There are literally thousands of Social Media widgets popping up daily. For business, some are better than others. The following 5 widgets I have successfully implemented for clients who have not built a full community. I would however be remiss if I did not mention that the future of enterprise platform providers will be their ability to seamlessly integrate widgets into their platform. Something to keep in mind!
With that-here are the five:
JS-Kit Echo – A commenting tool that can be also used a Testimonial solution. Look how Authority Domains used it here. As you can see, it fits seamlessly into any existing website and looks and feels like it belongs.- Share This– I have blogged extensively about this widget. Why every indexing page of every website is not using this is beyond me! Even if it is an old fashioned push website, this tool is easy to plug in and makes the content of that page something that can be emailed, IM’d, and put into all the major Social Media channels. Many of those channels are “do follow” by Google, which means link juice and organic rankings for that page.
- FriendFeed – Create a Friendfeed page and add in all of your “Social” usernames and password. Friendfeed will document and display all of your social acitivities in an easy to follow display. This give the end user the ability to follow all of your travels in an easy to use navigation. This is an important add-on for bloggers.
Here is a great example of a client using it effectively. - Tweetizen– A couple months back I made mention of Tweetizen. It is a way to post a Twitter group (based on keywords) within any website. If you know CSS you can edit the colors and size to fit your web presence. Although something far more powerful could be already created. Today it was announced that the Delicious creator quietly launched Threaded Twitter Conversations.. http://twit.ac/Tt_V Something to keep an eye on.
- Feedzilla RSS– Having pertinent industry news makes your community, blog or website sticky. It makes your web presence a destination to return to more regularly. It will also give you insight into the latest news so you can blog or offer your opinion real time. You can also add a video Feedzilla widget.
Below is a list of widgets your organization can utilize today. But the five above are ones that I feel are must haves for any business web presence. Please comment and add any other widgets you have successfully utilized.
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August 11th, 2009 at 11:59 pm
Good summary of social media widgets. Can you point to some good readings on the role of social media in business and how it can add value?
Thx Ali.
August 12th, 2009 at 12:43 am
Thanks for the advice! I am new to this whole social marketing and need help with the RSS thing. Any advice is great.
August 12th, 2009 at 3:29 am
It is always interesting to see the different widgets that people are using. I saw a new one that I am about to try (it’s still in beta) that seems like a good solution. Then I’ll be changing 3 months down the road. 3 months seems to be as long as any client makes it before they find something new – something that looks more cool.
August 12th, 2009 at 4:53 pm
Ali, scroll though the previous posts of my blog. Most of what I speak to is the ROI of Social Media. If you want to talk further call me at 978-973-1655 or email me at derek@authoritydomains.com and set up a time to chat further.
Doug, Use http://www.netvibes.com to organize your RSS feeds. If you want a one hour tutorial I can be hired to set it up for you and show you how to use it and how to find and plug in RSS feeds. If you are looking to put in news feeds I am happy to also help you set up the widget with the external sites that are of interest.
McLaughlin- Agreed! The widgets I posted here have have a good shelf life with my clients. I suspect Share This is here for quite some time. But your right, there are new cool ones everyday. I try to keep up on them and will do a quarterly update on the good ones. Thx for the idea. 🙂
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August 20th, 2009 at 2:03 am
I agree that Share This is a great widget.
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January 20th, 2010 at 12:57 pm
Great advice, I’ve upped my PR and visits almost double in a month using a variety of social media widgets. Thanks again.
October 8th, 2010 at 11:59 pm
Quite edifying….shared it with several people.