Now that we have a few posts under our belt, let's unleash "WHY? Media: the Blog" virally. This is where the widget comes in.
Observe...
A widget is a small, sharable, sticky website that packages the content of your blog into a format that users can embed into their blogs, forums, websites, facebook & myspace pages, igoogle pages and more. Once your users put it on their pages, it's then available to their users to grab and share. It's like the old shampoo commercial...
"you tell 2 friends...and they'll tell two friends...and so on..and so on..."
There are several ways to make widgets from the content on your blog.
>You can make one on your own if you know html and flash.
>You can pay a professional like WHY? Media to build one for you.
>You can use one of the many free online services to make one.
Since this blog advocates the concept of DIY, we are going to use the last option because it's cheap and easy.
Here's the basic steps...
1. Burn your feed. We recommend you do this at www.feedburner.com. It's free and easy. There are advanced options to maxamize your feed and analytic tools to help you track your widgets traffic. I'm not going to go into the step-by-step. It's pretty cut-and-dry. I would recommend on the first page that you check the box that says "I am a podcaster!". If you are not currently podcasting on your blog, i hope to talk you into it in a later post.
2. Once you've burned your feed, copy the XML code from feedburner and use it to build a widget. There are several services that do this...
www.widgetbox.com
www.yourminis.com
www.springwidgets.com
there are more...do a google search on "build a widget". I like the springwidget because it will allow you to play a podcast directly from the widget, but they are all equally good. We recommend that you take the time to build a widget using several of the services. Each has it's own gallery that is often searched by it's own users. It gives you just one more way to spread your message.
3. Once you build your widgets, post them on your blog and invite your users to "Grab It" and "Share It".
(Oh, by the way...your welcome to "Grab" and "Share" the "WHY? Media: the Blog" widget from above. Just click "Get This Widget".)
Building and sharing a widget this way is simple, cheap and very effective and promoting your brand. If you run into any problems or have any questions, leave a comment below. We'll walk you through it.
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