Since launch, the response has been astounding. Thousands of people from all over the social media map have installed the widget. In the first month alone, it garnered more than 10,000 interactions.
Even more impressive is the engagement. Month to month, the average engagement time per user is 22 minutes. You did read that correctly. Every month the audience for this widget spends as much time with it as they do a network television show. What's the production budget for 22 minutes of televised programming?
Awareness
Over at Gogo, we've got a brand that's launching and positioning itself as the nation's provider of Wi-Fi internet to commercial airlines. As a new brand, it's in need of engagement and exposure.
Working with partner agency Upshot, Gogoinflight.com features a game in which you're a cell tower beaming beautiful Wi-Fi signals to the planes overhead.
This widget also continues to pull new downloads every single day, creating an advertising network of advocates money simply can't buy as effectively. To the delight of everyone involved, Gogo has given early adopters and evangelists a convenient tool to spread the word, with Gogo maintaining complete control over the messaging -- and fun -- as they quickly build equity with the people who mean the most to these early months of the brand.
But as any brand-launching marketer knows, frequency is crucial to establishing brand recognition in these media-saturated times we live in. On average since launching the widget, on every game-play, the Gogo gamer is exposed to 80 branded messages.
An added benefit of this widget strategy is understanding where the audience "lives" online. Initially, the thought was that the most play would come from the major players like Apple and Facebook. While these two monsters certainly earn a good share of the interactions, the largest groups of downloaders and active users are actually coming from hi5 and friendster. This is incredibly valuable insight to strategists looking to plot the future of the brand's interactive channels.
There are great things happening all over the world of widgets these days, clouded by the fog of terminology and, well, basic awareness. But there's gold in those hills. All we need to do as brand strategists is to look for simple ways to engage users on their terms.
The return, at the very least, is valuable insight on user habits, using the very same talent you're currently employing to make banner ads and microsites. At the very most, you'll be creating a network of advocates pushing engagement, awareness and significant revenue with every click of the mouse.
If there's one takeaway I hope you act on, it's just to get involved. Sign up on these networks. It's free to check them out and fun to experience. Just being polite and interested will help you to discover new insights and tactics to activate your audience that you won't find any other way.
Michael Leis is VP of Emerge Digital (formerly Publishing Dynamics), and writes What’s The New Media Buzz?