5 Tips for Using iGoogle Gadgets to Help Your Marketing Efforts

by Lyndi Lawson

I’ve reverted. Perhaps temporarily. Why? Because 5 tips just seems like the right number of tips to have. More seems superfluous. Less makes me feel like I’m cheating you out of my invaluable pearls of wisdom. Don’t scoff – you’ll hurt my delicate little feelings!

Anyway, my feelings aside, this week’s tips focus on Google gadgets. Asking what those are is not a crime – unless you’ve read the whole newsletter already and haven’t yet grasped the basics. Here’s the low down: Google Gadgets are essentially teensy weensy Webpages that (like any other) are written largely in Java, HTML, CSS or Flash. Like useful little pets they live on your iGoogle home page, on third party websites or on your Google desktop. The difference is that these little creatures don’t mess on your carpets, chew your skirting boards or wake the neighbours. In fact, usually they are designed to serve a specific (usually practical and useful) purpose.

You might be asking yourself, “What does this have to do with marketing?” Basically, if you are looking for a unique way to market yourselves online, then a Google gadget might be just the thing you’re looking for. And, the good news is that pretty much any tech savvy individual can build a Google gadget. What’s more, there are great benefits to using these spiffy little marketing tools. I don’t want to rabbit on about it but they can be an excellent link building opportunity and will drive traffic to your site. Gadgets also enable companies to build a useful tool and then attach their brand to it. This reaches a wide audience, provides an opportunity to appear on affiliate sites, and reaches people daily on their personalised home pages. What more could a marketer want, really? Yes, I rabbited. So sue me.

Along with benefits, there are also rules.
Well, not rules so much as best practices. These tips will not only help you use this tactic to your advantage, but it will also ensure that your gadgets get used by your target audience. So here they are:

1). Looks Do Count
Anyone who argues anything to the contrary is either lying or deluded. Sure, there are always ways around this universal truth, but in real life, pretty people get noticed with less effort. It sucks, but it is nonetheless true. And when it comes to prettiness, the attraction is not limited to other people either. If people didn’t like pretty things, the fashion industry would be non-existent, and commodities that rely on their aesthetic appeal would be redundant. On a smaller scale, it’s the same with gadgets. As with fashion, much of it does come down to personal taste, but there are always ways to maximise the chances that an individual will like the look of your gadget. A neat, appealing thumbnail is a good start. Easy to read text is crucial. And ensuring that your gadget doesn’t take up too much space and is a standard height also helps.

2). Focus on Honesty and Consistency
Often, when you’re building a brand, selling one idea to potential clients and then changing the terms to benefit you, is tempting. Don’t do it. It’s not polite. Users who add your gadget expect you not to change the gadget suddenly, or bombard them with banner ads or trick them into clicking through to your site. Because your gadget will become associated with your brand, it is important to keep that association a positive one.

3). Don’t Ask For Personal Information
I’m one of those people who hardly ever adds Facebook applications because of that little box you have to tick that allows them to ‘Know who I am and access my information’. While I will admit that I am a bit of a freak when it comes to privacy, I don’t think I’m alone in this either. People don’t like to share their details online. For me, the idea of compromising my privacy far outweighs almost any benefit that I will derive from using an app or a gadget. If you’re going to ask people for their personal details, you have to come to terms with the fact that it will put some people off. And you don’t want this, trust me. So, avoid it if possible. 

4). Achieve a Balance between Value and Fun
The most popular gadgets will always be those that look good, are fun to use and serve a purpose, even if this purpose has no long term practical value. People love applications and gadgets that they can interact with on some level, although currently the most popular Google gadget is a time and date calendar. What you do is important, but how you do it matters more. If you find a unique way to package information that users want, you will have a popular little gadget on your hands.

5). Keep Your Content Fresh
Just like any website, fresh content is key to ensuring that your gadget becomes popular and remains so. There has to be an incentive for the user to keep using. Providing something awesome once-off is all very well, but as soon as the user is done with your gadget, he will probably delete it. There shouldn’t be any need for me to tell you that this is BAD for your brand. Ensuring that there is something new to keep them interested is a great way to ensure that your gadget (and by association, your brand) sticks.

