Grow Your Own Flash Widgets with Sprout Builder

There comes a time in the lifecycle of every website where you run out of ideas for how to bring in new traffic.  For years you’ve been graded on how your site is doing against others, and Google Analytics does its best to fuel that fire.  But sometimes it’s about getting your content in the right hands no matter where they are located.  Many times this means someplace other than your URL.  It was around these ideas that Sprout Builder sprung up.

Sprout is a very powerful web application to build your own widget or mashup, which you can publish to your site or better yet, entice your visitors to publish on their sites and blogs.  If you have a brand with any sort of loyal following, Sprout is a logical tool to grow that brand.  Many of the usage cases on the Sprout site feature bands and other music-related businesses.  But Sprout Builder can be used in virtually any industry, as a way to show your news feeds, your schedules, your specials – all in branded shell that you fully control.

While your customers promote your brand you will still be able to gain valuable information on each click, listen or view, allowing you a unique insight into how people interact with your brand off of your site.  In addition, anytime you update your Sprout it will be updated every where it is shown automatically.

GIVE ME AN EXAMPLE
As with all apps we supply you with a sample usage case that will hopefully help you generate some ideas of how your business could be using this product.

• Small Burger Chain – You’ve built up a loyal following for your small burger chain over the last 20 years and now you have thousands of ambassadors who are waiting to help you build your brand even further.  In addition to your presence on Facebook and Twitter you’ve decided your chain could publish a Sprout to show all of your promotions which change every two weeks.  You build your Sprout on the $19 per month plan which enables you to offer an ad-free experience to your fans.  Using drag-and-drop on a number of already-produced templates you quickly wrap your widget in your restaurants colors, logo and fonts.  In addition to showing the latest promotions and specials, the widget also promotes your Facebook page and includes a stream of your latest commercial.  You announce the Sprout on your Facebook page and then sit back as your most loyal fans promote your brand on their site, which in turn leads to more promotion by their friends.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Although this tool works best for businesses with loyal and passionate fans, any business can find a use for the multimedia capabilities that Sprout Builder offers.  Many sites might be able to use it for multimedia purposes as a better way of displaying audio or video clips in a branded player.  Although the pricing is a little steep compared to many other web apps, Sprout Builder is a great choice to help your brand go viral.

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