Building a Social Network? You Need the Right Provider

Building a Social Networking community takes much more than just a great idea to be successful. Choosing a service provider for your site or building the site from scratch is one of the most difficult decisions to make.

You and your business partners have a wonderful idea you just know is going to work.  You've done the research, you have found a niche market and you are ready to rock.  You pool your money, plan your strategy, do a name search, buy your domain, create your logo and tag lines, get all your legal ducks in a row, maybe even go so far as to buy your business cards.   Now what?

Now you have to decide how to build this wonderful Social Networking site you just know is going to take off!

Social Networking has become the latest craze and many people are seeing some of the potential and benefits.

If you are considering starting your own, choosing a free social networking opportunity such as NING is a viable solution to get your feet wet. These sites offer the opportunity to build your own social networking site with the purchase of a domain name.

Now before you go looking up free sites, keep in mind that nothing is really free. You have to agree to have advertising on your sites of their choice, and for which they most often will receive all the benefits. You also need to become familiar with all the restrictions the free sites pose:

• how much is free
• when will you have to start paying for the traffic
• how soon before the bandwidth they offer free is used
• and how much is it going to cost to keep you going once you do find your momentum

In my opinion social networking is a good investment and this is a viable solution if you are looking to test the waters or if you have a local social club you want to link with the web. Just keep in mind, that if you do take off, you will need to come up with the cash.

If you are not the type of person who can build a site yourself, there are many factors you need to consider when you are sourcing this project. Just to mention a few:

Cost

Keep in mind that the estimates you receive may very well come in about 20-25% lower than what you will end up paying. That is not necessarily because your possible contracted provider is trying to 'stiff' you. It could easily be that you are not knowledgeable enough at the beginning to know exactly what you want.

Traffic and Bandwidth

At first this will not be an issue unless you have done a wonderful job of marketing the project before you decide to launch. But it can quickly become a real headache. Make sure you address these questions early.

• How well can your service provider handle a large increase in traffic?
• Can they handle spikes in traffic when you launch a special or receive a large increase in traffic because of promotions and marketing?

Connectivity

• What type of connectivity do they provide?
• How do they handle downtime, administration and maintenance?
• What is their track record for downtime?
• What type of security do they offer?
• What is their back up procedures and how will that affect you or your members?
• What web server do they use and how do they provide data integrity?

Customer Service

You will need to know what type of customer service they provide.

• Will making a call to have something changed cost you and how is that cost determined?
• Do they offer immediate 24 hour support for downtime issues?
• Who and how do you contact them?
• What is the expected response time?

These are just a few of the questions you need to keep in mind if you contract the building of your website.

Let's say you have done your due diligence and all of the preparation and are now ready to move forward.

You've registered your business name, you've developed your Terms of Use, Privacy Policy and maybe even a Code of Conduct. You've had them reviewed by legal, you've got the copy for your site content done and edited. You have decided if you are offering free memberships or different levels and what benefits your members will receive for each level of membership. You have determined if will you will offer a store of items and so many other questions. You've decided on each of those and need to find a service provider that can handle it all.

There are many options out there. So many that it is almost overwhelming. I've been there, done that, and have dealt the with headache of finding something that was not going to cost an arm and a leg.

I would like to offer one website for you to start your search. This particular site may not have what you are looking for. But I guarantee that if you read over their site, including the techy pages, that you will, at the very least, learn what to look for. They have answered most of the questions you will need to ask, and that is helpful to the person looking.

Personally I don't think you will find a better product at a better price. And from personal experience I have not found anything to remotely touch on the quality of customer service they provide.

Give them a look and even if you decide on using the "Free" options to begin with, you will learn some good information just from the sales portion of their website.

www.yourmembership.com

Your great idea and all the effort you have put into getting things ready, makes taking the time to research this aspect very important.

Don't let this be the stage that stops you.  Learn what you need to know.  Ask around, find others who can help guide you in the right direction.  Take the time.