And that is about it from me. Go forth and build. It’s easy, it’s fun and provided you think it through before you start, the final product is bound to be rewarding.
If you’re going to be in Jozi next week and you’re keen to learn more about Google gadgets make sure you book your seat to attend the Google gadget API event which is being hosted by Quirk and Google South Africa. Find out more about the event now.


 

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Google Insights for Search

by Tammy Joseph

Google recently added a new traffic estimation tool to their AdWords keyword tool called Google Insights. It is an upgrade on Google Trends and Google Ad Planner, giving you more flexibility and functionality. This tool helps you to understand users’ search behaviour and allows you to establish trends and rising searches. Like Google Trends, you can just type in the search term to see the search volume patterns over time. You have to be logged into your AdWords account in order to access it.

Some of the things you can do with Google Insights:

• Relative keyword search trends for keywords, as well as A/B keyword comparisons (displayed on a graph).
• Top related keywords and hottest rising related keywords (displayed in a table below the search volume graph).
• Category based keyword search volume trends.
• Countries, states and cities where a keyword query is popular (displayed on a map alongside the related search terms).

Example:
Comparing Search Terms:  African Safari and Safari in South Africa
Category: Travel
Time Period: Last 12 months
Location:  UK

Results:

This tool is useful for comparing generic search terms to more specific ones. This will allow you to see how the news, marketplace and even the economy can change the relative importance of these terms over time. You can also apply this to your brand terms and see how your brand is ranking compared to competitors.

From these trends you can also see when your marketing strategies are doing really well at any given time, and then boost your advertising through other marketing mediums. For Adwords advertisers this is useful as you can increase your media spend for this successful period and boost performance during these times.

These top searches are also helpful for PPC marketing. They can help you identify the top searches at any given time which you can add to your campaign if you don’t already target them. In addition you can use the rising search terms to boost your campaign performance in the future.

There are loads of other statistics that you can delve deeper into, and I would urge you to go play around with this tool because it can be extremely useful in PPC campaign management.

The only set back that I see for myself as a South African advertiser, however, is that it does not give you any data when searching for South Africa as a location. I have often struggled to find both keyword research and traffic estimation tools for relevant search volume in South Africa. Other than that, big ups to Google, it’s a fantastic tool!

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Monkey Lovin'

by Kyle Verhagen-Roberts

Warning! Explicit AnimalSexual content

This brilliant beastly viral just has to be from a Dutch firm!

Having lived in The Netherlands for 8 odd years (Amsterdam, in Red Light District, above a coffee-shop :)) I can definitely relate to this funny viral from holiday specialists Zonnetour.nl. Ooh that last sentence could almost be misinterpreted – don’t worry – I am not a big fan of ‘Monkey Stimulation’.

Wonderful monkey-making music and a chuckle-inducing tag line really add to the overall effect of the viral.

I’ve shouted this viral from the tree-tops!


 

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Nuts in a Can

by Werner deBruin

“I got thrown out of school several weeks in my senior year being caught in the girls' dorm. This was 1954. The girls' dorm was off limits. Even to girls, I think. “ - Robert B. Parker

We all at some stage get caught with our hand in the cookie jar. Not always a fun experience, but it surely makes a good story afterwards. Like the first time I had dinner at my (spanish) girlfriends house.... * memory recall... screen getting foggy....   

The ending was not exactly what you expected? Imagine the possibilities; getting caught and having someone else take the the wrap. You would definitely have a promising career in the government.

So what's there to say about the viral video? It's got the build-up, the “climax”, and then a “snake nuts can” ending. I call that a great recipe for a viral video.

Another “snake nuts can” video; you might have seen it a while back on TV. Well, I hope you did, or else it would definitely not be a great example of a viral video. Enjoy.

