We live in an age of information overload. With all the stories from news, blogs, social media, and other sources, the amount of information about any given subject can be overwhelming. It is hard enough to keep up when you are just a consumer of information, but what about when you need to curate content for a target audience?

Thankfully, there are tools that can collect and organize information from a large number of sources, making that task easier. One such tool is the PressForward plugin for WordPress.

PressForward is a multi-user, collaborative RSS feed reader that integrates with WordPress' publication work-flow and provides users with the ability to curate content for a target audience.

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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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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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Mobile users spend little time viewing web content on their mobile browsers, preferring to read most of it through their social networks. As a result, publishers are losing control of their content, and users are overloaded with content sources.

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In what has become a heartbreaking routine—employed during the Paris attacks of 2015, as well as after recent terrorist attacks in such places as Belgium and Istanbul — people shared emotional memes in solidarity with the city of Nice, where 84 people were killed by a truck driver barrelling into the crowd on the Promenade des Anglais.

Using the hashtags #PrayForNice or #JeSuisNice, people expressed solidarity over the deaths of at least 84 people, which French President Francois Hollande says was caused by an act of terrorism.

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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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I am involved in several free software projects, including one or two where I maintain the website. For one of those projects, we currently are updating the website. Ours is probably similar to other free software projects. We use a hosting service for several key services, including news, but we run our website on a web server that we own. In our case, we run most of our project on SourceForge and run the website on a third-party service, so the news and website are on different systems.

Not surprisingly, our project uses an RSS feed to pull news items from SourceForge to display on the project website.

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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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For more than 56 years the charity I work for, Bloodwise, has been working to beat blood cancer, the third most fatal form of cancer. In our work, we have had to constantly evolve and adapt to meet the ever-changing needs of our supporters and patients.

Unsurprisingly, the rise of digital channels has been transformational for us, from the delivery of patient information online to communicating with supporters via social media. However, as the importance of digital grew, we knew we needed to use data and insight to understand our online audiences better and measure our performance.

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RSS Feeds for the Marine Corps Times.

Everyone realizes the importance of social media marketing. Businesses are tapping benefits of using networks created on social sites to sell products.

What is social media marketing?

Social media marketing is using social sites such as Facebook, Twitter and many of the social media tools to create awareness about products. It is an approach where business can reach their customers. Many customers interact with brands through social media. A company that has a high social media-marketing plan can thus tap into the opportunity and increase their customer base.

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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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Imagine if you were an entrepreneur in the late 1980s, or even 10 years ago. It may be hard to believe, but at that time — and in all other eras of business history except now — social media did not exist. You relied on word of mouth, paid advertising, and old-fashioned grunt work to get the message out about your business.

All of that is still necessary — any savvy entrepreneur knows you should not rely on social media alone to promote your business. Despite its pervasive reach, social media still only reaches a limited and largely distracted audience. For that reason, you have to take care with your social media promotion. Unfortunately, you can’t flood your account with random tweets and sell huge volumes of product.

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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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Whether you are constantly searching your own name online (you know who you are) or there is a topic you want to follow closely, Google Alerts lets you know when new pages hit the web that match your query—and you can convert these results into an RSS feed (or something else) to make them easier to manage.

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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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RSS, also known as Really Simple Syndication, provides a great way to keep up with your favorite websites and skim through the headlines to find the articles. Safari makes it really simple to subscribe to a website's RSS feed in just a few clicks.

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This summer, the American Civil Liberties Union of California requested records from 63 police departments, sheriffs and district attorneys across California. Of the records they received, 40 percent of the agencies (20) used social media surveillance tools, and most of them started using them within the last year.

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Looking for a job for the first time in over a decade can be a lot like trying to date again after getting divorced from a long marriage. You can try to do it the same way you did when you were much younger, but you would have much more success using social media to find the right match. If you are not sure where to start, this list will introduce you to how each major social media channel can help build your personal brand online and network like an all-star.

According to a 2016 survey by CareerBuilder, 59 percent of hiring managers use search engines to research job candidates. If you have no presence online, you will be perceived as being out of touch.

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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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Since January, more than 200,000 posts per month on Instagram, a picture-sharing app owned by Facebook, have been tagged with #ad,  #sp or #sponsored, according to Captiv8, an analytics platform that connects brands to social media influencers. Hiring such influencers allows companies to reach a vast network of potential customers: Mr Ronaldo has a combined following of 240m people across Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

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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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In the past two years, investors have spent more than $10 million on social networking apps in India. And a growing number of them are focussing on niche segments — from students to Hindi speakers and parents to high networth individuals.

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1. Avoid use of headlines and writing of tweets that misrepresent and/or oversimplify the content of linked-to articles. Headlines matter as they frame the stories for users.

2. Call racism racism.

3. Call sexism sexism.

4. Call terrorism terrorism, and be consistent in the use of the term regardless of the ethnicity, religion, national origin and ideological motivation(s) of the perpetrator(s).

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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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We think the world is dominated by Facebook, but is it really the world’s favourite social network? And what about the second most popular social networks? Lets check the world map!

I won’t keep you hanging. Yes, Facebook is still the worlds most popular social network, and by far. But the following maps, designed by Vincenzo Cosenza, are still full of interesting – and sometimes surprising – insights on how the world uses social media platforms.

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Last week, the APA released a study finding that Americans were experiencing the first statistically significant stress increase in the surveys 10-year history. In January, 57 percent of respondents of all political stripes said the U.S. political climate was a very or somewhat significant source of stress, up from 52 percent who said the same thing in August.

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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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When it comes to social media, especially Facebook and Twitter, I am guarded when it comes to whom I friend or follow. I use Facebook almost exclusively to connect with friends, family or business acquaintances. I use Twitter mostly for news and commentary that's of interest to me personally.

