The one thing that I know about widgets is that many of them depend on consumer adoption to succeed. We're not talking about those kinds of widgets today. We're talking about enterprise widgets, and ad networks and analytics brands have been using them for a few years now. The question that you have to address for your company this: "What's the role of enterprise widgets for our brand?"
But you might not have a really solid idea of what an enterprise widget is.
What defines a widget?
- It's something that occupies a small area on a web page or blog - usually smaller than your hand.
- It's made up of a portable chunk of code that can be installed or cut-and-pasted within an existing HTML page.
- It executes on information that usually comes from outside of the page that it's hosted on, but can also leverage on-page information (think Gmail or Yahoo Mail ads)
Sometimes widgets are known by other names: gadget, badge, or module. I know of three companies that allow you to make entire web pages out of widgets: Pageflakes, Netvibes and yourMinis.
Let's start with one you may know of: Google's Adsense product.
It's a widget, and one that tries to be contextually relevant by showing you ads based on what you've written in an email or the particular web page that you happen to be on.
Let's dive a little deeper look at a few of the ways that enterprise brands have tried engaging in social media by using widgets. This first example is pictured above. The Discovery Channel (Discovery Communications) partnered with LaunchSquad client Newsgator last June to make a widget to promote the 20th anniversary of their Shark Week show. (By the way, I'm not linking to this because it's a LaunchSquad client - I'm linking to this because it's high-quality social media). The widget was really only a part of a multi-pronged social media initiative including blogs, games, quizzes, virtual dives and other really engaging content. If you spend a little time on this site, I don't think you'll feel like eating shark any time soon. It's pretty cool stuff, and fun.
There are a few reasons the Shark Week widget rocked so hard:
- It allowed end-users to share their interest in shark content
- It looked cool and was lightly branded to match the rest of the Shark Week content
- It was viral in nature due to the GET THIS WIDGET link on the bottom of the widget
- It addressed the spectrum of engagement - non-bloggers (99% of the population) could pop in their iGoogle page or on their Facebook profiles while bloggers who actually could cut and paste code could take it right from the widget itself and be creative with it
Let's look at a less flashy, but more widely distributed widget approach. SAP has been experimenting with this stuff for over a year, and now have a very active widget forum. It's a virtual clearinghouse for SAP widgets and plenty of others (Mac OS X, Windows Vista). From what I can tell, it's a very polite and helpful place, and very business-focused.
SAP's view on widgets is that they're "helper applications" that ideally monitor a larger application without the user having to actually launch the whole darn thing. But if you think about it, that's exactly what the Shark Week widget is doing. If a given Shark Week viewer is going to visit their Facebook profile daily, but only going to check out the Shark Week website, say, once a month, they are using the Shark Week widget as a helper application and a substitute for the Shark Week site. The application's goals are pretty simple:
- Show people that I like sharks
- Tell me what time the shark show is on and if I've seen that episode yet
- Put cool pictures of sharks on my web page or blog
Sure, this is a far cry from a CRM widget that would tell you how many crates of baby food shipped out yesterday, but you get the picture of the functions that an enterprise widget fulfills - it displays engaging or necessary information to your stakeholders.
Here are reasons that widgets should be a part of your social media strategy toolset:
- Your brand might have stakeholders who work at so fast of a pace that they may not have time for long engagements with big applications. That includes even visiting your web page.
- Widgets boil down complicated messes of information down into simpler, bite-size chunks. When you say, "Give me the ten-second version," what you really mean is "Give me the widget."
- Widgets allow your users to choose where they want to see your brand and gives them the choice to opt-in. Giving them control ultimately leads to more trust in your brand.
- If designed correctly, pass-along can be done easily.
If you care to read the history lesson on widgets, click on the SAP blog posting listed above. My job is to help you figure out how much of this matters now, and how much time and money you should spending on it.
http://metzmash.typepad.com/folderone/2007/10/ente...