Posted by Digital Digest: The Coming Facebook Redesign
Digital Digest: What Edelman Canada is reading in digital marketing, technology and strategy.
Digital Digest is a weekly bundle of six links, served up on Edelman Canada’s Our Ideas blog, sually served up on Fridays but today we’re delivering a special pre-Canada Day edition. It’s also available as a weekly email. If you know someone who would like to be added to the mailing list, have any questions or just want to share some thoughts on anything you read here, email me.
Google Analytics Now Tracks Social Sharing Buttons
Google Analytics just added features to report on the effectiveness of social buttons like “Tweet this,” “Like this” and Google’s own “+1.” With the addition of a few lines of JavaScript, webmasters can see what pages were engaging enough for visitors to tweet, like or, well you get the picture.
RunKeeper Opens its Health and Fitness Community
RunKeeper, an app that helps you improve your workout routine, is opening its data to third-party developers. Developers will be able to access RunKeeper’s “HealthGraph” to empower users to share their fitness accomplishments with their friends.
Facebook Is Quietly Testing First Major Redesign in Over a Year
Mark Zuckerberg is courting Faceback (your editor’s word for users’ angry reaction when Facebook changes anything) again. The Atlantic reports that the social network is preparing to launch a redesign that will make ads more prominent. Improved exposure is good news for marketers, but Facebook is expected to increase prices for ad units as well.
Don’t do it, Zuck! Save yourself!
Bonus: Twitter may add more than timeline ads.
Iterative Branding
How brands communicate is as important as what they say. Method’s Marc Shillum argues that a company’s identity is a constant dialogue among the company, its own workforce, and the customers who extract value from the product. ”[T]he interface through which a brand is accessed has become a primary identity element. This requires that a brand’s “identity” should not only be defined statically or dynamically but also iteratively through successive release and behaviorally through interactions.”
The medium is the messaging. Too obvious?
Infographic: What Makes People Want to Follow a Brand?
Research by Get Satisfaction looks at why consumers engage with companies and products online, giving marketers new tools for creating positive customer experiences.
Why, could special offers be a motivation?
Google+: A targeted response to Facebook’s shotgun approach
You may not have heard, but Google launched a social network this week to take on Facebook. With Google+, the company will enable users to create private “circles” of friends, family and colleagues. GigaoOm explains why Google’s second attempt to tap the social graph (after the underwhelming and controversial Buzz) may actually be a gamechanger.
Can Google Out-Facebook Facebook?
Digital digest is curated by Matthew Hayles. Follow me on Twitter: @midnighthaircut.