Digital Digest: Fly With #NewTwitter

Digital Digest: What Edelman Canada is reading in digital marketing, technology and strategy. Fresh links served up Fridays.

On Thursday Twitter announced a major update to its product, and launched brand pages with a select group of 21 companies, charities and individuals. This isn’t the first time the world’s third largest social network has announced an evolving mission: it’s tagline has been updated three times since 2006 (“What’s happening?”) through last week (“Follow your interests”) and today (“Yours to discover”). But the move shows a substantial change in mentality at Twitter, driven by CEO Dick Costolo who wants Twitter to “make A LOT of money” by trading access to its audience for brand dollars, as Facebook has been doing for years and news media did before them.

So how can PR professionals and marketers work with Twitter’s new tools to run more successful programs online? This week’s edition of Edelman Canada’s Digital Digest presents six links to help you fly with #NewTwitter, including three views from Twitter and three views from third parties on the implications for marketing and communications.

New Look and Feel

The changes that will be most noticeable for Twitter users are the updates to the web interface, which sort tweets and followers into four new tabs. The refreshed look emphasizes the role of “serendipity” on Twitter, introducing new ways for users to discover stories that matter to them, and promises “a faster, simpler way to stay close to everything you care about.”

Twitter: Yours to discover

Twitter Tries to Simplify Its Service

In this New York Times interview, Twitter co-founder and chairman Jack Dorsey says that the goal of the redesign is to counter the “perception that it is difficult to use.” New tabs are designed to counterbalance the sometimes obscure symbols and abbreviations (@, #, RT) that can drive new users away from the platform. The new design “will encourage people to spend more time on the site,” said Dorsey. Good news for communicators looking to make an impression with online stakeholders and customers.

New York Times: Twitter Tries to Simplify Its Service

Introducing Twitter Brand Pages

Brand pages, long a part of Facebook and recently introduced on Google+, promise a larger header image and some tools to feature your most important and media-rich tweets at the top of your page. A number of features coordinate with Twitter’s advertising platform, promising resonance between paid and owned media campaigns. Twitter is publically testing the new brand pages with 21 companies, charities and individuals, including American and Canadian Edelman clients such as BestBuy, Chevrolet, American Express, Microsoft, General Electric, American Express, HP and Pepsi, and will invite “a wider audience of brands in the coming months.”

Twitter Advertising Blog: Let your brand take flight on Twitter with enhanced profile pages

New Tweets and Buttons

Along with all the updates to www.twitter.com, the Twitter team also launched new features to help bring Twitter sharing to your website. There are now new ways to embed tweets in a blog post and new buttons to encourage website visitors to share with a hashtag or @username.

Twitter Developer Blog: New Tweets and Buttons

Twitter Launches Brand Pages for Marketers

In this interview with AdAge, Twitter Chief Revenue Officer Adam Bain says that brand pages will provide a way for organizations on Twitter to make their content stand out better. A separate tab for @replies that will help customer-service oriented companies avoid diluting their messages, as well as new ways to feature content at the top of your page, will encourage consumers to “spend more time or get deeper in terms of engagement,” says Bain.

AdAge: Twitter Launches Brand Pages for Marketers

So, what’s the best platform for you?

With three of the most prominent social networks now offering competing products to brands, what’s the best platform for marketers and communicators to focus on? CNET takes a look at the pros and cons of Twitter, Facebook and Google+ brand pages, to help you choose the right platform for you.

CNET: Twitter, Facebook, Google+: Three-way brand page shootout

Edelman Canada’s Digital Digest is a weekly bundle of links, served up on Edelman Canada’s Our Ideas blog on Fridays. It’s also available by 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. Let’s get a conversation going.

Digital Digest is edited by Matthew Hayles.