It is a heady formula. With brands across the globe spending nearly $27 billion on social media marketing, an expenditure estimated to go up 37% by 2020 to reach $37 billion, and 45% of the worlds population actively engaged on social media, one unlikely sector has found a lucrative and free marketing source – college students.

Several universities across the country have begun using so-called student ambassadors or influencers to market their brand on Instagram, Twitter and YouTube.  According to a 2018 study by Pricewaterhouse Coopers, social media is the most influential marketing source for potential buyers. Over 70% of social media users hit the college sweet spot: individuals between the ages of 18-29.

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Smith had a Twitter meltdown this morning in response to some relatively gentle and polite criticism from me. Smith is a perfectly respectable journalist in his day job — a purveyor of tediously predictable received opinion, to be sure, but there is room for all kinds. Online, he is transformed through the emotional alchemy of Twitter into a deranged, masturbatory, feces-flinging rage monkey straight from Hell’s own zoo. He is, amusingly enough, so enraged that he cannot even get straight what he himself has written.

I hope readers will forgive the brief point-by-point here. I promise it adds up to something.

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Once you have decided to invest in social media marketing, your next key challenge is to decide which platforms you should be focused on.

This used to be relatively easy - you started a Facebook Page, set-up a Twitter profile, and then added others over time. But now, things have changed. Instagram is a much bigger consideration, Facebook's dwindling organic reach means it may be less of a priority, Twitters algorithm changes the equation, and LinkedIn's seeing more traffic. Pinterest, too, is on the rise, while if you're going to create video content, then YouTube definitely should be on your radar.

But you can not be active on all of them all the time - so which platforms are right for your business and marketing efforts?

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Wish you could follow a couple of Twitter or Instagram users, without setting up an account? Create an RSS feed for them.

RSS Hub is an open source project that creates RSS feeds from a wide variety of websites, including social media pages. You can install this on your own server, but it’s not necessary for most users.

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Social media continues to surge as a channel for businesses to market themselves and engage with customers. And with its continued growth and popularity, there is no shortage of social media “how-to” advice out there directed at businesses trying to scale up.

If you make it a point to keep up with social media trends, you’ve likely found at least some overlap in these tips—but every so often, there are unconventional or uncommon practices that can lead to great results. As experts in social media marketing, the members of Young Entrepreneur Council shared their most surprising social media tips—that truly work—and how you can take advantage for your business.

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Before the internet was consolidated into centralized information silos, RSS imagined a better way to let users control their online personas.

About a decade ago, the average internet user might well have heard of RSS. Really Simple Syndication, or Rich Site Summary—what the acronym stands for depends on who you ask—is a standard that websites and podcasts can use to offer a feed of content to their users, one easily understood by lots of different computer programs. Today, though RSS continues to power many applications on the web, it has become, for most people, an obscure technology.

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Wish you could follow a couple of Twitter or Instagram users, without setting up an account? Create an RSS feed for them.

RSS Hub is an open source project that creates RSS feeds from a wide variety of websites, including social media pages. You can install this on your own server, but it’s not necessary for most users.

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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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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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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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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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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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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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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.

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.

In a recent survey of 1000 consumers and 500 businesses, Animoto found that 75% of Millennials purchase decisions were influenced by a brands social media presence. But that's Millennials, a generation that's largely grown up online, and those response figures vary significantly across the different age brackets - so which platforms should you be focusing on to reach your target market?

To provide more insight, the team at Animoto broke their research down by generation.

Some of their key findings include:

Gen Z chose Instagram as the platform to follow brands
Baby boomers spend most of their time on YouTube and the Facebook Feed
Gen Z, Millennials, and Gen X selected YouTube as the platform they rely on when making purchase decisions

Union home minister Amit Shah on Saturday said he is "totally healthy" and not suffering from any disease. Shah said rumours about his health conditions have been spread through social media. "I am totally healthy and I am not suffering from any disease," he said in the statement in Hindi which was posted on his Twitter handle.

Jarrett Stidham seems likely to get a chance to prove himself as the New England Patriots' next franchise quarterback. But Patriots Hall of Famer Rodney Harrison isn't ready to trust the second-year passer just yet.

Opportunity knocks for teams in need of interior line help.

One of the best guards of 2019 is all of a sudden on the market.

Fred Smoot compared the Cardinals' defender to his former teammate Sean Taylor.

Yahoo Fantasy’s Liz Loza and NFL writer Eric Edholm provide their NFL player comparisons for the rookie wideout from South Carolina. Subscribe to the Yahoo Fantasy Football Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

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

Defensive tackle Derrick Brown, the seventh overall choice, became the league's initial first-round draft pick to sign his rookie deal. He agreed to a fully guaranteed, four-year, $23.621 million contract Friday. Uncertainty over the COVID-19 pandemic has prompted a question of whether some owners might hold onto signing bonus money longer than usual. The Bills, [more]

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

The 49ers are far less likely to encounter the extreme weather they dealt with at various points last season.

NFL Network's Steve Smith Sr. believes pressure is still on Seattle Seahawks to sign outside linebacker Jadeveon Clowney.

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]

Believe it or not, Las Vegas experts favor the Lions over the Bears in Week 1 of the 2020 NFL season.

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