Ü Oughta Know is a combination of digital crib notes and marketers’ cheat sheet, bringing you important – and occasionally weird — stories and trends from digital marketing news.
Each week our hope is to help keep your knowledge sharp while providing a delightful craving of classic Alanis Morissette. Here’s what you oughta know:
OK, we get it. When Twitter grows up, it wants to be Facebook. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing say some analysts – and by some analysts, I mean people who get quoted by sites like Mashable, The Verge and Wired. They suggest that it’s a way to make Twitter more mainstream. And that’s important when you play with the grownups and your stock is trading on the New York Stock Exchange as Twitter’s now is. When that happens, you need to monetize things a bit – and to do that you might need to do a little mainstreaming.
But I know what you’re asking: What’s it mean to marketers? Alex Charalambous of circlestudio.com was kind enough to explain:
“…the new design may help with engagement as the popular tweets will have larger text. So if your firm has a tweet that starts gaining popularity, it could create a domino effect and go viral faster than in the past.”
Color me meh. I’ll believe it when I see it.
But as social media grows into ‘tweenhood,’ each network is looking at what’s working on other networks and in the hope of getting a piece of the big success pie, is borrowing a bit here and there to boost its own standing. Twitter wants to look like Facebook; Pinterest has added a search that might 
out-Google Google. LinkedIn introduced sponsored updates that are an awful lot like Facebook’s sponsored stories – which have been dropped. Every social media network wants to be like other social media networks. Pretty soon they all combine into one big social network and it will probably be called MySpace.
Justin Timberlake’s looking pretty clever now, isn’t he?
important blog post.”
Think photo, context and call to action – stuff that should drive the traffic to your site. But not just any traffic; relevant traffic. That means people who are actually candidates for buying what you sell; possibly even people who will tell others about it. These people are the human equivalent of Willy Wonka’s golden ticket: You can’t find them everywhere, but when you do find one, it’s gold.
Twitter says in its blog that the Website cards were tested with a few brands and results included decreases in cost-per-click; higher engagement rates; and an increase in URL clicks. What’s not to like?
Contacted by The Next Web, a Twitter spokesman said significant notifications is, “This is a new feature that is currently available to verified users,” but didn’t share any more details.
BTW: Twitter quietly tried out a “share” button to replace the “retweet” function a couple of weeks ago, but quickly pulled it. Really, is nothing sacred?
All a-Twitter
Twitter’s been busy over the past couple of weeks: The number of changes and tweaks we saw were almost Facebook-like. And speaking of Facebook-like … “Twitter Rolls Out Its Facebook-Like Profile Redesign,” Mashable’s recent headline read recently. “Twitter redesign looks a lot like Facebook,” said The Verge. Even Wired weighed in with “The Reason Twitter Wants to Look Like Facebook: Your Parents.”
OK, we get it. When Twitter grows up, it wants to be Facebook. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing say some analysts – and by some analysts, I mean people who get quoted by sites like Mashable, The Verge and Wired. They suggest that it’s a way to make Twitter more mainstream. And that’s important when you play with the grownups and your stock is trading on the New York Stock Exchange as Twitter’s now is. When that happens, you need to monetize things a bit – and to do that you might need to do a little mainstreaming.
But I know what you’re asking: What’s it mean to marketers? Alex Charalambous of circlestudio.com was kind enough to explain:
“…the new design may help with engagement as the popular tweets will have larger text. So if your firm has a tweet that starts gaining popularity, it could create a domino effect and go viral faster than in the past.”
Color me meh. I’ll believe it when I see it.
But as social media grows into ‘tweenhood,’ each network is looking at what’s working on other networks and in the hope of getting a piece of the big success pie, is borrowing a bit here and there to boost its own standing. Twitter wants to look like Facebook; Pinterest has added a search that might out-Google Google. LinkedIn introduced sponsored updates that are an awful lot like Facebook’s sponsored stories – which have been dropped. Every social media network wants to be like other social media networks. Pretty soon they all combine into one big social network and it will probably be called MySpace.
Justin Timberlake’s looking pretty clever now, isn’t he?
Website cards
More interesting for marketers is a new feature: Twitter’s ads that preview a company’s website. The Website Card is described by Twitter as: “a new way for advertisers to easily surface website content within a Tweet and drive relevant traffic to any page of their site, such as their home page, product page, or animportant blog post.”
Think photo, context and call to action – stuff that should drive the traffic to your site. But not just any traffic; relevant traffic. That means people who are actually candidates for buying what you sell; possibly even people who will tell others about it. These people are the human equivalent of Willy Wonka’s golden ticket: You can’t find them everywhere, but when you do find one, it’s gold.
Twitter says in its blog that the Website cards were tested with a few brands and results included decreases in cost-per-click; higher engagement rates; and an increase in URL clicks. What’s not to like?
Significant notifications
Currently in iOS testing, Twitter’s “significant engagement” feature will highlight “Important or higher than usual engagement with your account or Tweets.” A couple of people at The Next Web got the feature. Here’s what it looks like: The feature can be turned on and from within your settings. According to the Next Web, if switched on, the alert you get will look something like this:
Contacted by The Next Web, a Twitter spokesman said significant notifications is, “This is a new feature that is currently available to verified users,” but didn’t share any more details.
BTW: Twitter quietly tried out a “share” button to replace the “retweet” function a couple of weeks ago, but quickly pulled it. Really, is nothing sacred?