Blog Widgets: Finding and Choosing the Best Ones for Your Website

One of the biggest mistakes a blogger can make is to overly clutter their page with widgets. At best, clickable blog widgets can start to look like advertisements and might seem to new readers like excess site spam. At worst, blog widgets that display low statistics can convince visitors that a blog is unpopular before they even read what that blog is about. From established bookmarking tools like AddThis to next-generation widgets like ROMlet, the key is to get as much out of the few widgets you have on your blog as possible.

Choosing the right widgets with the tips and resources provided here will help in two crucial way. First, these recommendations will assist you in showing off the most impressive current statistics about your blog. However, they will also help boost the popularity of your blog by directing readers to the best and easiest methods they can use to bookmark your site and/or share it with others!

Showing off site statistics to demonstrate blog popularity: One popular type of widget is a brag badge or display counter. Back in the day people used to use overall site statistics counters but these have become less popular over time. Instead, many people show things like subscriber readership through blog widgets like FeedBurner badge or a ROMlet top referrers counter. However, for such statistics to be impressive a blog usually has to (1) have a readership of at least 50 or so and (2) be the kind of blog that tech-savvy individuals read, who know how to subscribe to feeds. A better approach, particularly for newer blogs, is to cluster (not haphazardly, but in a controlled fashion) a series of blog reader badge widgets that show popularity on a variety of feeds.

Social bookmarking buttons to increase blog popularity: Social bookmarking widgets can be applid to a blog main-page sidebar and/or to individual posts. Blogging platforms like WordPress have some ready-made widgets to do this that are easy to install. It is really only worth adding social bookmarking buttons or widgets to a page if you yourself belong to and are somewhat active in those sites. Also, too many buttons will confuse a reader - they won't want to push them all, and often will push none as a result! So, select these buttons carefully (in the case of the WordPress widget you can check/uncheck various buttons easily). Also, don't hesitate to write right in a post which social networking or bookmarking site you want a reader to use for that specific post. The best part about these buttons is that they work well even for newer blogs and can even be used by the blog owner to submit their own material, on occassion, more easily. There are also aggregator widgets like AddThis that provide many bookmarks in one button, but they require more work on the part of readers.

Social networking communities to increase long-term readership: While widgets from sites like MyBlogLog and BlogCatalog aren't particularly good at driving lots of traffic to a given post, they are a great way to build up readership over time and to show you have readers without showing how many. As such, they are great for newer bloggers just getting started but with, perhaps, more time to network on a more one-to-one basis. These widgets essentially show 'avatars' (visual representations of individuals) and names of people who visit your blog. They are at once a way to see who is reading things on your site and to follow up on those readers by leaving thank-you notes on their blogs or in their blogging communities.

All-in-one combination widgets - boasting and boosting popularity: The is increasing interest in blog widgets that help reduce clutter by combining the best aspects of established widgets. However, one such widget that is currently in development and soont to be released is ROMlet. ROMlet combines aspects of a statistical brag badge, a social bookmarking button and a social networking tool. It is designed to show off the 'best' statistics a blog has to offer, and thus work for both newer and more veteran bloggers. The ROMlet widget also displays up-to-date incoming social bookmarks directly on a blog sidebar, making it easy for interested readers to bookmark or vote for new material on a site. Finally, ROMlet encourages other readers both within and outside of the ROMlet network to link to a site - because the widget displays the top referring sources of recent traffic to the blog's visitors. ROMlet and other widgets like it are likely to be the successful forerunners in the next generation of social bookmarking, news and networking tools. Though it isn't released yet, the team creating the widget has invited interested bloggers to sign up to learn when ROMlet goes live.

So in short: there is no one 'right widget' or even one best collection - it all depends upon the specific blog. The key is to select carefully based on the popularity and other facts about a particular blog. Also, be sure to update to new widgets as they become popular and clear out old ones that aren't working for you - too many people simply let their site become filled with useless blog widgets that do them no good, or actively do them harm!