As social networking sites continue to grow at an unprecedented rate, creating an exclusive network for your brand is not always as complicated or expensive as you might think.
If you are in this industry, you must be aware of the social networking craze (the one that has some folks sweating bubbles). More broadly, you understand the intrinsic link between your job and popular culture/social movements. Finally, with that in mind, I hope that you recognize, at least on some peripheral level, the name 50 Cent.
50 Cent is the face of manufactured hip-hop-for-the-masses. Like most successful mass-producers, his brand sports massive awareness. And with so many platinum records and sold-out arena shows across the world, the immense industry team that supports the 50 Cent effort still found it necessary to build him a MySpace page.
At the time of writing this article, the page boasts 1,005,145 friends, an unmanageable number. The wall of his page has devolved into more or less a repository of announcements from so many "upcoming" stars. With this in mind, the 50 Cent team set out to create something every interactive marketer strives for: engagement.
The team decided to build an exclusive social network for 50 Cent. This network, created using Ning, and named "Thisis50," currently boasts nearly 22,000 highly engaged users. From this forum, the 50 Cent team can advertise upcoming shows and supporting acts to the people who are actually going to show up. They also get valuable user information by requiring users to submit a valid email address as a requisite to join. The Ning site is then advertised on the 50 Cent MySpace page, creating a funnel for those users looking to really engage with the brand.
Creating an exclusive network for your brand does not mean you have to be so popular on MySpace that you need to filter out your die-hard fans like 50 Cent. A little snooping around the Ning site brought me to a network called "2 Wheel Atmosphere," a network for motorcycle enthusiasts.
This network shows 141 users at the time of writing this. While it's not 21,000, it is still an example of a smaller idea and a smaller niche creating a highly targeted and relevant audience. If I were selling motorcycles, or a motorcycle magazine, or parts, or whatever, I might want to keep my eye on this site. Conversely, the small size of this site might encourage me to create my own site and encourage these users to join my network. Given the popularity of shows like "West Coast Choppers," it could be a great outreach for regional dealers to get their messages out to their constituents to maintain relationships. The bottom line is to do the work, make the site tasteful and relevant -- not many people appreciate the hard sell nowadays -- and build your network.
At this point, you may be thinking about ROI. Web developers are expensive, and the one you already have is booked solid for the next year trying to keep up with the new happenings in the industry. Well fear not. Here's how to build the network yourself in less than 60 minutes.
Before we get started, I want to be upfront with the fact that while I have been talking a lot about Ning in this article, I am only doing so because Google favored the site, it's free and its interface is about as easy as it gets. I have no connection with the company, other than the network I am about to build.
Techcrunch published an article last summer about the various ways to go about building your own social network. The list involves many options from point-and-click networks (like Ning), to ones that involve a marginal level of developer participation (KickApps), to developer-intensive sites. Please research at will.
The idea for the following network came from my fellow editors at iMedia. After trade shows, they would come back with all sorts of nifty swag to distribute around the office, so I am building a network dedicated to swag, called "SwagMe."
Start the clock.