10 Tips on Social Marketing – Widgets and Applications

With all the buzz about Social Media Marketing, what are the core concepts and ideas that continue to separate successful campaigns from failures? What can a widget do for your strategy, and how does it differ from an application? Let’s answer these questions and start thinking about your Social Marketing Initiative.

Time/Sony Homepage Takeover Screenshot

It seems like everyone in online marketing is looking for the silver bullet. And while some say widgets are the answer, still others are of a mind that an application is the solution to their non-existent social media strategy. Let’s start there first. Even if your social media strategy is small, something is better than nothing. As long as you follow at least some of this good advice, you will achieve your social marketing objectives.

First, please consider your target audience. When sculpting your message and approach it is of the utmost importance to keep your audience in mind and to be consistent with your message. While creating your value added proposition keep in mind function and form. What does your target audience want and need? What can you give them that will encourage their brand loyalty to you? How can you engage them in an activity that benefits you while benefitting them? How will you present your message?

Here are the top 10 things to consider when forming your social media strategy:

o    Start somewhere – Something is better than nothing
o    Always consider your target audience first
o    Be consistent – This helps a lot with the next one
o    Be clear – Don’t confuse the user
o    Be Engaging – Bring something to the table that adds value
o    Widgets or Applications – Applications are viral and engaging, but generally exclusive to one platform while widgets are cross-platform
o    Keep it simple – Choose your content wisely
o    Decide what to do with Audience Voice – Who is being social for you?
o    Cross Promote – Are your TV commercials driving installs?
o    Change it up – Don’t let your message get stale

It’s really important to be clear in social media marketing. Don’t confuse the intended recipient of your message or you’ll loose them before they love you! Remember that a social media user likes to know what’s in it for them first. If you can build (or pay someone really good to build) a clever social media strategy you’ll be viral in a really great way and people will grab you. If I lost you with the Viral grabbing comment than please remember that if you succeed in doing this right, people will grab your message and share you with all their friends.

That brings me to the next section of this informative blog. Do you know that many people still ask me what if any difference there is between a widget and an application? Well, there are a few MAJOR differences I’ll point out that will help you to distinguish this for yourself. A widget is a small collection of branded content and value propositions (ie. Contests, form subs, games ect) that is intended to be grabbed and virally shared across multiple platforms, while an application is usually designed for just one platform or site.

The viral map of an application is also much different from that of the widget, because although the widget can and is often shared from one friend as a recommendation to another friend, the viral nature is far more engrained in the functionality of an application. This is part of what makes the application a perfect place to target an engaged audience and a widget the perfect way to promote a brand.

A widget is also something that we tend to use alone. It is a small promotional device that a user downloads to their page. It does one or two simple things very well. Simple.

How will you be engaging? Musicians use music videos and exclusive download content. The Motion Picture industry uses trailers and games, while news channels use rss feeds and polls. So next, let’s think about how we are going to engage your audience. Consider your brand and chose a value that makes sense for you. Again, the value is the reason that the user wants to keep your content on their page and should keep them coming back over and over again.

If you are marketing an application, marketing with banners on an application or distributing your own widget, please also keep in mind that even your most loyal fans don’t want to see the same thing over and over. Change up your content enough to keep the audience you’ve earned engaged over time. I strongly promote A-B multivariate testing for even the smallest social marketing initiatives. This is possibly the hardest concept to grasp for many new social media marketers but once you get it down you’ll find greater success when you change things up often and keep it interesting for your audience!

I always find it interesting to see how brands choose to respond to their audiences voice and how they choose to apply their own voice in social media. It’s almost always the conversation that goes a little like: “Yes, let’s hear what everyone has to say.” Then it kind of goes “Wow. People are talking to us. What should we say?”

Nobody wants to say the wrong thing, so this is where your social media representative needs to have a great idea of your business philosophy and know when to ask questions. With the right points covered they will know how to reply on your behalf. This should be a productive experience for you and a great way for you to monitor your campaigns overall sentiment. I encourage you to start your own enterprise profile on Perfspot or Facebook for your brand, or for the personalities that are important to your brand. Make some friends and open up the conversation slowly to get acclimated. Although some moderation is necessary for any social media plan you will be pleasantly surprised to find out that little is needed.

Lastly, cross-promote your social initiatives wherever possible. So if you have a huge contest for your widget, talk about it in your standard media placements like radio and T.V. This is a great opportunity for you to drive more social media traffic to your web page, contest or widget.

That’s it from the peanut gallery. Hopefully this is informative for those of you looking to learn, entertaining for those of you just browsing and reassuring to those of you already doing all of this! Feel free to leave your comments here or contact me directly about your social media marketing questions.

