Sprout Builder is a fabulous (and free) new service which you could use to create an interactive promotional widget for your blog.
To give you an idea of what can be achieved using Sprout, I've quickly created this promotional Blogger Buster widget. This only took around 20 minutes to create, but those who have more time and patience could easily create an incredible promotional tool for their blogs which (as you can see) can be easily emailed, embedded and shared by it's viewers.
If Sprout Builder seems like a tool you would be interested in using too, you can get started creating your own widget right away! You will need to register your name and email address in order to save and publish your widget, but the easy "greenhouse" building platform will offer you an idea of the possibilities until you're ready to sign up for your free account!
One of the best things about Sprout widgets is that they can be embedded in almost any web page. Even in MySpace! This means you could create a Sprout to promote your blog and include this in your online profiles, your web page, send it by email and ask your friends to share it too.
A great Sprout widget could easily become viral, and when used as a means of blog promotion this has the potential of gathering more readers (and potential subscribers) to your blog.
Sprout is rather easy to use. Building your widget is a case of "drag and drop", but I would advise using one of the pre-made templates to get an idea of how pages are constructed before trying to build one from scratch!
My only complaint so far is that the widget builder hogs my computer's memory; after using this for a while I noticed the interface became rather slow (but then my beloved laptop isn't quite as high-spec as I'd like...).
No doubt, Sprout will become an invaluable marketing tool as it's popularity develops. I'm definitely using this for some other projects I have lined up in the coming weeks!
Pop over to Sprout Builder to check it out for yourself and let me know what you think about using this as a promotional tool for your blogs. And if you create a great Sprout of your own, feel free to send this my way!
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My name is Amanda Fazani and I write Blogger Buster to help other Blogger users make the most of their Blogger blogs.
Post a Comment 14 Comments:
Hi Amanda, your blog is super and this tool/gadget seems to be great! I'l be trying to build one sprout foer each of my blogs. It will be a good experience!
Thank you and have a great weekend!
I discovered Sprout one month ago & tried it out for making an RSS widget... but i never imagined the full potential of Sprout!
This is absolutely amazing! I'll definitely make one when i'm free. :D
& what's more interesting is that Sprout is easily accessible to everyone - the interface is so intuitive! It's definitely one of the best webapps i've come across!
Not come across this before. What a great find! Has so much potential. Thanks, Amanda! :)
Amanda,
You have done it again - this is an awesome feature! I posted YOUR widget on "Sarah's Progress in her Battle with Hemangiomas" site in hopes of helping others start a blog and learn of your marvelous work! Also, I have a new site at http://eaa309.blogspot.com/ for the EAA Chapter here in Charlotte, NC. I am trying to set it up as a Team Blog to have posts from some of our 100 members about recreational aviation interests. Your widget will hopefully show them how easy it is to start blogging!
Chuck
For Helio Jenné:
I'm happy to know this is useful for you too :) Thanks for your comment!
For Carrotmadman6:
I first looked at this a couple of weeks ago, and since then all the major design sites have referenced it too. I think it's had a couple of improvements since the initial release, and you're right about the intuitivity!
For Teleute:
I hope you will enjoy this too! I love the "portability" of this, and am sure it will become very useful for us bloggers!
For Chuck:
Thank you so much for using my widget! I'm really happy to hear you're also starting a team blog. As yet I haven't written any posts about this, though I do have some ideas for future posts in my notebook.
Best of luck for your new blog!
Amanda :)
Hello! I popped over from "Blogging Basics 101." Great post. I'd neve heard of a sprout before. I'm heading there now to check it out. Thanks again. :)
Hello Shane,
Thanks for stopping by! Sprout seems like it's going to be a really useful service. Once I have enough time I'm going to update my widget with a much better one. Hope you enjoy using it too!
This is fantastic, thanks!
Kim @ What's That Smell?
Either my computer hates Sprout Builder or their website is going through their own issues. I certainly do not get anything like your screen shot when I try to build a sprout. I get the logo, a few button at the top right corner and the rest of the screen is blank.
I went over, and in no time made two. One for each of my primary blogs. Posted them on all my social network profiles. Love anything to promote. Here's another one for you. seems to run a little faster than Sprout.
http://www.widgetbox.com/
Plus they will add your widget to their gallery, all for free. You can also get a button for your page, that say says "get my blog in a widget".
I found Adoptic (adoptic.com) to be a helpful and simpler way to promote blogs. However, I think this is a cool widget. Haha.
nice one..sir..thank you...It bogged down my lappy too...cheers
This is a cool post about coupons and there prices.
Thanks for such an informative post.