Increase your member growth with a Super Brand New Way to Invite.

[Garfield Creator]

A whole new approach and new tool to growing your network.
When you are looking to grow your network you can come up with some pretty creative stuff as some creators have done here. I am about to take the something that is no longer used here on Creators and turn it on it's head. If you can follow my logic you may see why this would help grow your network - maybe even to 10,000 members in 3 months or less.

The Invite Method used successfully by Facebook and many other social networks.
Remember the "Invite" tab? It allowed your members to send an invite to their friends through  gaining access to their email address book so they could choose who to invite. A script would actually ask them to enter their email username and password (WTF? I know ). Apparently this helped Facebook grow really fast. A lot of social networks used this kind of script including Ning. It's a 1 to many approach. As each "1" member joins they have an opportunity to invite "many" in their email address book. In fact, below is the kind of html email invite their friends would get. I had to send one to myself to investigate what could be done to improve the process.

I invite you to take a look at this.

This is an invite makeover I took some time to work on. One of the things you'll notice is that it has been updated to include the new social sign in options (Something the last invite wasn't updated to take into account) This is very important because there is a certain segment of the population for whom social sign in would make a difference in their choosing to join your network.  What is different?

• I took out the members photos (Unless those members will be recognized by the person being invited they are just colorful pics)
• I took out stats info about the network. (A new network may not want to show they have 5 members and 2 discussions).
• I switched focus from the person doing the inviting to the Network. We are niche communities. The community should hold enough interest to the person being invited. 
• Also the message in the footer is a further call to action for the invitee to continue sharing the invite that is now generic enough to pass on and not limited to the person initiating the invite.

This invite will allow you to customize the text for both key site bullets & "About" section as well as the images. In this way you have full creative freedom in how you share your network. You can just copy the html below and paste it to the HTML Tab of your Broadcast message window then click the Visual editor and replace with your own text

This is where you can really make this invite shine because you can really detail out why someone should join your network more than ever before.  I really feel this is something new and useful for any network and you can see the clear logic behind it. It's actually simpler and too the point. This is an invite I sent to my email inbox showing how the invite would look like. The html is attached to this discussion.

Instructions

• Copy the attached code to the HTML Tab of your Broadcast Message. 
• Flip back to the visual editor tab and admire it for a few seconds before editing the text for you network. 
• Send yourself a preview. It's that simple.

The actual html is below. If someone actually prefers to fill out a form fot the text and images I will have one available on my other network but it is probably just as simple to edit inside the Visual editor of the broadcast message.

Context and overview and Logic

You are basically sending your members a broadcast message with an invite template that they can forward to people in their address book. Given you let your members know ahead of time that this is what you plan to do in a future broadcast message you can enlist their help to spread the love and grow your network. Benefits to your members:

• They don't have to enter their username and password in a script to access their address book. THEY ARE ALREADY THERE! All they have to do is hit forward and add as many people as they want.
• They can customize the forwarding text to add their own unique pitch to their friends about why your network is so cool to join. This takes care of "Social Proof" as one of the Network Creators mentioned below.
• The Social Sign in buttons are instantly recognizable to potential members. You may need to customize for which ones you use on your network.
• Those potential members can themselves continue to spread the word by forwarding the invitation as you suggest in the footer.

I recommend you get your own social sign in buttons. I will be deleting the ones in this template since the draw on the server where these image are hosted may be too much if everyone and their mother uses this.

You can download them yourself at from this site (PSD files), create your own or right click and save these images and upload them to your Network to get the image URLs. You can use my images to see how it would look for a few days but you'll want to get your own images because if I delete mine (which I will) your invite template will not show the images.

If you would like more creative ideas like this join my group here on Creators called "Creator's Dashboard"

I also run a pay network for Creators called Creator's University. I invite you to join. One of the reasons I can share something like this which seems like advice some would pay for is that as good as this tip is I have even better ones in reserve for my network. Stuff I will never share on Creators for several reasons and my members wouldn't wan to share either because they will be that much more ahead of the game. Join if you want and don't you don't want to.

If you have any questions about this invite or anything else leave a comment.

A network creator has already used this for their network and even customized it and made it their own which I love.

[Sylvia Hysen]

Did you manipulate the code Garfield has in the link, or did you use the generator from Creator's University, Ken?

Looks great.

 

[Garfield Creator]

He definitely manipulated it. However, I like it so much I might just create a form with a drop down menu to choose different types of invite formats.

[Sylvia Hysen]

+1...love, love, love options. That would be great.

[Ken Rich]

Yes, I tweaked it here and there. Used my own saved pics too of course.

I had that long banner and wanted to make room for it.

Plus, I wanted a short readable description, rather than statistics or highlights.

It's basically the same thing though.

[Janettee McCrary]

I'm still working on mine, but I took both your ideas and I'm working on two pages - Invite and Join. (Which I see you did as well.) I intend to fill one with reasons to join and then a "Join" button. Thanks for sharing this idea!!!

[Ken Rich]

Hi Janette - I just signed up to your network.

Could you please show me how to create the scrollable window for the code. I am showing codes for custom widgets but I do it in an "ugly" way.

What I see on your Invite page looks way better than what I do.

[Janettee McCrary]

Ken, thank you! I've been offline most of the day, but I will approve you now.

Yes, I can show you... But it will be a few days, as I'm about to head to bed and I'm working all day tomorrow and Friday and about half of Saturday.

I'm glad you liked it:)

[Ken Rich]

I've taken this concept a step further. I embedded my custom code into a page and shared it on Facebook, Twitter, and others. Invitation Page

This works great with the built in tools on pages - couldn't be easier really.

Not only that, on Facebook the link picks up the picture and description (looks really slick). My Facebook

If someone clicks it, they land on the page and see that big "Click to Join" button, instead of hunting around the crowded home page looking for the join option.

I think this is going to be my preferred way of inviting someone in the future. Thanks a bunch.

[Sylvia Hysen]

Damn, Ken...you really did a great job of customizing Garfield's concept. I love the created landing page idea, and your art design ties in so well.

This works great with the built in tools on pages - couldn't be easier really.

I would love to learn your step by step process. Did you customize a template from the NING design studio? Did you create a page in Dreamweaver? Then... where did you insert the code for both 1. the page design and 2. the actual linked invitation from Garfield.

Thanks, Ken, for sharing this. I'm just now focusing on community building and you just elevated the whole package. 

-Sylvia

genyhub.com

[Ken Rich]

1)Well I basically downloaded the button pics and uploaded them to a note to get my own URL's.

2) I already had that custom made banner on the left, so it was only a matter of grabbing the address.

3) I copied and pasted the code (invitecode.txt) into my message broadcast window and switched the pic url's. Then I just played around a bit, deleting, adding, stretching - until it looked good to me.

4) I saved it to my own note, so that after sending it out to all members, I could also use it for a Invitation Page.

I have another page where people can get the actual code - HERE

I made that code page because I have yet another page where I showcase custom viral widgets that link to my site - this is now one of them. They each have their own code page.

Sounds confusing until you visit - it's really quite simple. Hope that helps.

[Tiffany Lane-Crane]

This is awesome Ken!!! Love the personalization. BTW, I joined your network, love it ;)

[Ken Rich]

Thanks - glad you like it.

I think you were asking about the overall "skin" too. That is a modified skin package I bought from the "Ning Master". The name of his site escapes me at the moment.

Basically, it's all done by a pasted in CSS code. I just had to modify the images, to "baptize" it and make it suitable for a Christian network.

I don't use the Ning Design studio at all - it's completely by-passed by the code.