Blogs

Also called "The Social Media Scientist", Dan Zarrella shares boatloads of useful advice to help others achieve social media success.

His latest blog post was as fascinating as the finding he published The Science of Retweets. In today's post, he states that articles published/shared on Facebook in the course of the weekend are shared A LOT MORE than articles posted in the course of the week.

It kinda makes sense, if you come to think of it. Besides the reason Dan shares (that so many companies block Facebook to help with productivity), the weekend is also the time when we slow down, so we may catch up on the latest in the lives of our Facebook friends.

Anyway... just thought I'd share this useful post with you all, in the wake of the recent update to our networks integrating them with Facebook more.

Many Creators have noticed an increase in spam in the last couple of weeks on their Ning Networks. Starting around President’s day weekend we saw an increase in the amount of spam reported, reflecting an industry-wide increase, particularly from Canadian pharmaceutical companies.

What are we doing about it and how can you help?

We are aware of this issue and have been working hard to provide short term fixes for this increase and long term solutions to harden the platform against these trends. A lot of our work is in the background and not directly visible to Network Creators or Members.

That said, here is a run down of some of the features that you may see:

• We continue to tighten and refine our rules for identifying and removing spam accounts automatically, which you should see as a decrease in unwanted activity.
  

• We recently released the “suspend for spam” feature. We are now using this data to automatically disable accounts and analyzing it to help improve our ability to spot and remove these accounts more quickly.
  

• Last week, we introduced a Captcha feature for Ning Networks who do not use member moderation.
  

• We are working on a feature that will allow Members designated by the Creator to flag content and hide it from view...more details to follow.
  

We’re very aware of how spam affects Ning Networks and we are working hard behind the scenes to tackle this issue. In the next few weeks and months you should see significant improvements in our ability to block spammers before they hit your Ning Networks as well as new tools to help you manage unwanted content on your Ning Networks.

Martin Westhead (Martin runs the Spam and Abuse Prevention team at Ning).

Thanks to all the amazing Network Creators who entered our Ning + Austin contest! We’re thrilled to announce the three winners:

Swap Mamas is about getting to know other parents, making connections, and doing a little old school trading with friends. The more you give, the more you get.

Amped 4-a-Cure uses the universal language of music as the vehicle to deliver the message to the masses of the importance of getting behind the efforts of cancer research.

20 Something Bloggers has brought together thousands of bloggers from all over the world, and spawned a vibrant community of like-minded, fascinating people who thrive on one another's support and feedback.

Stay tuned – we’ll be announcing another Creators contest this Monday - open to every member of Creators!

I created whyleaveastoria.com nearly two years ago as a means for young adults to connect with their neighborhood. During this time, the site has become the most trafficked in the entire borough of Queens and one of the most heavily trafficked in all of New York City. Members have made countless new friends, businesses have prospered, and as we approach our second birthday and 4,000th member, our page rank keeps getting better and better.

However, we've now grown to a point where we have an exceptionally deep penetration into the target market of 25-35 year olds in Astoria. So now the challenge has become, rather than making the network bigger and not necessarily serve our target market as well as we could, lets make it better. In case you're curious, to us, better means:
1) More time spent on the site by users
2) More traffic via search (both of these equating to more advertiser dollars)

Over the course of the last two years, moderately tech savvy businesses have created user profiles for their restaurants, boutiques, dog walking services, etc. However, the issue here is, standard profiles often don't adequately address the needs of a brick-and-morter business.

Additionally, there is no effective way to filter or categorize proprietors from standard users in a generic site search. This is why I have created a new ranked business directory that will help my users identify the best establishments that meet their needs.

It's been a major challenge integrating this functionality into Ning--as the API can be a little frustrating at times when trying to access dynamic content and pull user information. However, after a year of planning (and mostly failing) my small development team and I were able to roll out a creative solution to allow users to create Business Pages featuring dynamic data pulled from my site, while still maintaining a direct URL that can be crawled by Google and deeply linked from other sources.

