Create your own social networks for free
You should certainly use them to market your home business website, it's an excellent tool for 'putting yourself about' on the web. What if you’d prefer to create your own community area rather than belong to an existing one - where do you start? And what if you’re trying to build your own community around your own website and you want to be the one who sets the rules? That’s where ning.com comes in! Ning is a website which allows you to create an online community area on any topic you please, and it gives you the option of photo galleries, video galleries, forums and blogs. It has a distinctive web 2.0 feel to it, which basically means it’s easy to use and navigate for non-teccies.
What puts the zing in ning?Firstly, here are a few examples of existing community based sites on ning.com:
I’ve selected three of the more accessible sites - there are some weird websites out there - but look at the difference in appearance between each of the three sites, they certainly don’t look like ‘off the shelf’ websites. I think that’s a pretty impressive look, and one worth exploring further.
So for instance, http://mombloggers.ning.com really ought to be a redirect from http://www.mombloggersclub.com. I found out the solution to this as I explored the site a little further. Having a custom URL is a Premium service … which means you have to pay extra for it. Having said that, look how well the site is doing without it, so who am I to speak?! Registering and setting up social networks on ning.comOnce you’ve registered, which is a quick and painless process, you just have to do a few basic things to join the other contributors on the site:1) Pick a name: Great web design tips 2) Pick a web address: greatwebtips.ning.com 3) Public or private social network: Public (but note you could have a ‘family only’ network for photos, news and blogs) 4) Tagline/Description/Keywords/Language 5) Select preferred layout … there are loads of really good themes to choose from and you can customise each one. You can also create customised CSS to determine the overall appearance of your website. 6) Select features from Photos, Videos, Forum, Events, Text box, Music, Groups, Notes, Blog, RSS, Gadgets. Having made those basic selections, you create your new social network … it’s as easy as that. Here’s the network I created in about 10 minutes: http://greatwebtips.ning.com/ I haven't done anything with this network, it's just sitting there, so just use it as an example of how easy it is to use ning.com if you think it might be for you. What's the thing about ning?
I think it’s a really impressive bit of kit … it makes me think that
no-one really needs to bother building their own websites from scratch
anymore, especially if all they’re after is a basic website.
The built-in forum and photo and video handling is excellent … and you don’t have to pay for the bandwidth (though note that your basic account comes with limited bandwidth and excessive use is a premium service). Also, if you want to use your own Google ads on the site ie ones that you get paid for, you also have to pay for that service as well. If you just want to run a small, niche site this is well worth a look. Even if you’re aiming for something a little more ambitious, this is still worth a thorough exploration, just read the small print about what additional services are going to cost you. One more thing I’d like to see on the site is the ability to bolt in existing blogs to the site, rather than having to write posts within ning.com. If social networks are your thing, and you'd like to have more control than the established providers like Facebook and MySpace give you, do check out ning.com as you might find it a really useful, free marketing tool for your home internet business. web2work shows you how to create an online community and share activities with others using social networking.
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