social media substituting real-life communication, one-third of people communicate less face-to-face with their loved ones, a key factor for damaging relationships, a study has found.

The findings showed that a significant third of people communicate less with their parents (31 per cent), children (33 per cent), partners (23 per cent) and friends (35 per cent) because they can see and communicate with them via social media.

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Facebook is under quite a bit of pressure of late. It's trying to fix the rise of fake news and clickbait on its News Feed and, more recently, it's had to deal with the Zenimax lawsuit against Oculus. But all of that hasn't eaten into Facebook's bottom line. As its Q4 2016 earnings report shows, the company once again raked in cash hand over fist, with $8.8 billion in revenue and $3.56 billion in profit.

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If you have ever bought an item that a celebrity recommended on Twitter or been persuaded by a discussion with a Facebook friend, you know that social media can impact your behavior and opinions. But you might be surprised to know that there is a science behind social media interactions.

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Back in the late 90s, when standards were proprietary and communication protocols complicated, two data formats appeared on the horizon. The first was the extensible markup language, born as an extension of an existing markup language standard (XML), and designed (by an open committee) with the purpose of storing and defining documents and data through the optional use of a schema.  The other, JavaScript Object Notation (JSON), born out of a programming language, was almost the exact opposite – a serialization format with requirements so simple they fit on the back of a business card. XML exploded in application development and communication platforms in the 2000s due in large part to the sheer demand for a human readable, vendor-neutral data format that was easy to read, write and share. As applications and platforms evolved and efficiency grew in priority, APIs evolved to become leaner, and JSON overtook XML as the preferred data interchange format among developers across many technology stacks.

JSON vs. XML: The battle for format supremacy may be wasted energy