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members (5)

From the ground up, Ning, Facebook & Your Hustle.

Posted by Swurv on February 12, 2011 at 9:37am in
Engaging Your Community

I know there have been post on why not to send your users to facebook and I may have mis read or not understood but one thing I know for sure is that we are starting to see more members and people actually blogging more on our site then ever before. In the last 2 days we got 11 people to join. We have been trying hard to control the spam so I would say maybe 2 out of the 11 could be spammers but most we can see that they like our page on facebook. 

Make it simple and put in the work to talk to people who like your page on FB, invite them to join your Ning site. With the new like page profile update you can see and do allot more. Everyone who likes our page we "TRY" to send them a thank you and to check out our NING site. On our ning we ask how did they hear about SwurvRadio and guess what they say :) not myspace....If you don't put in the work to get people to your site stop complaining about nobody coming to your site. I'm personally up at 6am daily promoting, engaging and networking...We are not even close to this is 50 or sites like that but I can see the fruit of my team as well as my labor. 

I can't remember this guys name but he was a great programmer that I met in SF years ago at some apple convention and he said "if you don't break it your not gonna know how to fix it" Basically try everything...look at what other sites are doing and do what they are doing but make it your own. Do it better. Try something different do research on your competitor, google 100 sites like yours and look at what they are doing and see what you can do to stand out. 

When we first started I had over 200 employees and I personally spent more money developing Swurv over that past 6 years than I thought I would. Paying a programmer thousands for a site that never got developed I had to think how can we have some sort of online presence and along came NING. We aggressively put our site together and within days we have almost 2-300 people join and it went nuts from there. But that wasn't because we didn't Hustle. We got out and promoted with flyers and word of mouth and just about anything we could do to get where we are today. I can honestly say I'm almost as excited about The new ning as I was when we first got on the platform. Whatever kind of site you have, if you believe in it...DO NOT WAIT FOR PEOPLE TO COME TO YOUR SITE, MAKE THEM! GO GET EM! BREAK SOMETHING & figure out how to fix it..You might Discover something new.  

I know I'm rambling now but I hope this helps anyone struggling with there site. I always tell my djs "I would rather have 1 really good dj than 35 who don't do Shit" How many ever members you have treat them like they are #1 and they will bring people to your site"

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How to export your members to a CSV file

Posted by Joseph Porcelli on April 2, 2010 at 7:00am in
Marketing Ning 2 Archive

Fellow NCs,

Once a month we do an export of our members and import them into our CRM database. We do this for two reasons:
  1. So we have a back up our members locally.
  2. We run queries against donations made by email and name (we are a non-profit), and based on profile questions answer, invite members to groups and events that might be of interest.
Here's is how to export your members:
  1. Log into your network as either the Network Creator or a user with Administrator rights.
  2. Go the Manage tab and under "Manage your members" section click on Members button.
  3. On the bottom right hand side of the members page click on Export All Member Data (.CSV)
Depending on the size of your membership you either be prompted to..
  • "Click OK to start the export. If you have a lot of members, the process might take a few minutes.",
Or, if you have lots of members you'll get a message that says..
  • "Click OK to start the export. We'll send you an email with instructions for downloading the data as soon as it's ready."
Let me know if you have any questions or suggestions.

Joseph
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The importance of saying "Welcome"!

Posted by Manny Hernandez on February 23, 2010 at 3:59pm in
Engaging Your Community
Take 1:
One night, you go to a party in a place you haven't been to before. You enter the house and everybody is going about their business... you go in, have a drink get some food and still nobody talks to you... eventually, you leave.

Take 2:
One night, you go to a party in a place you haven't been to before. You enter and, no sooner have you finished opening the door you are greeted by someone, bidding you welcome! You are shown where things are (not that you couldn't find the food or the drinks by yourself, but you get the idea...)

Which party would be more memorable to you?
I hope you answered "2". :)

This is the basics of the idea behind treating your members as guests in a party where you are the guest. While your network is small, this is a task that you should do yourself.

There are some networks that are well over 10,000 members in size and still the network creator takes it upon him/herself to greet every new member, but there's a chance this may become a bit overwhelming. So, in cases like these, I am going to recommend you set up a group of members to help you with the task.

On TuDiabetes (and EsTuDiabetes) we created a Welcome Committee (which later evolved into the Care Team). Nowadays, it's a group of 122 members who take turns to greet new members, show them the link to the Welcome Center (we call it the New Member Guide) and answer any immediate questions they may have. The group has evolved into a team that comes to the "rescue" if any of our members seem like they are in need of extra support (since ours is a network for people touched by diabetes, health issues appear left and right).

Typically, members will feel welcomed AND grateful to have entered a space where they were not only alone (clearly in the first party you were not alone, were you?) but they didn't FEEL alone, which is VERY important!

Here is a video we did inviting people to join in the Welcome Committee and telling them how to go about welcoming new members:

Find more videos like this on TuDiabetes

P.S. As you will notice in the video, another way in which a Welcome Team can help you is by keeping an eye on new members.
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Explain your network search system to members

Posted by Peter Matthews on February 20, 2010 at 6:26am in
Success Stories Tweaks & Quick Tips

Recently I have worried a lot about the network search system on my Ning network.

We have technical problems that may be inherent to all social networks, not just our Ning networks. The technology for searching inside networks that have new information added continuously is not very advanced, and this is general, not just at Ning.

So now I have written a blog post trying to explain -- in simple language -- how the search system works on a Ning network, for the benefit of my members.

See:

http://cooperative.ning.com/profiles/blogs/our-website-search-system

I have also described a couple of alternatives to using the Ning search (which I like very much, when it works).

I would be happy if other Network Creators can adapt my explanation to their own situation. And I would be happy for any advice on how to improve the explanation I have given.

Thanks, Peter

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