Seven Essential Steps Required to Launch and Grow a Successful Social Network (3-5)

Seven Essential Steps Required to Launch and Grow a Successful Social Network (1-2)

3. Develop a Budget & Schedule.

A successful budget needs to account for selecting the appropriate vendor and solution, building the framework, creating and implementing the design, marketing the site, signing up partners (if applicable), and moderating and maintaining the site. Also plan for ongoing development to keep the site fresh.

Set the project scope and timeline. Balance time-to-market requirements with building and launching an effective site. Based on market requirements, you may want to employ a "launch and learn" strategy. It may not be necessary to include all concepts in the first version. Launch the community and incorporate feedback from your users to determine site improvements. Make sure, however, you've incorporated enough functionality and design to attract and retain a thriving community.

4. Design Your Community to Achieve Its Goals.

An effective design should enable your community to meet your company's stated goals. More than just graphics and look and feel, the design needs to answer questions such as, "What features will my audience want?"; "Will we charge a membership fee?"; "Will access to some features be restricted to certain members?"; "What type of privacy options will we offer?"; "How will advertising be integrated?"; "Will content need to be reviewed before going live?"; and "How will the site layout and site-flow reflect my goals and shape behavior?"

A social network is much like a neighborhood. People naturally want to live in a place where they feel comfortable and welcomed. Your site's personality is one of the most critical factors to success. Once launched, your site will quickly develop its own personality, based on the online behavior of the early adopters, so it's important to consider your ideal member profile before you launch your community.

One design technique to shape site behavior is to create profile questions relevant to the ideal member. For example, if you are creating an online community for professional chefs, questions such as, "Who are your favorite chefs?" and "What are your favorite foods?" would more likely attract an audience of amateur cooks. However, if you included questions such as, "Where were you trained?" and "Do you own a restaurant?" you will more likely attract the intended audience. Understand what's important to your target audience, and craft profile questions accordingly.

Examples of sites designed to meet business goals:

• A global furniture conglomerate encourages customers to post photos of their favorite rooms designed with the company's furnishings. With one click, customers can easily purchase products they see in other customers' photos. And, all activity on the site earns the members points, which can be redeemed on future purchases. Site goal - improve customer loyalty and increase sales.
  
• A retail chain provides avatars (i.e., a multi-dimensional graphic of the user) to users, which can be dressed in the company's products. Users can search other avatars and, with a click of a button, purchase any article of clothing he/she may see on another avatar. The company can also release a new article of clothing to the online community exclusively, as a mechanism to test audience response. Site goal - improve customer loyalty, increase sales, and provide an opportunity for test marketing.
  

5. Choose Your Platform and Technology Wisely.

There are a wide variety of vendors and solutions from which to choose. Determine up front what's important to your organization. For example, will you be hosting the solution yourself, or are you looking for the vendor to host it for you? Are you looking for a platform on which to build the site yourself, or are you looking for a complete, out-of-the-box solution? How much of the design will you do in-house? What features are important to your target audience? Is the product extensible? In other words, are you looking to have your own developers add functionality, or will you rely on the vendor you select to enhance the site? Do you have a multi-site strategy? Can you succeed with a design and feature set similar to other sites, or do you need a complete custom design and implementation? Does it matter to you if the vendor has the right to post advertisements and market to your members, or are you looking for complete control of your site?

If this is your first social network, you may not know the answers to all of these questions, so look for a solution provider that has the experience and know-how to guide you along the way. Remember to look beyond the launch to the long-term. Launching your site is important, but look for a vendor and a solution that can support your requirements as your site grows.

Don't underestimate the importance of selecting the right technology. It is absolutely critical that the platform on which your community is built can handle the community, now and in the future. Scaling is critical, but very often your online community will experience extensive traffic as soon as it is launched. Having a site crawl to its knees will impact the success of the site and may negatively impact your business's reputation and bottom line.

Make sure you understand the technology and architecture requirements up front. The solution you select should conform to your company's technology standards so the IT organization can take advantage of a familiar architecture they know will address the scaling, integration, customization, and security requirements of your enterprise.

Seven Essential Steps Required to Launch and Grow a Successful Social Network (6-7)