Tony Idem of BlackTree TV explains how they use exclusive video as a key differentiator — including red-carpet-style interviews — to help drive activity on their community of movie lovers. Visit BlackTree TV.
Scott Sandland attracted a few key groups to share an online space. It’s a place for experts, learners, and mentors — as well as a place for consumers looking for authentic, no-nonsense information about hypnosis. Visit Hypnothoughts.com.
Sophie Martin found her hook right in her own neighborhood. After searching for fun sights and sounds in her newly adopted city, she decided what Albuquerque really needed was a website where everyone could share their passion for the city. Visit Duke City Fix.
What’s the single most important thing you can do when launching your Ning Network? It isn’t adding snazzy CSS, tricking out your home page or inviting your entire address book. Before you ever do any of that, you need to define the hook for your Ning Network: Why will people join, contribute content and interact with other members? What is a compelling enough reason for them to come back to your Ning Network… every day?
If you launch your Ning Network around a general topic but fail to define a hook, you may drive a lot of visitors to your Ning Network, but few will join. Or you may succeed in signing up members, but few will contribute content. Either way, eventually visitors and members will stop coming back. Think about the people you want as members of your Ning Network, as well as those that you don’t and craft a hook that generates passion with the right crowd.
Do this
- Use visual elements: Brooklyn Art Project is a Ning Network for artists both in Brooklyn and around the world. While their logo stays consistent, the imagery in their header reflects the ever-changing artwork of their members. Choose a logo, font, images and colors that show members what your hook is.
- Explain it on your Main Page: Some hooks are more complicated than others. For example, 29 Gifts is a Ning Network for people who have the goal of giving 29 gifts out, 29 days in a row. If your Ning Network’s mission is a little more complex, write out your mission in a Text Box.
- Elevate critical features: Which one-to-two features are most important to your hook? Are they near the top of your Main page? Launchpad INW is a regional, professional networking site to help people build business relationships using both online and offline events. Not surprisingly, members and networking events are the top two features on their Main Page.
- Rename features to fit: The Kreg Jig Owners Community is a place for passionate customers of this woodworking tool to share projects, tips and advice. Derek Balsley, the Network Creator, used the Language Editor to rename his photo albums “Projects” and made it the third tab on his Main Page. He also renamed the Blog feature. Now, it’s “Product Reviews”.
- Tell new members what to do: Often the easiest way to communicate the benefits of participating on your network is simply to tell prospective members what to do first. Lost Zombies points prospective and new members to a “Get Started” tab with four fascinating pages that set up the context of their network: to “create the world’s first community-generated zombie documentary.” they provide detailed instructions that shows how anyone can contribute.
Don’t do this
- Be all things to everyone: If you try to appeal to too many different groups of people with your Ning Network, you risk not engaging with any of them. It’s best to carve out your own niche. If you created your Ning Network around a broad topic, brand or cause, define how you want your community to engage around the topic.
- Make it all about you: You are awesome — there’s no denying that. You may have thousands of fans who would visit your Ning Network to read or view anything you contribute. But why would they contribute their own content or interact with other members? For artists, celebrities, teachers, consultants and other figures, it’s extra important to define a hook that’s about more than just numero uno.
Is Brooklyn Art Project a gallery? A neighborhood experiment? A group blog? It’s all that wrapped into one. If you care about cutting-edge art — or are an artist who wants to get noticed — this is the crowd to get to know (and impress). Of course, for this Ning Network, it’s all about the art. They seriously showcase member-contributed content. They even go so far as to put their members’ art directly in their header. They always have their own logo incorporated into the image, but they make a bold statement by doing it this way: This space is devoted to member creativity.
There are a lot of great ideas for how to give back to the world, but many of them feel tough to accomplish. Giving away a simple gift every day for a month (just about anything counts) and reflecting on it as you go is a simple, doable, attainable goal. That’s the premise behind 29 Gifts. Their hook is deep, so they must go deep and explain it. New-comers are presented with multiple opportunities to click through to their About section, where they can read an excellent origin story and watch videos that explain and promote the simple — but profound — idea behind 29Gifts.
It doesn’t get more niche than this. Ooooby (“Out of our own back yards”) is a New Zealand-based group of food enthusiasts who seriously dig local veggies. If you’ve ever eaten a warm tomato while standing in a back-yard garden, you’ll feel right at home on Ooooby. Since this site is all about thinking locally (it doesn’t get much more local than your back yard), they’ve chosen to organize Groups both by topic and by region. This works well for them and fosters a wider range of discussion — from the sharing of canned tomato recipes with everyone to the sharing of specific observations about soil composition in the Auckland metro area with your neighbors. Both drive participation.
Rapper 50 Cent’s Ning Network carries his name, but it’s about way more than the music on the stage. Instead of being a simple fan site, it’s an online magazine powered by 50 Cent, G-Unit Records and their most passionate fans. It’s an online, hip-hop TMZ spotlighting new artists and relevant news. It has allowed 50 Cent to expand his brand beyond music, generating 15 million page views a month and a host of new revenue streams in the process. They create quality, magazine-like, regularly updated content and spark discussions by delivering not just news, but gossip. And they’re not afraid to promote — including their friends, artists and products.
