Rachel Levy: Digital Marketing & Social Media

Last week, I found out about a really cool new toolbar for websites called Wibiya. I asked them for a beta invite and they said it would be launching to the general public soon (I guess I wasn’t special enough!), and sure enough, I was notified about it today.  So, what do I think?  Well, considering I was inspired to write a blog post about it within 15 minutes of installing it, I’d say I like it! :-)

So, what is Wibiya?  If you’re viewing this post on my website, just look down at the bottom to the pink bar.  If not, here a screen shot of it broken into 2 parts.

What it does essentially is bring your social media components (and a few other things) all to one place, and a place that is available everywhere on your site.  People can do the following right from the toolbar:

• Facebook
  • update their status (with automatic link to your site)
  • become a fan of your Facebook page
• Twitter
  • see your tweets
  • follow you on Twitter
  • tweet (with an automatically shortened link to your site)
• Blog
  • subscribe to your RSS feed
  • See your recent posts
• Search your site
• Chat with others
• Message your site visitors
• Translate your site into different languages

…all without leaving your site.  There are also a bunch of other apps, such as photo galleries and YouTube integration, that you can easily install.  What a great way to give people the functionality they want, without forcing them to leave your website and you never get them back.  Sure, most of these tools are available with other WordPress plugins, but it’s great to have everything in one place, so you can fill your site with more good content.

In addition to all of this functionality for your site visitors, you get analytics too!  So, as soon as I posted on Twitter, I could see how many people were visiting which pages, and where in the world they are.  What a great way to get instant feedback, to see if people are driven to your site.  It also shows you overall stats for the past 7 days, including assumed bounce rate reduction, and new RSS registrations.

As I said, I JUST downloaded this 1/2 hour ago, so I’m still poking around.  But, overall, this is a VERY cool app… a definite BUY recommendation from me! Oh, wait, it’s free.  :-)

What do you think? Have you discovered anything I haven’t mentioned above? Any downsides you see?

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