George Bush and Tony Blair have a 99 per cent chance of falling in love and having a successful relationship. Homer Simpson and Marge Bouvier, meanwhile, receive a 68 per cent rating and are advised to talk things through when the going gets tough. These are just two of the startlingly accurate facts thrown up by Dr Love at lovecalculator.com.
Now what, you are not unreasonably thinking, does this have to do with e-business, broadband and the small to micro-sized enterprise?
The answer is sticky content. Just as magnetic, I hope, as internet radio stations, Mega Latina, Bluegrass Country, and WNCS 104.7 from Vermont, three of the pre-set stations on my company branded browser toolbar.
Yes, this past week I have been creating and refining my IE7/Firefox compatible toolbar complete with company logo, links to individual pages on my web site, and a host of goodies including a rather neat internet radio tool, pop up blocker, newsfeed and webmail notifier. Now, all I have to do is persuade people to download it. As a marketing tool it cost zero to have my branding and links under each user’s nose every time they go online. And building the toolbar wasn’t rocket science either. If it wasn’t just me and the dog, I’d have the toolbar installed on all the company computers for easy access to key company web site pages too.
Building your own company toolbar is now point and click simple thanks to free software packages and various templated toolbars you can create online. Search on “toolbar designer” or “toolbar creator” to get a wide choice of options.
The one I opted for, instead of learning the new software package I downloaded and never installed, was conduit.com. But before discussing the nuts and bolts, first a look at some of the things to take into account.
Ensure any toolbar you create is properly branded for your company and contains links to your key web site pages. Do not go overboard though. Users will only download your toolbar if there are nifty tools that will actually enhance their time online, for example, a web mail notifier, pop up blocker, internet radio etc. They aren’t sycophants. They want something for nothing, albeit at the price of your hyper-linked logo staring them in the face every day. You could say, then, that the free toolbar is the internet equivalent of the giveaway company pen, cheap, handy and branded.
Okay, to get a feel for this whole company branded toolbar thing before we dive under the bonnet, you may wish to take a closer look first at the one that has installed itself in your browser already. Of course, at the risk of blowing my own trumpet, you could always check out mine instead.