The first challenge to overcome here was creating a way to determine the logged in user. Once we could identify the user, we then needed to create the ability for them to build a new page on my Ning network. Once this functionality was created, we built in the ability for someone to become a fan of a page--giving us a database of users. Next, we built a form that could be embedded in an iframe that will allow the user to input a business name, address, photos, category, tags, and various other parameters. We also built in a conflict detector that will determine if a similar business is already in the directory. Once the information is submitted, it's sent to my database which then runs a chron job to post the new page to Ning.

Once a new page is created, users are able to rate and review any establishment, become a fan, add a tag, submit photos, request an edit, and even use the default Ning sharing utility to reach beyond the Ningosphere!

Now, business owners logged in as members of the site are able to "Claim this business", giving them the ability to attach their RSS feed to the business page (Twitter, blog, whatever), correspond with the page's fans, and view some simplified page metrics.

Coming up:

• When a member becomes a fan of a page, we know they like the business. When they rate an establishment four or five stars, we know they like it, too. This gives us the ability to make recommendations of other establishments they should also consider--based on peer review.
• Members of my site have actual membership cards that feature a magnetic stripe on the back uniquely identifying each person. When they make a purchase at a partner business in Astoria, the proprietor swipes the card--which hits my database to determine who the cardholder is, allowing the proprietor to issue a discount and us to track offline user activity. The discounts accrued over time (and nights spent on the town) are stored in my database and will be displayed on business and member pages--allowing our community to find out where was last night's most popular venue and also which members are saving the most money by staying local.
• Since we know certain categories and tags for business pages, we can target page advertisements to keywords like "brunch" or umbrella categories like "Restaurants"--giving us a much deeper ad inventory. Additionally, businesses we choose to feature will appear more prominently in search results and be recommended more highly in the suggestions.

The directory is still very much a work in progress, but was a very important first step in our growth--as now users will be maintaining and growing the site while we focus on making it better.

We launched this new feature on Friday and by Sunday had over 150 new pages submitted by users. In the last week, we've seen an approximately 50% increase in pageviews and anticipate this will continue to climb as more pages get indexed. This was a big win for my network and I look forward to adding even more creative solutions like this throughout the spring and summer.

Fellow Network Creators,

WaggleForce is a Ning Network that helps members collaborate with each other to create career clubs and get communities back to work. Vote for Waggle Force

Neighbors for Neighbors operate neighborhood-centric community-generate social networks that serve as a soundboard for voice and a springboard for action. Unlike Facebook, Neighbors for Neighbors connect people who live, work ans serve in their neighborhood with the purpose of brining people together offline to do things with and for each other. Vote for Neighbors for Neighbors

Growing a Ning Network by populating it with lots of members is often considered to be the Holy Grail for many Network Creators. As a result, we see Ning Networks that are so excited to grow — and grow quickly — that their invitation lists more closely resemble the population of a small country. But, as the saying goes, it’s about quality not quantity. The key to building a vibrant Ning Network is to attract people that will love to be part of it and regularly contribute. Think before you hit send; are these invitees likely to be active, engaged members? That’s why it’s important to invite the right connections and friends that share your passion. To reach them, we’re highlighting four simple ways to best share with and invite the people that can make your Ning Network stellar.

1. Be choosy

We give you an easy way to invite friends and family by importing your email address book from Gmail, Yahoo, AOL and Hotmail. While you may be tempted to invite all of your email contacts, it’s also important to appeal to the people you think will most enjoy jumping on the bandwagon. Sometimes, it pays to be choosy; otherwise you might accidentally invite your vegetarian friend to join the Griller’s Index.

2. Leverage your online presence

If you’d like to invite your friends from Facebook and Twitter, or include an invite on your blog, you can post or send an invitation link to join. This link will send them directly to your Ning Network’s sign up page. To grab this link, go to the Manage page and select Privacy. At the bottom of the Privacy page, copy the invitation link and share it wherever you have a web presence.

3. Personalize your invitation

Adding a personal note to a friend or highlighting your favorite part of the social network gives more context to any invitation. You can also include links to interesting things posted by members, which fosters engagement within your Ning Network.

