Riding the Storm
Keeping Widgets Hot and Interactive
Recently we had a kind of challenge - a major studio used the MuseStorm platform as a key part of a new, hot record release. They knew response would be huge but the challenge was to capture that audience and engage them for days, if not weeks or months. More than that, they wanted fans to spread the word...and the proverbial widget.
Well things started off as planned. A few weeks before the record release the widget had stable hits and the very high interactivity that typifies a devoted and sizeable user base. Not huge numbers but good.
Then the album was released....and widget use skyrocketed into the hundreds of thousands of visitors. That was the good news. But also as expected (but not hoped), interactivity and interest inevitably started to decrease, as less devoted fans started accessing the widget and began to lose interest.
It was time to act!
Here are some techniques we used to “capture and hold” this new audience:
- Periodically Update Widget “Programming””Tell me what I don’t already know” you say. Well, amazingly, this basic precept of holding an audience is often ignored: Keep content fresh. Do it early and often and plan for the content weeks in advance. We often tell clients to think of themselves as a television channel: You entertain and you capture your audience. Don’t entertain, and you will get canceled. The perceived problem is that keeping content fresh often requires costly updates. (Here comes the shameless pitch) Not so with MuseStorm. Adding fresh content can be done on the fly and by just about anyone. Look ma! No programming!
- Announce!. Ok. Don’t get obnoxious about it, but announcing information that you know would be interesting to your audience is a good thing. In our case there was a new album released, a concert tour, a contest, etc… and you can see how tempting it is to announce too often. Use your judgment, do it right, and you will give your audience a portable way to keep close to their adored star. (Of course, MuseStorm has a handy and easy way to create announcements that show up prominently on all distributed widgets.)
- Link In and Link Out. Got a web site? Doing a sweepstakes? Linking in and linking out to the widget creates more cross pollination than a rabid killer bee hive. Here we linked into a sweepstakes and then embedded and promoted the widget from the main site. The result? More traffic in both media and increased virality.
- Use Video Strategically. Updating general content is one thing. But updating with video deserves special attention; it is that compelling and effective. Some of our customers use video to answer fan questions, create special multi-media announcements and more. This particular customer initially placed their artist’s video up front. Later they realized they could leverage it to pull users farther into the widget, increasing interactivity.
So what were the results?
Using just a few of these techniques we were able to increase user interactivity by over 13 percent in a single day and maintain audience engagement for weeks. That’s a huge payoff for a few minutes work.
Impressions Vs. Reality
Recently we had an animated brainstorming/feedback session with one of our customers. After a discussion on features (they are on their way!), the conversation turned to a talk about “Impressions VS. Reality” We thought we should share.
Here is the general issue: Traditional media concentrates on impressions, defined as how many eyeballs might have actually seen a specific piece of content (an ad, banner...you get the idea).
Impressions are ok if they are the only thing you’ve got. But many times, users don’t notice content on a webpage, or content gets loaded outside the users view, and these things still count as impressions.
Without an alternative, impressions are the best you can do...but is a very inaccurate best when your business objective is to understand (and capitalize on) engagement. In the widget “industry” today, the focus has been on meeting the status quo: impressions are what people understand...and so that’s what vendors delivered.
We’re taking a different track, and this customer noticed. Viewing MuseStorm’s Total Analytics for the first time, the customer realized that they could gain much deeper insight into user engagement and commitment; insight they could use to better value their content and success. We identified several analyses that, taken alone, just look like stats. But when interpreted from a business perspective, provided a new dimension of user commitment and business value:
- Widget Impressions. Yes. Still need them. But now they actually indicate how many times the content has actually been loaded, not seen. Maybe we should change their name to “deliveries”
- Widget Interactivity. This goes beyond click-through. Widget Interactivity can show how devoted the user is to content. Certain of interactivity flows are especially interesting. For example: For those users that stop a video, do they restart it and watch it completely? Similarly, when audio or video are muted, is it unmuted? Was the video watched more than once by the same user? These behaviors are a clearer measure of how interested the user is in the content.
- Widget Stickiness. Stale or uninteresting widgets get dumped pretty quickly. Widget stickiness measures how long widgets live on web pages. Understanding when a widget is removed or becomes inactive can act as an alarm to bolster content and maintain widget freshness.
- Widget Revenue. How much revenue (ad, sales) can be directly attributed to the widget.
The MuseStorm platform provides a wealth of analytics data on both engagement and distribution. It is the only service that actually provides real engagement metrics (not just clicks) and we constantly work to add more insights and views. Check it out by signing up here.
MuseStorm Now Lets You Create Complete Facebook Apps
Yesterday we announced the availability of ground-breaking functionality: we now allow users of the MuseStorm Content Engagement Platform to create complete Facebook applications and to dynamically re-purpose Flash-based widgets into Facebook applications (the full press release is here).
While all other solutions/platforms out there simply provide a way to stick a Flash widget on a Facebook page, allowing no access to the social graph and social networking APIs, MuseStorm actually lets you create real, native FBML applications on the fly, in minutes.
Here's a glimpse of our Facebook Application Generator (click images to enlarge):
Create Facebook applications from scratch or re-purpose Flash based widgets
MuseStorm automatically converts Flash functionality into FBML
Dedicated Facebook functionality allows you to create applications in minutes
Total Analytics give you engagement and distribution metrics
Oh, and by the way, any Flash widget you create using our platform can now run on the desktop as a stand-alone executable (no need to download an engine).
The new functionality will be available to customers Monday Dec 9th.