Learn From 15 Ebay PowerSellers How They Raked In Over $11,726,200 Last Year Alone

Eight Steps to Making Money with a Social Network Site

You don’t need to be a major metropolitan broadcaster or newspaper or a large corporation to succeed with social networking, nor must you take a major leap to get started. You can test the social waters slowly with just a feature or two, if that is your business’ comfort level and budget. 

Here are the steps:

Before you buy equipment, hire contractors or staff or advertise your social media product, you must plan.  It is vital that you give a lot of thought to what you are doing and why.  Is it because your current readers, clients, customers, patients or community members are asking for it? The biggest mistake business people make in setting up a social network or user-generated community site is that they forget to research and plan. You must set policies in place, know the step-by-step procedures you are going to take, and who is going to do what. You must also determine if you are going to police community-contributed content. If so, who is going to be responsible for that and when? The best wisdom is that you allow comments uncensored and let other community members flag them for review if they find them offensive.

Assign a product manager. This should be someone who really understands the community you’re targeting, and someone that many community members know and trust.  It might be a well-known local business owner, performer or prominent activist.    If your community isn’t geographic but rather a niche community of like-minded individuals, you’ll want someone recognizable in that avocation, occupation or interest.

You should decide on what features you want to offer immediately, and those you’ll add later. This will help you decide on any vendors you must hire. 

You might:

• Offer blogs or allow community members to upload their own
• Allow individual profiles
• Provide online entry of user-generated photos, videos and/or articles, reviews, ratings or contribution of events to your community calendar.
• Include classified advertising and allow buyer /seller conversations.
• Hold contests and sweepstakes
• Enable an audio player for music listening and uploading

You must detail all aspects of your social media profit.  Of course it’s important to determine how you are going to make money with your social network site. Beyond that, however, you must decide who is going to sell your products and how you are going to compensate them for that. You must set your fees and make sure you have a platform that will allow for short term specials. Will you offer classified advertising, banner advertising, pay per click or other form of advertising such as sponsorships?  

You must choose the vendors that will help you launch and maintain your social network site. For this you’ll want companies that pledge themselves to your success and not those that just want to sell you a product and then disappear.  Look for a vendor that has several clients akin to you in size and target market. If the vendor is new and without a track record, study the background of its founders and key personnel. See if they have familiarity with your type of product or service. 

You must then lure contributors. Most social network sites do not compensate their contributors. Most folks love to see themselves, their families, their neighbors and their pets pictured and talked about on the Web. If, however, you are trying to find community photographers to go out on a regular basis and take multiple photos of community events, consider enabling online sales of the photos. You could then commission your photographers based on the sales.

You have to market your social network site. Grass roots seems to be the preferred marketing method for numerous community user-generated sites. What works best is showing up at community events, sometimes helping to sponsor the events, speaking at local clubs, and handing out tchotchkes.    

Don’t forget to track the results of your social networking efforts. It’s important that you know who is viewing your site, how often, and how long they’re staying.  Your advertisers and advertising prospects will know to know this too.   There are a number of excellent lead generation and CRM products, some that work hand in glove with each other, that will help you keep track of consumer activity on and about your site, and will also let you know what advertising resources companies in your target area or interest are now using.

Keep in mind, as you progress through the creation of your social networking site that there are three key ingredients in your success.  You must first know what it is that you want to accomplish; you must then know what you are going to do each step of the way to make that happen; and, finally, you must take steps to recognize that you accomplished it. With detailed market research and planning, a smart mix of social features and tools, help from the right vendor, the buy-in of your staff, and plenty of grass roots marketing, you can succeed at social networking.

constant-content.com | March 20th, 2008
Tags: social networking, social networking make money
Categories: Web Commerce

You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.