Ron McNeil asked:


With the popularity of social networking software and websites growing at such tremendous rates, designing and starting your own website may seem like a glorious idea! After all, current statistics show that the popular online community, MySpace, receives more visitors a day than Google, a very popular search engine. However, before you make any final decisions about starting a virtual community offering social network software, it is important to first do some research of your own.

Online community network is more than just building friendship, or relationship for that matter. It helps in building communication with people, and this could be utilized to your business benefits. To do that, you would need to provide the features for creation of stronger networking ties between people, and when such ties develop, your customer base increases, building up a brand for your social networking site.

One good way to research to determine which types of social networking software are most popular with internet users, is to preview different community software tools for you. You may need to become a registered member of several different online communities in order to test out the social network software tools provided by each website. In most online communities, the basic networking tools, to aid in communication, are offered with a free membership. However, in some online communities, advanced social networking software tools are provided against a small monthly fee. Either way, it is a good idea to try the different software, prior to starting a social networking website. In doing so, you will be building knowledge to help you determine which type of community software tools you wish to provide.

Another way you should consider researching before starting a social networking website that offers community software tools is to read about some of the current most popular networking websites, and determine what keeps them so popular. Communicating with different members of the most popular online communities is a great way to determine factors that keep particular communities so popular. Be sure to ask a lot of questions, and you’ll likely be surprised how many people are eager to answer.

In starting a social networking site, it is very important for you to have a plan for targeting the right people in the community. The choice of social network software would allow you to put in features, which would be appropriate for the people that you would want to join your network. For example, instead of career and school sections, you could have the interactive game feature, aiming to build the brain strength of your members. Your social networking software may also provide news on entertainment, a hobby section for older people, and tips how to keep healthy. It could have forums, where members would discuss regarding the relevant matters, and a place for blogging, which the members could use as journals. There would of course be a space provided to your members to put up their profiles, which form an important part in such social networking scenario. You could also consider putting in a profile tracker feature, by which the members would know how many times his profile has been viewed.

The social network software that you choose would mostly depend upon your plan of approach for the networking site that you have in mind. After choosing the kind of people that you would want to target, you need to have a clear conception on what you are going to provide in the site. This would determine the choice of your social network software. Your social networking site may allow the member groups, which would perhaps include business groups and others, to create online communities, and this could be provided free. This would provide the initial member base, to create vast numbers of community network by inviting friends.

By starting a social networking site, you would benefit from the growing customer base that the social networking software would build up for you. This would create your own brand, expand your customer base, increase traffic to the online communities of your web site, boost your revenue, and increase market differentiation. Your social networking site should have enough features to retain the customers, and you should have a plan to add more and more features, as your customer base grows.

One fact remains – social network software continues to grow in popularity, and the growth is predicted to continue. Since the development of the first social networking website in 1995, more and more people are finding themselves becoming actively involved in different online communities. Starting your own social networking website may be a great idea, but you should do extensive research before making any final decisions.

Ron McNeil asked:


Social network is a social structure, with the individuals or organizations as the nodes. A social network software ties together one or more types of relationships, such as financial exchange, friends, kinship, dislike, trade, web links, sexual relations, disease transmission (epidemiology), or airline routes. In effect, a social network is built on two things, the nodes and the ties. The nodes are the individuals, or organizations within the network, and the ties are the different kinds of relationships formed between the nodes.

Social networking software promotes strong branding. For instance, when anyone adds a member as a friend, sends e-card to them, makes comments on their journal, and sends them a private message and replies to their comments, the social networking software automatically sends e-mail notifications for all those activities. These notifications bear your website’s name. With your website information being sent with such notifications, you are effectively building up your brand, keeping your website’s name fresh in the minds of the users. The notifications may also carry your marketing message, which may also be placed on your online social networking site, so that the users logging into your network can also view the message while they participate in social networking.

You would need to build up your brand. This would make your social network system stand out in the market place with more prominence. Users creating profiles, and adding their friends and journals to your website are in effect creating their social base in your network. These users are most likely to remain with the network, and once they have created this base, they will go on inviting more and more friends and associates, with the intention of making their social base larger and larger. Typical social networking software would enable you to create different marketing tools for your online business.

