Do it Yourself Social Networking Milestone
April 20, 2009 by Anna Farmery
Filed under Social Media
Last week Ning achieved the milestone of having 1,000,000 social networks which quite literally surprised me. Ning has fallen into the background with the emergence of Facebook groups, Friendfeed and of course at a different level Twitter. Though I have to say I wonder how many of them are fully active?
For anyone who wants to quickly put together a quick social networking platform then Ning is a great option. Twitter Moms and Mugglespace for Harry Potter fans are examples of how you can grow a thriving community.
Ning is worth checking out not only if you are looking at creating a social network but also if you are trying to reach out to niche communities. What are the key points to create a successful Ning commun
ity?
- Understand who your community is and what your community isn’t…
- Promote the community through a combination of traditional and social media techniques.
- Create value and valuable content. You will need to facilitate until the community is ready to manage the site, and during this time ensure that you give people something to talk about…gossip marketing at its best
- Keep the momentum going with fresh value, fresh content and fresh reasons to join
Only problem I have with Ning is the API is slow sometimes.
*Real* slow.
Eric – yes I have found that too, I also wonder why you would use Ning rather than Facebook in a way as most people are either on Facebook or at least no about it whereas again Ning is not known too widely outside of serious web users?
Eric – just visited your site – you see good networking by you! And fascinated if you feel like coming on my podcast The Engaging Brand which you can find at http://www.theengagingbrand.com to talk about how art engages people, how an artist goes about their work…let me know at anna@theengagingbrand.com would love to talk about art and engagement….