Widgets for Business
Does your company site or blog need a widget? Small Biz Tech Girl explains using widgets for your company.
Aliza Sherman
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Widgets for Business
Hi there, The Digital Marketer here, ready to help you put the power of the Internet and technology to work for your business.
Today I want to talk about widgets. What’s a widget, and how can you use one?
I can’t believe that the term “widget” finally means something and is not just a stand-in word for thing-a-ma-jigger. In the most basic terms, a widget consists of code that you can embed into your web site or blog that pulls content from another source dynamically and presents it on your site like a small badge or micro-mini site-within-a-site. Hmmmm…well, why would you want a widet on your site or blog?
How Widgets Are Useful
Widgets can serve a number of purposes:
- They add content to your site or blog from other sources. The more valuable or interesting content you have on your site or blog, the more people return to read it. Widgets feed fresh content to your site beyond what you update on your own.
- They can pull your content into your site or blog from other places where you publish. If you publish content in more than one place on the Web, a widget can aggregate or bring it all together into one place.
- They can be a compact distribution method for embedding your content onto someone else’s site. Space on blogs and Web site pages is always at a premium. Widgets pack a lot of content into a very small space.
One popular widget is the Twitter Badge where you can embed a small colored box graphic into your site or blog, and the widget code pulls your most recent postings from your Twitter page. The widget also has a link to your Twitter page so people can follow you and tiny arrows so readers can scroll through past Twitter posts called Tweets.
The Lijit widget at L-i-j-i-t.com both aggregates content and provides traffic statistics. Lijit links to all of your Web-based content across blogs and social networks and places them into a single tidy widget box. It also provides you with password-protected site statistics, measuring traffic on your site or blog and presenting them for you in an easy-to-understand graphical format.
If you want to create your own widget, there are Web-based tools that help you convert your blog, your Web site, or other content you produce in Flash, HTML or Javascript into the code that makes up a widget. A service like WidgetBox at W-I-D-G-E-T-B-O-X.com allows you to create these micro-versions of the content you’ve produced and allows other people to embed your widget into their sites. Developing and distributing your own widget is a creative way to place your brand on other sites and draw more traffic to your own site. Even Google has gotten into the widget act with Google Gadgets.
And if you listened to my other show about RSS feeds, you’ll know how important they are to capturing your audience and boosting your site or blog traffic. You can use an application such as Wigitize at W-I-G-I-T-I-Z-E.com to make a widget out of your RSS feed.
Not every site or blog needs a widget; however, because they’re so compact, there really is no reason not to have at least one if it can add value to what you currently publish, brand your company across the Web or drive more traffic to your site. So my advice to you is: Widgetize!
That’s all we have time for today. Visit the show’s website at digitalmarketer.quickanddirtytips.com for links to all of the sites mentioned in the show. If you’d like to ask a question or request a topic for The Digital Marketer, email me at digitalmarketer@quickanddirtytips.comcreate new email.
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RESOURCES
Twitter – Visit Website Twitter
Lijit – Visit Website Lijit
Google Gadgets – Visit Website Google Gadgets
Widgetbox – Visit Website Widgetbox
Wigitize – Visit Website wigitize
Apps image courtesy of Shutterstock