4. Share what matters most to you

Your Ning Network might have hundreds of photos and videos posted by you and other members. Sharing the content that matters most to you is likely also meaningful to your connections and real-world friends. Look for the Share link available on most pages to spotlight compelling content through email or posts to online services like Digg. As we just announced, if you have Facebook and/or Twitter integration set up on your Ning Network, you can share content on these sites in just two clicks! This is a great way to draw people back to content you think is fantastic and it’s a nice way to tip your hat to members contributing positively to your Ning Network.

Many Network Creators and members have written to us recently through the Help Center and here on Creators reporting issues related to Search. I head up Ning’s Search team, one of the Agile Teams here at Ning, and we’re currently working hard to improve the search experience across the Ning Platform.

Right now, the Search team is developing a platform-wide Ning Network search in parallel with our ongoing efforts to improve in-network search. We’ve been working on both of these projects for some time now. Just last week, we made some major changes to in-network search, including hardware upgrades, that should ensure current and steady results. We’ve also heard a lot of feedback from Network Creators and members requesting that we bring back search for Ning Networks, and we want to make it better than ever! We have a release planned for this updated feature sometime in late March.

We appreciate your patience as we continue our efforts to revamp search. In the meantime, if you have any search-related questions or concerns about your individual Ning Network, we can help you through the Help Center. As always, our Advocacy Team is happy to help! They work closely with us in Search to make sure we stay on top of pressing issues and keep us posted with feedback received on Creators and through the Help Center.

Stay tuned for further updates on Search!

Thanks!
Brent

The BBC ran a great article about social networks holding local politicians accountable, and it features Harringay Online, a Ning Network by Hugh Flouch.

"The website was used to organise a petition to visit every local street likely to be affected by knock-on traffic.

"The council were just not listening to the community", he said. "By the end of that year we had 500 members. Now we are touching 2,500."

It's great to see Network Creators receiving recognition for their efforts, and the real-world change that comes out of Ning Networks. We hope to read more stories like this!

Ning Networks are "mini" Facebooks for different topics. They are social networks created around a central hobby, interest, lifestyle, etc... It's best to keep a "Facebook" attitude in mind when creating your network. In this post I'll show you the key steps to setting up and maintaining a thriving Ning network.

The Setup

• Sending the broadcast message at least twice a month (and no more) is imperative to encourage participation in the community.
• Keep the entire site open. This will increase visits from search engines.

Thought you would be interested to know that the site I run just won 'Best Healthy Lifestyle Website' in the Hantsweb awards.The awards are for sites in Hampshire and the Isle of Wight (UK). What I thought was great was that all the other sites were created by web designers etc but Ning was judged better than them!!http://newforesttransition.ning.com/profiles/blogs/food-challenge-site-wins

As you may know, Premium Support is one of the premium services we offer, which allows you to get quick turnaround for questions on your Ning Network. We offer three levels of support for various needs, from 24 hours to 4 for urgent issues. While we try to answer everyone's questions efficiently and reliably, we make it a priority to answer our Premium Support holders first. You can see a quick comparison of our Premium Support plans here, including how we prioritize issues.

Premium Support focuses on providing guaranteed time frames for responses to your questions. According to ourPremium Support Terms, we answer questions relating to issues you are experiencing, feature requests, and general usage and development questions. To clarify, we can help direct you where to find help on CSS or whether a Ning App is possible; we don’t have an in house team to design or develop Ning Apps for individual Ning Networks. That said we’re happy to suggest external firms who do provide this!

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact the Ning Help Center. And if you already have Premium Support purchased, be sure you are signing in with the account and Ning Network covered under support!

Thomas Knoll writes a brief but meaningful post with one simple tip: talk to your customers.

Now, I'd replace customers with members as it relates to Ning Creators, but the concept still stands. Specifically, Thomas points out the importance of finding out when and where your members are when using your Ning Network (product). And, what are they doing immediately before and after (ie, what triggers their visit)?

We've discussed the topic of when people visit your Ning Network here. It's important to think of this in context then - are your members at work, home or elsewhere? What else might they have, distracting them (perhaps rightly so) from your network? What sort of impact does this have on what content you are serving and when you first add it to your Ning Network?

To bring it back to his basic point, talk to your members to find out answers to these questions. It will help you be a better manager and potentially drive even more traffic!

Leave your thoughts on this below, including ideas on how and where to reach out to members!