As the users spend more and more time on your social networking website, they repeatedly come across your website name, brand name, and/or the marketing message. They become more loyal to your social networking site as they continue with their presence in your website. This loyalty would prompt the users to make use of the other services that your website offers, participate in and make donations to your organization, and also purchase products that your website offers. All you need to do is to choose the right social network software to meet the strategies that you have formed for the success of your online business.

In order to create your business identity, you would definitely need a website, which draws in people, who would be constantly reviewing the services and products that you are offering. Ideally, social networking software would help you to create a social networking website, providing you with the right marketing tools for your business. You need to create your business identity, and that does not happen by sending off marketing flyers to the email list that you have purchased. You need to build up customer loyalty first, and create your brand.

Business identity is best created by having a social networking website. Such a website would create that identity on its own, and as users would invite their friends to join, communities and groups will be set up, having varied interests. Users will be spending more and more time on the site, coming across your marketing messages and the products that you offer.

Social networking software has been able to squeeze the world, crossing the language barriers, and the borders. People all over the world still yearn for a sense of community, sharing parts of their lives with others. There are organizations seeking to convey their purpose of existence to others, making their business presence felt. What could be a more apt opportunity for you in building up that kind of a database, when you have your own social networking website?

Social network software has opened the door for users to create different kinds of relationships on the website, by which the traffic to your website is automatically generated, as the users go on establishing their social base. With users creating profiles and journals on your website, inviting others to join, they are most likely to stay on using your social networking software, there-by putting much more faith and trust in the network. Once they have their base, the customer loyalty would establish a brand for you. Your social network website would provide a captive audience, and there would be plenty of opportunities to convert this audience into paying customers for your products and premium services.

Richard asked:


No doubt you already belong to one of the social network sites the likes such as Myspace, Yuwie, Facebook, Direct Matches, or one of the dozen others that have sprung up like mushrooms. You will probably have received some sort of e-mail from a buddy or someone telling you to join one right away because it is the next big thing in marketing. Some savvy webmasters are also jumping on the bandwagon and starting new social networks and it can be rather disconcerting to be told to join a new one almost every day by some well meaning friend because they promise you it is going to be the next best thing. The every same people tell you that as a marketing tactic social networking is going to be huge and you believe them.

 

Social network and blogging overload is coming.

 

You will discover that almost all these social network sites have a blog that you can keep up as well. The majority of people only have enough time to efficiently manage two or maybe three social networking sites. This is even truer if they all have blogs that should be kept updated to some sort of regularity. From a marketing point of view, if you have any experience in internet marketing then you will know that the only real advantage a blog has as a marketing tool is when you keep it updated with fresh content all the time. If you are trying to manage 4 or 5 of these blogs or social network sites it is going to become more of a chore than a pleasure which is what these social network sites were originally all about.

 

The fine line between being a social networking site and a marketing tool

 

Already the well known social network sites are starting to restrict the amount of promotion and linking you can do on your blog or website. This is sensible otherwise a social network site will become no more than a classified advertising site and which was not the original plan. The most effective way of marketing your business is certainly through networking on social network sites but if you have joined one to tell your life story or for fun to share your thoughts with the World Wide Web, then you may want to be choosy to find one that is right for you. Otherwise your opinions will be lost amongst a bunch of adverts.

 

Social network blogs

 

As previously mentioned the majority of social network sites have blogs where you can add occasional but more preferable regular posts. These blogs may be monetized in such a way that 50% of the takings go to the webmaster/owner. I have noticed that this type of social network site is one of the better ones for personal pages because you will see that terms and conditions allow minimal promotion of websites. One such example is hub-pages and Squidoo. For people that prefer getting their business into the market place then blogs like Blogger from Google is perhaps a better choice; and social networks like Adlander Pro and Direct Matches which have become extremely commercialized are also more sensible options.

 

Advertising your business with social networks.

 

You can definitely get good exposure from social network sites and there are even paid options of increasing this advertising exposure.  Problem is that many other members may be looking at doing the same and once again your marketing may not be as efficient as you would have liked for the investment. At the end of the day it would be better to leave advertising and marketing to the classifieds sites and search engines rather than what is happening with social network sites that are not really as social as what they are labeled. When you want to read something interesting and social no doubt you are going to hate having a ton of ads in your face. Rather look for top advertising packages on the internet or make use of PPc sites like Google and yahoo which are the two main ones

 

Always Look for the best Advertising Package for ROI