Make Money Online Today (Step By Step Guide)

Starting and Running your Own Social Networks

 Since the creation of Facebook, the social media industry has been booming. Mark was the needed trigger and catalyst that pushed entrepreneurs to think, take risks and create a social network that is new and fresh.

Have you ever thought of building your own social network? But how do you start a social network? Do you have the needed resources to create a social networking site? 

What does this mean from business and development point of view? Here are some steps that you need follow in the process.

#1. Identify your community

If you don't want to shoot in a dark and have financial losses you need to identify your community. The process of identification needs to be done in the brainstorming stage. Identifying preferences and dislikes of your community will help you in better understanding the psychological factors that affect them as a consumer and what you can do to get their attention. Sometimes the need for what you are offering won't exist on the market, that's why gathered demographics and psychographics data will give you the power to trigger and create that need.

#2. Define the features and functions

The definition of the features and functions is tightly related to the quality of the identification of your community. Your community wants and needs will shape and outline the features of developing a social network website. What do you want your users to do/ How will you define the privacy of the data?

The overall vision of your website is crucial. Macro scan that will break things down into categories such as user functions, administrative functions and advertising is a must thing to do.

Defining the type of data that will circulate, what they can post, how they will register and what automation you should use is only the beginning. There are a lot of things to be considered at this phase.

#3. Develop Growth Strategy Based on Your Users

To build your social network you need to first prepare your growth strategy. Your target audience is defined, you have all of the important data  but now you need to make them aware of your service. The need to define consistent growth strategy aligned with your target audience comes from the fact that the destiny of your social network commercial success depends on it.

There are two things you can do:

Begin Small and slowly expand your base. Remember Facebook started local and small. They used the information available in their high school yearbook. 

Go Big - Focus your efforts on large demographic and your marketing on longer base at the very start. Unless you have a unique solution you should always begin small. It's a less risky success strategy. The Go Big approach will expose your social network to other competitors as well, so growth will be tougher.

#4. Use minimal and simple social network UX Design

Keep it minimal and simple. Why these two rules exist? Because users want to make a social network that is all about them, not you. The user experience matters. Create your own network that cares about their journey and the value they get out of it. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat have one thing in common which is user oriented design and ease of use.

There are basic elements that you must think of before you start defining your social network front end. You must think of:

1. The elements of a standard profile
2. Chat options and features
3. News Feed design
4. Connect Buttons 
5. Engagement Buttons 
6. Comment Section Areas
7. Social Groups options
8. Setup Page Design

The UX design can be tricky. You must make sure your social network provides user-centric and enjoyable experience for your target audience. Consistency across all of the parts of your social network is a must. Heavy investments into quality app architecture is something you have to be prepared on time financially and structurally.

#5. A must have structure

Once the user-specific features are listed, you must prepare the growth environment. Certain general rules apply for building all web pages and  are out of huge importance for your social media networking platform since you are trying to engage users in social activity and keep them longer on your site. There are three must have pillars that you need to incorporate if you want your social media network to be successful and profitable.

Customer service - Partnering with a hosting company can change your life. They will deal with technical issues and any other issue related to your platform

Security - use reliable security systems that will make your users feel like they can do everything on your social media platform without worrying about privacy intrusion and data leaks.

Scalability - When you start building a social network from scratch you have to consider growth. Your social media platform has to be able to expand easily and quickly so it can follow the pace of your growth.

#6. You need to attract the right users

After everything is said and done, in terms of defining the target audience and developing the right features the next step is attracting the right users. There are a lot of tools that will help you create awareness on the market. Before people start talking about your social media they need to be aware of it. Digital marketing has tools to increase awareness. It has the right set of available options that will help you reach your goals and it's cost effective too.

Few concrete digital marketing solutions you can do to promote your social media network better:

1. Build your SEO strategy - SEO is equally important or social media network as to any other e-commerce site. There are  a lot of experts on the market that can help you in building quality SEO strategy that will not cost you much but increase the ranking and the online exposure of you business.
2. Use Lead Generation tactics - build a landing page and give free access to some premium features for free. This will help you build your database with leads which you can use later for newsletters and future cool updates about new functionalities. You may even try recent chatbots marketing strategies
3. Use another social network for promotion - Use your followers base to dig deeper and find out about their friends on other social media. Ask them to invite them manually. This means that you have to set an automatic invite system that can invite friends based on their email social media profile. It will really help in building your community.

With the numerous available resources today, creating a social media platform is easier than it was in the past. Doing a quality research is a must activity before you start with anything else. The right information can save your resources and time.

Written by: Antony Moturi

DJ | Social Media Specialist | Online Marketer | Content Creator | Sound Engineer