Laura

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

I stumbled upon a very interesting type of content, today. I had a client request a custom design that is similar to thisis50.com. This is not the first time I've received this request, by far. Beats the heck out of me, but a lot of people love the design. I think mostly, they can't see beyond the popularity of this particular site. I think they think, if I have a design like thisis50, I'll get a 1/2 million members, too. But, that's beside the point.

I took a long hard look at thisis50, longer than ever. In fact, I don't know that I've ever stayed on a Social Community Site outside of my own, and technical sites, than I did on thisis50. I simply could not stop reading, or watching videos. Not many sites could get away with their approach - - black, white, not. But, if you're clever enough, you could apply the same principle, with your content type in mind.

Here's one of the reasons the site is so popular, aside from the fact that it is the one and only: "thisis50", and beside the fact that it's filled with sexy male and female members, it's their content - - and the "style" of content that gets the traffic. Notice I used the word "style", not "type". Bottom line: A lot of the content is controversial, and drives "passion".

The team who administrates thisis50.com, obviously, on a daily basis - - do their homework. They post baiting and controversial content. And let me get controversial for a moment, in this blog posting. It's practically a breeding ground for heated discussions. To be politically correct, let's just say, a lot of the content is: "he said", "she said", "not".

Here's how it's done. Videos and Blog topics are posted that start HUGE topics of conversation - - fighting, yaya'ng, back/forth, competition, etc... If you apply the same principle, but with your topic of expertise, you will get more hits, and eventually more new traffic. I don't think the content has to spur "word wars". Just come up with content that is so enticing about your site topic, that your members feel compelled to react - - "react", the critical word, here. Make it the type of content that brings out the passion in your members - - whether it's about politics, activism, favorite authors, etc... Like I mentioned earlier, you're going to need to be clever about this.

Take these lessons, throw in a positive spin, based on this "proven" success story, and add interesting and compelling content!

And here's a fun note: I'll probably get reaction and passionate response to this blog. ;-)

Today on the Ning Blog we highlighted a couple of new programs we think will add to the great insights we see here on Ning Creators. Take a look at the post for more information about these programs. I've included a quick recap below as well:

The Network Creator Council Program - This program is made up of a group of active Network Creators like yourself with whom we periodically discuss upcoming feature releases, brainstorming sessions, and other targeted input sessions. We’re going to purposely limit membership in this program to a group of roughly 100 members so we can really dive into each of the topics we review. We’re including Ning Networks of all sizes and types in this program so we can be sure to hear a variety of perspectives. Here’s a bit more about how the program works:

1. Council members are invited to Palo Alto for a 1-day "Summit." The goal of this Summit is for Ning to learn more about participants' Ning Networks, tell them how the Council program works, and gather their feedback on a series of upcoming features and other things we're working on.
2. After the Summit, we conduct regular conference calls so we can get more input from Council members on new topics or changes we've made based on Network Creator input.
3. Finally, we also have a private Ning Network that we host for the program to ensure we keep the lines of communication open with the Council members. As with the Summits and Conference Calls, information from this Ning Network is kept confidential and is not divulged outside of the Council program so that we can maintain the privacy of our Council members and our own product development where it makes sense.

If you're interested in participating in the Council program, feel free to email us (ning-research@ning.com) with your name and Ning Network url. As I noted above, participation is limited, so we can’t guarantee you’ll be invited into the program, but we definitely want to hear from Network Creators who are interested in providing constructive input.

Quarterly Online Survey - Last month, you may have seen an invitation from Ning to participate in a brief online questionnaire. This 11-question survey is a way for us to regularly measure how we're doing along several key attributes in the Network Creator experience. We'll be keeping regular tabs on this data throughout the year as we strive to create the best experience for you and your Ning Networks.

Through the discussions here on Ning Creators, we've learned a lot about you and your experiences. We look forward to opening the lines of communication even further with these two new initiatives.

"For me I see how easy it is to get caught up in the exciting side of the business, e.g. the technology, the platform, the shiny, bleeding edge new feature. But from my experience the way to make an impact is absolutely on the strategic planning and organizational development side of things. It’s not sexy and it’s certainly not easy, but ultimately the real impact if you work on the brand side is found through fundamental organizational transformation."

