Widget Web Expo – More Widgets Than You Can Shake a Stick At

Widget ninjas and influential minds from all over the world converged on the New York Mariott for a two day symposium on the most effective form of social marketing. They discussed the future of what some believe will be a 36 billion dollar yearly industry.

Marketing media gurus like Josh Bernoff of Forrester Research and Ivan Pope (the “father” of the modern widget) also spoke about other topics, such as long term strategy and setting realistic campaign goals. Key topics included widget standards, cross domain functionality and the value of open social to name just a few.

Jodi McDermott of Clearspring addressed a crowd of expert online marketing professionals about web analytics and how Clearspring is forging new ground, making it easier than ever before to deploy a thoughtful, measurable widget strategy. Jodi also pointed out a simple but effective point. “Keep the end in mind” she says. Don’t ever start a campaign without having a clearly defined set of achievable goals.

Linda Boland of ComScore gave her audience her professional insight on tracking widgets in the wild and effectively portrayed a deep insight into the life of a widget once it is released correctly. Linda gave us a high level view of widget migratory pasterns that go “viral” and shared her insight of the viral loop.

Notable companies like Clearspring, MuseStorm, Sproutbuilder, MindCandy, Nokia, Motorola, Plusmo, Newsgator, Platform-A, Mixercast, Splashcast and Perfspot spoke in open forum discussions and private meetings about the future of online and mobile marketing.

A concentrated group of companies that are leading the charge against static banners and stale advertising tactics gathered to talk about the widget; a small thing that is changing the advertising world as we know it. Outside the box engineers and creative thinkers like Khris Loux and Chris Saad enlightened us to the tomorrow of data portability and Open Standards. Patrick Sexton of SEOish who came to the second day admittedly hung over and still delivered a presentation that rocked the foundations of what we thought the rules were. Patrick taught us new ways to enhance our SEO strategy. He also reminded us of an important point that I feel should be mentioned here. Brands: take controll of the conversation or you will have others doing it for you. Take a stance with your brand and continue the conversation in social media on your own terms with atainable goals and the appropriate degree of prudence. Don’t let your affiliate marketers define your brand for you.

Who knows what the future of online marketing will be or the eventual outcome of the social media frenzy? The pioneers and engineers of rich and engaging advertising online and the early widget brand adopters have an idea. The widget will inextricably change every experience we have online.

PerfSpot is happy to embrace the future of the web and it was a pleasure to meet the best and brightest artists of the code and widget. Thanks to all that participated. We look forward to continuing to socialize, discover and create with you!

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!