The amazing strengths of tiny tools: using widgets in social marketing

If you're doing business online, you may have noticed there's been a slew of articles produced recently about tapping into social networking sites. A presence on sites such as Facebook and MySpace can be effective in sparking interest in your product or service, and ultimately have a positive effect on sales.

Many small business owners erroneously believe that marketing campaigns on these Web sites fail to produce measurable results. The biggest hurdle: the territory is relatively new vs. traditional marketing avenues. Since social media marketing is still in its infancy, the most common reason for failure is that most marketing ‘experts’ are inexperienced in connecting with these audiences.

Compete.com published this list of the top 25 social networks by traffic in February 2008.

Rather than pushing ads, the key is to reach out and interact with the community on a regular basis. Simple exposure will reinforce branding. Regular visitors returning to your site over and over will become more familiar with who you are and what you have to offer — promoting a sense of trust. This communication process creates a fertile environment with a receptive audience.

With the groundwork established, you’ll want to be sure the path is clear to your goods and services. Special offers and product visibility are important considerations.

So, what's a widget and how can
a widget help with online marketing??

Here's an excellent definition of widgets:

"Widgets are small applications that provide functionality and content online, distributed through a potentially limitless number of websites. They also represent an entirely new way of looking at advertising. Unlike almost all other online ads, widgets are uploaded onto sites (personal sites, profile pages, blogs) by consumers themselves. They are pulled by their audience, instead of pushed by marketers. And the publishers (largely personal publishers) who upload them are far more than affiliates: owing to these publishers’ personal dynamic and voice, they become advocates for the marketers whose widgets they help distribute. Widget Marketing is exciting because it allows advertisers to swim with the current, not against it. Now advertisers can be invited into conversations they might not otherwise have access to. It means a whole new way of thinking about marketing, but one that marketers will have to move towards if they want to continue connecting with their customers."

How to find a widget you can use...

Widgets for eBay Sellers:

For those who sell on eBay, you may have noticed a message that now shows up during the listing process, inviting you to place your listings on Facebook.

----- Here's what eBay has to say about using the Facebook widget -----

Sharing Your Items with Other Websites

Sharing your eBay items for sale with social networking sites and your community of friends on those sites is free and a powerful way to drive traffic to your eBay items for sale. To purchase one of your items, your friends can click the listing link and then view the item on eBay.

eBay doesn’t charge a fee for this service.

All selling formats are supported for sharing listings. However, if you want your online friends to buy your shared items, you’ll need to offer one of these payment options:

* Buy It Now
* Fixed Price

Important: It’s still okay to offer auction-style bidding on your items. But your online friends aren’t allowed to bid. That’s because eBay’s shill bidding policy doesn’t allow anyone who has more access to your item information than the general eBay Community to place bids.

We recommend that you block bids from their eBay accounts. They can buy your items through methods that don't involve bidding, such as Buy It Now.

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Although not as easy to find, there are other site widgets eBay makes available which you can use to display your eBay listings on MySpace, a blog, or any 3rd party Web site.

Check out the various formats here:

http://togo.ebay.com

Lots of opportunity for creative marketing!

Flickr also has a neat slideshow feature that allows you to place a tiny mix of photos from a Flickr photo set onto the sidebar of any other Web site. This simple tool can integrate product photos (or company-sponsored event photos, happy customer photos, etc.) into a neat visual package that will fit compactly onto the sidebar of your Web site. Something like this can be used to generate interest in visitors who will want to get to know you (or your company) better and find out more about what you have to offer.