But there is another social media site I use a lot, and that is LinkedIn. LinkedIn differs from Facebook and Twitters generalized social interactions by focusing on helping people make and maintain professional connections. LinkedIn was purchased last year by Microsoft for $26.2 billion, and has become Redmonds foray into social media.

Social Media Security

Content marketing paved its way into the global village a decade back and has immediately shone up to fame with the coming of new media. Business houses across the globe are increasingly developing solutions for content marketing.

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2018 is only four months away, and brands have to prepare to take advantage of the opportunities social media presents -- or their competitors will.

When it comes to reaching audiences, effectively distributing your content, and building a following around your brand, social media offers a wealth of possibilities. It's where your audiences already live and engage with content, which makes it a convenient platform for brands. Its built-in analytics allow you to track and improve your efforts over time. Plus, all the free social-media tools make it easy to use and maintain an active presence.

As you look ahead to 2018 and begin planning for ways to strengthen your social strategy, it is important to keep a pulse on trends.

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Have you tweeted, posted an Instagram photo or just generally engaged in social media before? Then it’s possible you have been part of a research experiment of sorts. Think that raises some ethical questions? You are not the only one.

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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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Facebook is adding to its collection of apps. This time, a social network called tbh, popular with teens.

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Some people might think that online privacy is, well, a private matter. If you don’t want personal information getting out online, then you can just not put it out there. Right? Wrong. Keeping your information private isn’t solely your choice anymore. Friends can play a big role in your privacy, new data show. And the more they share on a social network, the more that social network can figure out about you.

Someone who joins a social network — such as Snapchat, Instagram or Facebook —wants to find their friends. Often, the social network can help. Many apps offer to import contact lists from your phone or e-mail. These apps then use that information to find matches with people already in the network, and suggest them to you.

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Blogs are the lifeline of companies across the world, and marketers are hungry for B2B blog marketing tips. According to a study conducted by Content Marketing Institute (CMI), blogs are the 3rd-most popular content marketing strategy, just behind social media marketing and articles.

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Happy New Year! Are you looking to reach and engage with customers in a new and exciting way? This is going to be the year your business embraces content marketing in a real and serious way. Why is this going to be the year of content marketing?

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When effective content marketing meets your customers, the magic happens. Before we dive in to the secret sauce behind the magic, what comes first, content or the customer? That is not a trick question. It’s a real test to see which direction your content marketing is headed. If you’re not sure about how this should play out for the benefit of your marketing and your customer…read on.

As a marketer and a consumer, I always think about the value content plays in a marketing strategy and campaigns.

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Did you know that the average CTR for any form of online advertising went from 0.09% to 0.05%? For this trend we are to blame the rise of social networks and ad blockers which helped consumers successfully fight the unwanted ads.

Where does this leave marketers?

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RSS is now competing for my time with Twitter, Reddit, internal Verge chats, and other news sources

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CJ Marple wanted to teach his young students how quickly information can spread on the Internet.

So earlier this year, the third-grade science teacher wrote up a tweet with the help of his students, asking for other users to retweet the message, or even reply to the message with their location.

The Kansas teacher says he expected 1,000 or so retweets, but within days the tweet went viral and gained more than 227,000 retweets and 75,000 replies from users all over the world. His students, who are probably a little too young for their own social media accounts, learned a lot that week about the power of social media.

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Of course using something like IFTTT you can convert this RSS feed into a different format if you prefer: send the feeds to a read-it-later service or a Google Sheet, for example. The beauty of the RSS format is you can queue up all of your web search hits in the background and then check in on them when you’ve got the time.

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Social media marketing plans can decide the future of a business and a brand. As the technologies advance, the boundary between social media marketing and mainstream marketing is becoming more blurred than ever. Chalking out a social media plan is no easy task for a first timer, but getting a few tips from the pros certainly helps. Very simply put, every social action must culminate to a larger social media marketing strategy. People, their likes, shares, replies, and posts should all be a part of a larger plan that generates leads, drives sales, or contributes in other ways to a business goal.

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Qu Toutiao, which means Fun Headlines in Chinese, is reportedly making its own fun headlines these days, telling sources that it is eyeing an initial public offering that could value it as high as $3 billion.

If successful, it would be an extraordinary valuation for a company, a news and video aggregation mobile app popular in mostly rural areas of China, that was launched less than 2 years ago. The company is considering an IPO in New York as soon as early this year, people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg News.

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Facebook announced a new initiative today aimed at improving its policies and the role its platform plays in elections. The company acknowledged that it was slow to respond to election interference efforts that took place on its site and says it wants to learn more about social medias role in elections around the world. To do that, it's putting together a group of researchers that will then develop a research plan, get proposals for projects that address issues defined in its plan and manage a peer review process that will determine who will receive funding and access to Facebook data for their research.

The commission of experts will initially work for one year and Facebook says membership will be determined soon.

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The next money-maker could be this tool for connecting marketers to social media creators so they can team up on sponsored-content Facebook  ad campaigns. The Branded Content Matching search engine lets advertisers select the biographical characteristics of creators fans they want to reach, see stats about these audiences, and contact them to hammer out deals.

Leaked screenshots of Facebook’s promotional materials for the tool were first attained and published in German by AllFacebook.de.

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In 2015-16, roughly four-in-ten adults across the emerging nations surveyed by Pew said they used social networking sites, and as of 2017, a majority (53%) use social media. Whereas, over the same period, social media use has generally been flat in many of the advanced economies surveyed.

Internet use and smartphone ownership have also stayed level in developed markets over the same period vs rising in emerging economies.

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