We innovate everyday. It creates hype, turns into a fast spreading word of mouth and tomorrow it’s just a past. We always want to add something new, a ‘zing’ to our lives. And so do the advertisers. When click, lead generation and all have killed visitors with boredom till death, widget has come forward as a new innovation and a great tool to advertise brands. This is surely a great way to build brand equity.
Now the question is what is this much talked about ‘widget’? It gives impression of some techy gadget. And yes it is. You must have heard of web gadgets, badges, web modules, snippets or capsules. Let me tell you something these are nothing but widgets.
Now let me be specific. Widget is a small Internet application that can be posted to a website or blog to serve a specific function. There are wide varieties of widgets and they serve different purposes. These are not only useful devices but also serve as a great source of entertainment.
Users can put up widgets on social networking sites like – Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, Piczo, Xanga by simply inserting the HTML codes. Another spot to add widgets is weblog. Online blog services like Blogger, WordPress, SixApart are places where such widgets are posted. Besides websites and blogs, one can also create own display widgets on customizable homepages. You can obtain desired website’s RSS feed, create ‘things to do’ widget, put up a calendar, play games, read news, keep a watch on the temperature, follow the stock market, enjoy scrolling wallpapers and many more. People simply download these, paste on their personal blogs and social networking sites. Hold on, not only these, they use them again and again and rather prefer to share with their pals. One can also adorn the desktop with these widgets. It adds appeal to the desktop.
Widget is an amazing way to promote business. Creative, innovative and unique widgets have opened doors for altogether new realm of advertising. If you can create innovative and useful widgets, bloggers and website developers would crave to post them on their sites. Thus it will be an advertising of your brand for free. What more can you ask for?
New-gen youths are literally drooling on these widgets, created by newbie young online ad creators only. These widgets are even beyond imagination. A handy game, calculator, sports news, fortune teller, calendar, quote of the day, jokes, digital clock, i-tune player, weather report, wallpaper slideshow, picture of the day, on-air radio, tv show, online dictionary, date and time display, email notifier, countdown timer, messenger, photo feed, virus alert, love quotes, alarm clock, world clock, currency converter, space news, online translator, search box, railway reservation status – what not, the list just goes on.
On screen, most of the widgets look like a small window. These can be stagnant, mobile, scrollers, pull downs, alert pop ups anything.
21st century’s brainchild fancy widgets offer advertisers distinctive advantages. Users download these widgets and tend to use them for long time. These tend to have longer visibility. And what’s most interesting is that the users do not keep these caring about the brand, but because they simply drool on its interactive feature and visual appeal. As a result, even without forcing hard the brand obtains maximum brand visibility and unknowingly occupies user’s top of the mind. Widgets turn out to be popular on their own. Users like them, download them, use them for long and push further to their friends. And in all these who turns out to be the winner? Indeed the brand and that too silently.
Widgets makers have successfully snatched away sleep of the web owners, by making the page views and traffic hits obsolete things. Widgets enable one to see typical feature of a webpage right on the desktop / blog, even without opening the actual website. What can be more convenient than this?
Widgets are the coolest online marketing gadgets today and a huge craze among the youngsters. And what’s interesting is that the brand spreads fast and silently, away from everyone’s notice.
