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.
Off-topic or inappropriate comments will be edited or deleted. Email addresses will never be published. Thanks.