SockNet Austin

We had a great Bootstrap Marketing Swarm meeting last Wednesday. We focused on a Social Network and had good attendance, despite my sloppy communication.

NOTE: The next Marketing Swarm is on Wednesday, April 4 at 6:30pm. Details >>

Shelley Chan of OakTreeIdea introduced her Christian-oriented social network to the group. She currently has 4000 registered users. She is generating revenue via advertising, and all of her advertising clients have come by word of mouth. The site has been up for 6 months, but she only purchased it 1 month ago.

Infrastructure
OakTreeIdea was built on Cold Fusion. Shelley uses StatCounter and Google Analytics to measure the site's activity. Shelley makes good use of interns to build the site.

Marketing
Shelley focuses on placing profiles on other social networks such as MySpace. She reasons that this is where she'll find socially networking oriented users. She also believes in press and aligning herself with Christian music venues.

Communicating Purpose and Vision
The first challenge she faces when a new visitor arrives is communicating the vision and purpose of the community. Currently she uses a "flash rotator" at the top of the page that provides images and text to communicate the purpose and vision.

It was recommended that she consider bringing some of her content to the front page. The community is centered around questions of faith and there are some provocative questions that would grab visitors... and communicate the mission of the community.

Voting on Content
The question then becomes, how to choose which content to bring to the front page. Voting is the way many sites do it, such as Digg and delicious. The point was made that you don't want to top voted content on the home page. It's often the most controversial, gamed or confused. Instead look for the top 80% to 90% range where more on-target conversations will be found.

Most Visited Features
Ironically, with all of the social network features she has, it's the forums that are the most visited feature. OakTreeIdea has a beautiful design for its forums, a refreshing change from the open source forums that are functional, but ... typical.

Shelley would like visitors to use more of the other features, like Godsecrets (a spin on Post Secret) which is a Blogger blog nicely integrated into the site; or Photorocket.

The point was made that these are the seeds of the site, like the small amount of pure silicon crystal that is used to grow the 8 foot tall silicon columns from which wafers are cut to make microchips. Exercise them to bring others and engage other in the site. They are the influencers (or influencials); they like to take things and make them their own and then tell their friends.

The Importance of Email and Invitations
We talked a bit about the importance of the invitation process and how important email is critical to building community. OakTreeIdea has a very robust invitation system allowing you to access your Gmail, Plaxo, and others. It is critical that we provide lots of ways to invite others, and that our members know that their invitees will be well communicated with.

Invitation emails should be clear about the site's vision, should allow the inviter to add comments. The process of coming to the site and joining should be head-banger easy (you could do it by simply banging your head on the space bar).

Then you need to hold each invitees hand to help them get accustomed to the site. Spend lots of time on your outgoing emails. For OakTreeIdea, the inviter should get an email when the invitee joins up so that they can them point the newbie to cool things.

Despite the very cool import feature, OakTreeIdea doesn't provide many ways to simply type in an email address. Each page (and possibly each post) should have a "Share with a friend" button. There are none here!

You should also look for every opportunity to send valuable email to your community. On OakTreeIdea, they could send you an email when someone posts to a forum on which you've commented or when someone responds to a question. You should get an email when someone comments on your profile. Members should receive a regular email with pointers to cool new content.

As I was researching for this post, I noticed that I had 2 new friend requests, a reply to a post I made and a comment on my blog. Now, I'm embarrassed to interact with these people because weeks have gone by. Send me an Email!

This will put rocket boosters on your community growth. But, always let the members change their email preferences.

Leading Visitors Through the Site
OakTreeIdea has several blank pages that should be used to move the visitor along to other valuable content. For example, when there are no photos in your photobook, you get a big blank page. Why not show some of the site's most visited photo books in this space? Same for blog posts. Guide the reader.

This is another great use for email. Send periodical emails that highlight one feature of the site and show exceptional examples on the site.

We talked for almost 2 hours, so this doesn't cover everything. All I can say is come to the next meeting!

Recommended book: Starfish and the Spider

Other social networks discussed:
Flixster

Design Inspiration:
Etsy.com
BoardGameGeek.com