 

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Friday Fact Box - Online Tool Preferences

by Katharina Scholtz

So, I realise this is the third post from me today, and you're probably sick of it. There's just too much hapenning today! We couldn't go without putting up a Friday Fact Box, and this week the focus is on what online/desktop tools people like to use. I really had to scrounge around to find the stats for this one, but I hope you find it useful, or at least interesting. (I couldn't find anything on how many Outlook users there are, if you have some stats, please leave them in the comments). Ok that's enough from me, have a great weekend!

Image via Flickr: Mark Baker (under CC)

From Market Share Net Applications July 2008

Market Share:

• Internet Explorer 73.02%
• Firefox 19.22%
• Safari 6.14%
• Netscape 0.69%
• Opera 0.69%
• Mozilla 0.08%
• Other 0.17%

From W3Schools Browser Statistics July 2008 (with different statistics)

• IE 52%
• FX 42.6%
• Moz 0.5%
• S 2.5%
• O 1.9%

From Yet Another Boring Blog AdBlock Plus (and a little more)

FireFox has:

• 3million active daily users
• 90% of users install a new update within 2 - 3 weeks
• 2000 people are using development builds

From Ars Technica Mac OSX market share sets new record at the end 2007 January 2008

• "according to the metrics derived from web usage as indicated above, one in 10 PCs will be a Mac"

From The Rumbling Edge Thunderbird Statistics Accessed August 2008

• There are currently just over 70 million thunderbird downloads

From TecCrunch Early Adopters Still Spend More Time With Microsoft Than Google, Facebook, or Skype. But For How Long? May 8th 2008

In a study of 30 000 early adopters
Most used, in order:

• Outlook
• Word
• Gmail
• Excel
• Messenger
• Facebook
• Google Aps take up 17 percent of their time, while Microsoft aps take up 41% of their time.
• 35% of users are on Macs (international estimate is at 10% worldwide)
• msn messenger takes up 4.14% of their time

From O'Reilly Radar The Suspended Facebook App Top Friends June 2008

• Top friends one of the most used facebook apps

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Tim Shier - Drag Queen Attends Geek Girl Event

by Katharina Scholtz

Tim "Drag Queen" Shier spoke at the Cerebella (a.k.a. Geek Girl) event that took place last night, and made quite an impression on the ladies. Tim was there to punt the BrandsEye Blogger intiative. Quirk also provided some excellent cupcakes from Charly's Bakery.

The focus of the evening was on how to build your own brand. It presented a starting point from which to approach launching your own business and a way to meet people with a similar mindset.

Nikki Friedman spoke beautifully and accessibly about the importance of finding your own story and using your differentiated talent. While this may all sound fairly airy fairy, it is in reality a pretty tough thing to do. I'd like to see the discussion evolve into some practical steps we can take to direct our personal brand (or business) goals (I have to thank Nikki for letting me chat her ear off, and for offering some valuable insight into how you would negotiate that). 

Thanks to Sarah Blake, Max Kaizen and Nikki Friedman (Max hosted the evening eloquently) for putting it all together. I enjoyed the bubbly, and met some interesting women. No Tim, I don't mean you.

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Blog Action Day 2008 - a Dialogue on Poverty

by Katharina Scholtz

Blog Action Day 2008, happening on the 15th of October, is focusing on poverty. The most recent statistic I could find points out that 854 million people worldwide are undernourished (and that's from 2006). Getting engaged in a dialogue is really the least we can do.

The intiative encourages people to write about poverty, in a way that fits in with the theme of their blog, in order to get the conversation going and hopefully encourage awareness and solutions. For a more poetic introduction to what it's all about, check out the video below.


Blog Action Day 2008 Poverty from Blog Action Day on Vimeo.

Last year the focus was on the environment, and you can see the post Janine did then here. TechCrunch and ReadWriteWeb (along with 15 other of the world's most popular blogs) have signed up to be involved this year. As the organisers pointed out, "that's only in the first few hours of the campaign". You can check out the website here and sign up to join the conversation.

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