Cameron Olthuis

For of those of you who maybe don’t spend as much time on the web as I do, you’re probably wondering what MyBlogLog is? It’s a small, bootstrapped, social network for bloggers. They recently had a win by selling to Yahoo for $10 - $12 mil.

So the reason they won? In two words, their widget. The whole success of that company was because of their widget. Without the widget they would have never grown they way they did. And fortunately for them they were the first ones to think of it. Other social networks could’ve made the exact same type of widget and it probably would’ve worked really well. The whole blogging connection didn’t hurt either.

Hell, other social sites could probably still create a similar widget that would work. Lets take Digg for example; if they created a widget where you could see which diggers were visiting your site it would probably work. Not only would it increase the user base but it would also strengthen the core of the overall community.

Overall MyBlogLog was a great idea that was properly executed, but it also makes for a great widget marketing example.

PS - Here is my MyBlogLog page, but I don’t use the widget.

Noah Kagan wrote a post today on the Top 5 Stupid Trends of Marketing 2.0.

1. Our product is viral
2. Paying $10,000/month to advertise on Techcrunch
3. You need a blog
4. Digg will save us
5. Oh, don’t worry we have a MySpace badge.

You should really head over to Noah’s site and read the description of each one before you read my counters, otherwise you’ll probably be wondering what the hell I’m talking about.

Noah’s a friend of mine and he’s a very smart guy, but this time I think he’s gone a little overboard with the whole hippy marketing thing. Just kidding Noah. Anyways, it’s on bro.

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Widget marketing is really starting to heatup. Today, TechCrunch announced that Hugh Macleaod of Gapingvoid fame has launched blog widgets, you can now show his daily cartoons on your website.

Fergus Burns says… A new space is beginning to develop - widget marketing.

Led initially be desktop widget services such as konfabulator, we are now seeing tons of services supporting widgets/gadgets - especially in social media applications (typepad, wordpress, myspace, aimpages, netvibes, etc).

Widgets are great marketing tools. They give you free exposure and improve the user experience (or sometimes not). They can also be used for SEO, they’re great for building inbound links.

Many companies are missing out on the potential of widget marketing, but there is a right and wrong way to use them.