So says Jordan Williams, Manager of Digital Engagement at REI. I completely agree that this is the more difficult and time consuming aspect of community management, whether on a national level or smaller group. :)

One of the great features of Ning, is that creating networks is easy and free, which means you can create test Ning Networks. This is something I always encourage, to provide a place to test out changes to design or format. In terms of planning and organization, the test network can also be used to scope out goals for the main network, brainstorm or discuss issues that come up. An alternative is to have a private Group on the primary Ning Network for this, though that provide a bit less freedom in testing ideas.

I'd argue that representing a major brand like REI brings its own challenges and expectations. However I encourage all to read this interview of a seasoned Community Manager!

We're excited to be heading to Austin, TX in March for the SXSW Interactive conference, March 12-16. While we're there, we'll have a booth on display at the SXSW Tradeshow during the day, and will be sponsoring the {RV}IP Lounge at night throughout SXSW Interactive.

While we're in Austin, we'd also love to meet up with any Network Creators that are either attending, or live in the area. Please let us know in the comments below if you'll be around!

We've collected Ning Networks that have inspiring design here in the past. Here's a post on Socialbrite, where LauraO shares some of her favorites. The collection includes Ning Networks focused on commercial efforts, those that are non-profit based, as well as a couple making best use of the Groups feature.

Some will be familiar, but there are definitely a few Ning Networks new to me!

What do you think of those mentioned? Which do you think should be joining as a best-designed Ning Network?

We recently concluded a very successful online survey of our members on our social network for people interested in finance and investing, and would like to share with other Ning creators why we did it, how we went about doing it, and what we learnt about our network.

Let's start off by explaining why we did it. We did it for the simple reason of wanting to get to our members better, and find ways to grow our network by understanding how to serve them better. While we were getting lots of qualitative feedback through constantly interacting with members who were active on the network on a one-to-one basis, we also wanted to reach out to the sizeable population of registered members and non-registered visitors who are less active in discussion forums and networking, but were still visiting our network regularly just to browse content.

How we went about doing it? We set up our survey using a 3rd party survey software provider. We used Survey Monkey as it met our needs best, but there are tons of other providers out there such as Survey Gizmo and Poll Daddy, to name a few, each offering their own online survey tools that you may find better and / or more suited to your situation.

We then set out an invitation to our members in our weekly newsletter (followed by a reminder email a couple of days later), but what really helped us drive responses was the incentive of a free ebook download, as well as a chance to win a small cash prize.

When we were done collating and analyzing the final results of the survey after we closed it, we also made a choice to publish the results to our members and the general public, as we felt that that was another way to communicate with our members and not ring-fence what was essentially our member's contribution and work.

Besides, as the survey results were generally positive, we also felt that publishing our results helped us in our marketing - it reinforced the credibility of our network as a place for like minded people to come to for authentic, unbiased and quality finance and investing content and interaction.

So what did we learn about our network and its members? A lot of the discussion posts on our forum were started by college students studying finance, which led us to initially believe that we should prioritize our attention and extend our out-reach programs further with the student audience. However our intuition and common sense always told us that there were probably lots more employed professionals than students out there who were interested in the finance and investing content we had to offer on our network.

Sure enough, we found from our survey that over 80% of our members were in full-time employment, and virtually all of them have a bachelor’s, graduate or professional degree. As a matter of fact, graduate or professional degree holders represent two thirds of the respondents. This finding dispeled notions that our network was only for students, and in fact reached out to a much broader professional audience.

Why was this happening? While younger students are the most active in the forum and are certainly the most visible part of our audience, it is clear that the significant bunch of older employed professionals out there were simply sitting back and silently observing all that was going on on our network. Taken in context with the qualitative feedback we’ve received, we guessed that it’s not a matter of all take and no give, but perhaps more a matter of familiarity with social media and the perennial issue of the time that our members could allocate from their busy lives to active social media participation on our niche network.

So that wraps up our post about how we conducted a successful online survey on our Ning network, and if you have comments or feedback to share, please leave a comment and I'll try to respond as soon as I can.