Oh the Wonders of Widgets: How to Make and Bake a Widget

Okay so there is a wealth of information out there about 2.0 and social media, but what does it really mean to the brand? What is a widget and where should you begin?

Well first thing is first. I hope to help those of you that are looking at social media as a tool to market your brand or biz find your way through Perfspots’ new application and widget functionality. http://www.perfspot.com/apps is the address of our newly launched application gallery and is probably the best way to kick off this conversation if you already have a rudimentary understanding of the Perfspot profile (or “Perflife”.) If you don’t have a profile and if you haven’t already been around the site enjoying the various features and functions then I strongly recommend you do so before continuing.

I will take this opportunity to tell you that a widget is basically a mini web page. Usually made in flash for this application, it is best known for doing one thing well. Some widgets tell the time. Some simply count down to an event. My favorite widgets though are the ones that let me click around and see videos, take polls, register to win a contest, update me about my favorite content and are entertaining. To give you an example; I have the Madonna widget installed on my profile because I am a fan and I think everyone that visits my profile should get to see just how cool her new video is. I also like the ESPN widget which keeps me up to date on my own terms with all the current events I should know about. You may also like the Techcrunch widget or the James Bond widget… You get the idea. (or if you need a little help you can visit my Perflife at http://www.perfspot.com/internationalsales where even my blog is a widget.)

Now lets talk about how to make a widget. If you aren’t a professional coder don’t worry. Tools are out there to make your life easier like Sproutbuilder.com and Wix.com to name a couple. For the more analytically inclined professional user you can register at Clearspring.com and look forward to the most advanced widget analytics on the planet (visit head of analytics Jodi Mcdermott’s blog here http://widgetanalytics.wordpress.com .) I also like the professional tool set that Musestorm offers advanced users. The functionality you include will be limited by your experience or your learning curve, but you should be able to spin out a nominally good widget within 20 minutes that is fully sharable on all of your favorite social networking sites.

How is the widget shared? How can I tap in to the viral loop? Let’s answer these questions next. Some widget companies such as Splashcast prefer to make their own sharing tool for reasons that mystify me, however most other widget designers use either the Clearspring “Launchpad” sharing tool or Gigyas’ “Wildfire” Sharing tool to help the social community members “grab” or install the widget to their own pages. So I’m a user and I see a widget that I want for my page right? I press “Grab it” on the widget and a list of icons and names come up on a small menu that allows me to choose where I would like to place my widget. Let’s just take Perfspot for example (imagine that). I enter my login information, choose whether I want my widget publicly displayed on my profile or privately placed on my “dashboard” where only I can see it. Then Voila, I have installed a cool new widget to my profile (which I check every day) and I can go play with it right away!

It’s not hard to suppose how a really good widget can go viral almost overnight this way. If a widget has a great perceived value for the users and starts building some momentum it gets something I like to call “Spin”. You can either buy spin or work really hard for it but the end result is basically the same. The only difference is that you don’t have to pay for popularity if you make something that the users really love. If you put a lot of hard work into making your widget popular you just might see the gold at the end of the widget rainbow. Depending on how high the adoption rate is and how fast it spreads you might just end up with hundreds of thousands of little billboards across social media we call widgets!

Adventures in Marketing – More comments from the peanut gallery

As a little background about Perfspot.com for those of you that may not know. The site is a social network based in Scottsdale Arizona and visited religiously by its members in more than 130 countries. The site was published in March of 2007 and has exploded. Experiencing 756% growth world wide and achieving a top Alexa rank of 66, Perfspot was the worlds fastest growing social media property in 2007. Perfspot now serves more than 7 million members and 30 million unique page-views monthly.

Please allow me to introduce myself. I am the Senior International Media Executive with Perfspot.com. We are a group of creative individuals comming together and working to make an exciting and engaging space online. Our goal is to create the “Perf” spot to hang with friends, discover new worlds and build your own.

I have the distinguished opportunity to receive a continuing education second to none in social media and the opportunity to aid marketing professionals to engaging their users and achieving campaign objectives with entertaining content. It is safe to say that I have a very fun and rewarding job.

The main stay of online marketing has been banner advertising and search for decades. Today’s advertising, however is forging new paths into more innovative outlets. Forays into viral video, widgets and social media marketing are becoming less experimental and more acceptable as they become more measurable. It is now common place for a socially accepted brand to have multiple business profiles with varrying levels of user interaction. Big business has even turned to social media for user generated comercials on radio and T.V.

Social networks like Perfspot are realising the true potential that exists for branding and a whole new kind of direct responce. The holy grail of marketing comes down to action, in social media we call it… engagement. Through new developments in technology, marketing online is becoming a truly amazing place; and best of all from a marketing perspective.. it’s measurable. Quantifiable results make honing in on the verticals, channels and sites that really make an impact on a campaign easier and faster than ever.