A couple of weeks ago, I was a guest blogger for the Elance community blog, known as the "Water Cooler" (a great resource, by the way) They came to us asking for a "Widgets 101" post - all about what a widget is, how it is used, and why they matter in the online space, particularly as it pertains to small businesses.
We obviously get tons of questions here that make it clear that while we all know widgets inside and out, they are still just starting to break through the noise in the general population. To that end, I thought it would be helpful to reprint that post here, as I'm sure many of you have the same questions. It is a long post, but (hopefully!) a helpful one. Enjoy!
What’s a Widget Anyway?
Widgets have certainly become a hot topic these days – and for
good reason. They’re expected to break the web wide open. Despite the
pervasiveness of widget talk in the press and blogosphere, there is
still a lot of confusion about what a widget is in the first place.
Adding to this confusion is the fact that there are many different
types of widgets out there. So before we dive into what a widget can do
for you, let’s define what a widget means in the context of Web 2.0:
A dynamic bit of bite-sized web content that is
portable, allowing anyone to personalize their web experience exactly
how they want it to be.
You may have also heard people talk about Gadgets (particularly in the
context of Google), and Apps (particularly in the context of Facebook).
Widgets, Gadgets, Apps, etc. – these are all essentially web widgets,
as they all adhere to that definition of dynamic, portable, and
bite-sized. These three characteristics are what differentiate widgets
from banner ads, modules, and web pages, respectively.
Where Can Widgets Go?
Now that we’ve defined a widget as a dynamic, portable, bite-sized
piece of web content, let’s talk about where widgets are used.
Basically, web widgets can be used anywhere HTML code can be inserted.
The most popular places that widgets find homes are inside social
networking profiles (like Facebook or MySpace), blog sidebars and
posts, start pages (like iGoogle, or Netvibes), and personal or small
business websites. Essentially, if you are a web page owner of any
kind, you can use widgets. Below are some examples of the types of
widgets that tend to be used in the various places. Once you know what
you want your widgets to do for you, you can tailor the types of
widgets you create for one or more of these demographics.
Social networkers love to use widgets to express themselves and their
online identity – some people call this “bling.” These widget users are
building out their profile pages as giant billboards promoting
themselves. Widgets such as glitter text and cyber-pets are very popular among these users.
Bloggers are a bit more into utility, and prefer widgets that give
their readers important information, like site visit counters and
weather widgets. Bloggers also love Widgetbox’s blidget
tool (yup, that’s “blog+widget”), which allows anyone with an RSS feed
to quickly and easily make a widget out of it. We’ll talk more about
blidgets in a bit, as they are a great way to market you or your
business.
Start page widgets are even more personal. I have a Netvibes page
filled with all the blidgets I read on a daily basis (Mashable,
TechCrunch, and Read/Write Web, to name a few). I check it often
throughout the day to see what interesting news is popping up. If I
want to read more, I can click through to the website. Start page
widgets have a 1:1 owner/viewer ratio, which makes them inherently
pretty different (and less viral) from the rest of the widgetsphere,
where you have a 1:Many owner/viewer ratio.
Widgets as Lean and Mean Marketing Tools
What does all this mean for you and your business? Well, first it means
you need to clearly define whom your customers are and whom you want to
attract. Are you looking to make inroads with a particular demographic?
Second, the key in any widget strategy is that while a widget can act
as an advertisement for you, a widget is not, and should not be, an ad.
Let me say that again – a widget is not an ad. Widgets are 100% user
driven. You can’t force someone to take your widget and put it on his
or her web page the way you can guarantee views of an ad. In order to
entice people to subscribe to your widget, it has to be compelling.
When you have a compelling, dynamic widget that speaks to the right
demographic, your widget will do most of the work for you. A clickable
ad just can’t compete with a super cool and useful widget (and sheer
entertainment can be useful, by the way).
Herein lies the power of widgets as a marketing tool. When someone gets
your widget, it is a statement of intent, and often of interest and
loyalty. By definition, because widget use goes far beyond viewing (or
ignoring) a banner ad on a page, widgets have the power to engage your
customers outside of your website in ways never before imaginable. Stop
and think about the possibilities of this for a moment. Your online
effectiveness no longer has to be intimately tied to your website
and/or your keyword spend only. By using a widget, you can be set your
content free to roam around on the web and help you find customers you
could never reach otherwise. Add to this some fancy, individualized
widget SEO, provided by the Widgetbox crew, and you can really drive
some new business your way.
A Small Business Example
Andrews McNeel Publishing (AMP) is a publishing house dedicated to
general nonfiction trade books, gift books and humor books. They
publish about 300 titles per year. One of their popular categories is
cookbooks, and in January of this year, they took an RSS feed of
recipes from their cookbooks and made a widget
out of it. This widget drove over 100 subscriptions from all over the
web. But this was just the beginning. They then made a blidget from the
popular book, Things Cooks Love, and a video widget from their new
book, Dear Mom: Thank You for Everything (just in time for Mothers’
Day). AMP published these widgets at the end of March, and applying
some lessons learned from their first widget, they took a few extra
steps this time around. First, they used the Widgetbox viral installer,
which allows their users to grab their widgets quickly and easily from
their own site – you can check out their widgets and “get widget”
buttons on their homepage. They also used our App Accelerators to make
full, standalone apps on Facebook and Bebo. These widgets now have over
300 and 350 subscriptions, respectfully, in just over two weeks –
again, from all over the Internet.
The important thing to note is that your company can be any size. You
can be the Gap, or a small independent publishing house; no matter your
size, widgets can help you market your business and get you incremental
traffic towards realizing your online goals.
Making Widgets is Easy
Creating a widget is easier than you think. Here are a few options:
- Got feeds? Make blidgets! Blidgets are a great way to make
widgets with a couple of clicks and less than a minute. You can
customize your blidgets and set defaults. Use our viral installer and
watch your content spread!- You can also make widgets out
of any flash file, create one from HTML (using our HTML editor),
widgetize remote HTML (using our “web page” option), or import any
Google gadget from the XML feed. Widgetbox offers lots of options. You
can also check out someone like Sprout who has some cool flash widget building tools.- If you need more detailed and technical widget development, the other option is, of course, hiring someone to do it for you.