It’s also timely, as I feel, for about the fifth time since I started ever blogging, that I should increase the frequency of my online efforts. This time it is the course I am attending that has poked at my blogging brain to once again spark it into life.

I’ve just completed the second week of a direct and interactive marketing course which is hosted by the idm in teddington. I started with an open mind, not quite sure how I would adapt to being in the classroom again after a good ten year stint out of any form of education. But it has proved quite enjoyable and I’ve certainly learned a lot (I’ve not just put that in to please who I work for either!).

One of the best aspects of the course is the fact they have guest speakers who vary in quality admittadly, but in the main are excellent.

This week we were given the pleasure of listening to one Drayton BIrd who quite literally lit the place up with examples of his quality copy-writing and his extremely colourful language. He was most certainly an inspiring character who had been there, done that and bought the flat cap.

He is most certainly the reason why I’ve decided to have another flirt with blogging although Im sure if he read this there would be a comment on the bottom saying don’t fu*cking bother!

I would certaiy recommend the course to anyone interested in improving their marketing skills. It covers all areas and does it bloody well. But beware, it is an intensive course… Very tiring, so be prepared for some stressful times and sleepless nights.

Anyway, i’ve been at this station now for 2 hours and the train (that I can legally catch) has come into sight… So I’m off.

Oh, and blogging on this wordpress app. Yeah, pretty good!

I came across Widgetbox when I was looking into developing a Facebook widget I had an idea for. As with most bloggers I want as many people as possible reading my posts, so I look into every avenue of marketing my website. The social network boom has made this an obvious place to look, with every person having so many friends viral marketing has never been able to spread so fast.

For my Facebook application I delved into FBML and already had knowledge of php so was able to develop my widget in about a week. However when I came across Widgetbox it looked on the surface like I could have saved time simply registering and going through their wizard.

That wasn’t quite the case although the features it does support are still quite impressive.
With php and mysql you can obviously create a far superior application than what is basically possible on Widgetbox. But it does let you interface with Flash and Javascript so there is scope to make a decent application.
As it interacts with Flash there are already loads of games that have been made into Widgets.

However the quickest and easiest way of creating a widget is by first creating a Blidget. This is a Widget of your Blog.
Widgetbox guides you through the process seamlessly, even loading Facebook within a frame to enable you to set up the necessary parameters.
You can then promote your new widget through Facebook, through a blidget promo badge you post on your website or on other social networking sites such as MySpace or Bebo.

You see, even though I’ve banged on about facebook, Widgetbox supports the OpenSocial container as well. Although Facebook is not developed on the OpenSocial platform and is at the moment the most used platform, OpenSocial is Googles attempt at standardising social networking… and I wouldn’t bet against Google winning in the long run, would you?

So all in all Widgetbox is a great tool for developing a widget to promote your blog really easily.
Infact you can install my Widget to have a look at what it’s like by clicking on the “Get My Widget for your site” on the left hand side of this page.

It looks like this…

I’ve only touched the surface of what Widgetbox can offer, but I can see that it will help loads of people out there spread their hard work to a far reaching audience. ]]> http://www.neilsmithdesigns.co.uk/blog/2008/12/use-widgetbox-to-promote-your-blog/feed/ 1