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Shruti this is our first email in our series "Your Social Website" by Jay Roberts of www.spruz.com. The series is designed to increase your success with building, managing and growing a socially enabled community website for personal or business.
The internet is a great and wondrous place, with a few clicks of your mouse you can journey to places around the world within minutes. If you are like many others, building a website for people to visit and join can be allot of fun, build reputation, and even earn you an additional income source. If you are serious about building and growing your own whitelabel social community then continue reading, if not then you can find communities with your interests in mind by going to http://spruz.com/?page=spruz&cmd=search.
Getting Started
Building and growing a website takes time, patience and some dedication, but it does not have to be work. It should be fun and exciting, and the website should be about what you like to do.
The first key to creating a successful website is to think small. To often people try create social websites thinking they will be the next MySpace or Facebook. The need for those communities is already filled, but you can be very successful filling different more targeted needs, this brings us to the beauty of niche social networking and social websites. A niche is a smaller targeted group of people that may share your interests.
Now that you can take advantage of DIY (Do it Yourself) Social Platforms, you can create a community that will attract a strong following if done correctly. The great thing about a Social Website is once you offer your visitors something that they are interested in, those members will grow your site for you. All you need to do is define your website, setup the framework, add some information and begin using it.
You are asking now what do you mean "If Done Correctly"? Just like anything in life, making the least amount of mistakes and using your time effectively is very important. That is why we put together 5 steps to getting started with a social website from a person with extensive experience in the field, Jay Roberts Co-Founder of Spruz Inc
Step 1. Decided your focus
Your websites focus is extremely important, would you get in your car before knowing where you are going? Nor should you begin you website without first thinking about your target. What need is your site filling for your visitors through information, social interaction, and/or e-commerce channels.
Example 1: Lets say you want to create a website about dogs, Well there are already many sites about how to care for your dog, find a dog, etc. But there are not many sites about a certain type of Dog, So lets start with a website about German Shepherds. On Google over 250,000 people search just the using the term German Shepherds just last month. So when you begin building the site it should have information very focused about German Shepherds You can use the Google Keyword Tool to find search volume of a key term. Now just imagine if you just had 10% of those people searching using only the words German Shepherds clicking to your website that would turn into 1000's of dollars a month is just ad revenue. Important to note that search engines favor sites with very focused content and will rank higher then sites about many different things.
What's great about a focused site is people like Niche networks that are only about just want they are into and does not present them with information they just plainly don't care about, plus advertisers will pay you 10X more for advertising on a site that has a focused demographic of users.
You have filled your first need! By giving a place where people can meet and share their interest with other German Shepherd Owners. BTW there is not a social community online that is just about German Shepherds. This is just one example on how you can focus on just one small segment and in turn build a large following around it.
Step. 2 Setup your website and pick a good name you can stick with.
Rome was not built in a day, nether will your website. While getting your site started on the Spruz Platform is quick and easy, configuring it to your needs and focus will take a little time. The same goes for any other website platform, but Spruz is by far the most flexible for expandability for you. It is important that you pick a social platform and a domain name for your website and stick with it.
The single biggest mistake people make after they setup their website, they want to change it out or delete it and start over. DO NOT START OVER. If you get bored or tired just create a new website and come back to your first site later. Search engines rank your website first and foremost based on the domain name and how long your site has been up and accessible. To learn more about how to get a good ranking in Google, read our "How to get your site in search engines like Google" article that has some great information.
Step. 3 Add Information about the site
It is important that, when your German Shepherd Fans visit your website they need to know that your site is just about German Shepherds and nothing else. Don't worry about not being able to expand upon this later. All to often we see sites that get created and they miss the most important part (A Clear Description). Making your site description obvious to your visitors is very important! Your site description should be no more then a paragraph long, with maybe a link to your about us page for your visitors to read more about you, your website, and maybe a mission statement. About you and your site should not be something that is left out.
By making the description clear and telling others about your site clearly, helps you in 2 ways.
- When people find your site they can tell right away what this site is about.
- Search Engines Rank you higher and quicker if you have focused content.
Think about how you use the internet, how many sites do you visit in a day and what captures your interest to browse a few pages on a site you found. The goal is to keep your site visitors from bouncing. Bouncing happens when the visitor only visits one page of your website. We recommend adding Google Analytics to your site so you can see how long your visitors are saying and make changes.
Step. 4 Begin Adding Content - continue to do it regularly
Use the blog, photo and forums modules to build content at first, you must start using your site first before anyone else will. Make it a goal to spend 1 hour a week making some form of update to your website, This is often the hardest part, it is hard sometimes when we feel the only person we are talking to is the wall. However what you are doing is building content, letting search engines know your site is active, and when you post content it is automatically syndicated and used by our system, to assist you in getting traffic. If you are dedicated to adding blogs, forum posts, and images to your website regularly traffic will come! Trust me!
Future "Your Social Website" Series articles will go into more detail about content ideas you can apply to your website.
Step. 5 Spread the word!
This is the last key in getting building the success channel people to your site, that in turn will promote and grow it for you.
Here are 5 things you can do quickly, easily and for little to no $$ that will start opening the flood gates to your website.
- Invite your friends! We have built in inviting features that allow you to import your address book and send everyone a message with everything they need to know in order to get to your website and help you build content.
- Post your web address on your Facebook, Blog, twitter, and your other social places. This will let your friends know what you are doing and will help search engines find your website quicker. Remember every place you post your website address is another place for people and search engines to find you. Any place you are posting information to, try to mention your website address as a place where people can contact you.
- Put a free ad on Craigslist with information about your website, and why people should visit it. They have categories like services, and so on, that are for the most part free to post and will get a lot of views.
- Link Exchange! There are a lot of small sites that will exchange links with you if you ask them and you have information that would be useful for them to link to. In a lot of cases they will just add a link to their website without a link back from yours
- Advertise on Google or Yahoo Search, if you have a very focused website in the way of content and structure your keywords the same in your ad campaign, you can buy a lot of traffic for just 5 cents a click.
The key here is building your website about one interest you have and finding others that share that interest. It is all about you and what you are going to do. If you follow these Getting Started Steps, and you stay dedicated to your goals you are really off to a good start at building that successful website you are dreaming about.
If you would like to ask questions about this article then please visit the full post in our forums on our Spruz Support Community website. On twitter? Follow us at http://twitter.com/spruz
Good Luck and Best Wishes!
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