When I look back at all of the mistakes I’ve made in business and marketing and add my observations from working with over 57,000 business owners and entrepreneurs in nearly every country in the world, it dawned on me.

Social media marketing success boils down to three simple steps.


The Three-Step Social Media Marketing Machine

For the past decade, brands have been capitalizing on the pervasiveness of social media in consumers’ daily lives and shopping habits. And this past year was no different.

Social media analytics company Unmetric found that brands that promoted messaging with edge, savvy, conviction—and occasionally dogs—won the marketing game.

Of that messaging, video—particularly those with memorable storylines, guest appearances or creative approaches to addressing social issues—reined as the overall best-performing format for branded and original content, a consistent trend in their numbers since at least 2015.

The Most Captivating Brand Campaigns We Saw on Social Media in 2019

With another US Presidential election on the way in 2020, we can expect the debate around fake news to once again ramp up, and become a key focus of discussion as we look at how political influence spreads online.

What if Fake News Is Not the Real Problem on Social Media?

David Finchers The Social Network seems quite prophetic considering how the 2010s turned out. With its focus on the digitization of social interaction as well as the need for social engagement and the advantages of sociopathy in powerful people combined with the power of public shaming, The Social Network explores the contradictions that animated the culture of this decade.

The Social Network Predicted The 2010s

Is influencer marketing becoming a strategy of the past? Are influencers worth what brands pay them to endorse their products?


How This Social Media Agency Is Revolutionizing The Influencer Marketing Landscape

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

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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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.

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.

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.

The NFL schedule just dropped which means we're one step closer to football. Here's what we know about the Ravens upcoming season.

The 49ers are going to be good next season. But how good?

The "Around The NFL" crew breaks down teams playing in prime time in 2020.

The '"Around The NFL" crew list their can't-miss games on 2020 schedule.

Joe Staley left 49ers guard Laken Tomlinson with some valuable lessons.

The new era of New England Patriots football has its schedule and Tom E. Curran and Phil Perry are breaking it down on the latest edition of Curran's Patriots Talk Podcast.

NFL Network's Chris Wesseling takes a look at the Cleveland Browns and quarterback Baker Mayfield heading into the 2020 season.

Marquise Brown knows that he still has another gear after an injury-riddled first season.

Thursday Night Football includes a number of marquee matchups with intriguing storylines in 2020.

The NFL's regular-season schedule surprisingly opens with a bang. In a year during which the NFL could have loaded up the first weekend with so-so games and fans would have lapped it up like malnourished kittens, the league has instead loaded nine division games into Week One. From the banner raising in Kansas City featuring [more]

The 2020 Monday Night Football slate looks terrific, including a number of marquee matchups and plenty of intriguing storylines

David Haugh, Chuck Garfien and Mark Carman join Kap for a casual Friday edition of SportsTalk Live.

The 2020 Sunday Night Football slate looks terrific, including a number of marquee matchups and plenty of intriguing storylines

Here are some rookie-against-rookie battles we can't wait to see in 2020.