Want to know how to create a social media website? Well, you’re not alone in your striving to derive maximum benefit from this potentially lucrative niche. Nowadays that social media are making massive inroads into people’s social and business life, more and more entrepreneurs are setting their sights on social networking site development, and for good reason. Being one of the most popular online activities of the 21st century, social media garner lots of attention not only from ordinary users seeking communication, but also policy makers, social activists, volunteer organizations, and businesses. Billions of active users constitute a huge living organism that generates colossal profits and help millions of people find their niche in the social media market. Want to know how to create a social networking site like Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn, but don’t know where to start? Below are some helpful tips that will walk you through the process of creating your own social media and instruct you in the subtleties of running a social media business.
# 1 Clear Your Doubts Before Making a Social Media Website
At the beginning of their quest towards creating a successful social media site, a good many entrepreneurs find themselves pondering the question: ‘Is my venture worth time, means, and time I’m about to invest in it?’ Or ‘Why do I actually need to develop a social networking site?’ If you’re also beating your brains out trying to figure out the answers to those questions, let us get it straight: you can make a good living in the social media business if you have the right attitude and develop the effective business strategy from the start. You also need to make a quality research to assess the potential profitability of your startup prior to starting with anything else.
Once you do your research, don’t hesitate to try your hand in developing online platforms that bring millions of users together and help them build virtual social networks. If you’re still hesitant as to whether you’ll be able to quickly get your business venture off the ground, trust the recent statistical data, according to which almost 73 per cent of all start-ups in the sphere of social networking website start reaching profitability within the first year. With this in mind, cast away the doubts that often interfere with the realization of the most fruitful business ventures and go ahead with realizing your plans.
And now it’s about time you learned how to build a social network website from scratch and make it profitable. Make sure to follow our recommendations to the point and launch your journey towards success right away.
# 2 Define Your Niche and Target Audience
First of all, you need to figure out who you are and who your customer is. We know it sounds lofty, but you’d be surprised at how few people actually can tell what their business is all about. Not to make the same mistake, you need to define your niche. It goes without saying that you can’t service all people. So, you need to figure out something original and non-trivial, something that will interest and intrigue your target audience and at the same time will be profitable.
You know that there are several types of social media networks you can choose from.
- Discussion Forums and Chats (Quora, Gamespot, Stack Overflow, Reddit). As their very name suggests, discussion forums aim to help users maintain conversation and facilitate discussions on a variety of topics.
- Consumer & Business Review Services (TripAdvisor, Consumer Reports, Angie’s List, Zomato). Such sites provide access to crowd-sourced testimonials and reviews of certain companies, products, apps, service providers, etc.
- Image and Video Sharing Networks (YouTube, Flickr, Instagram, Tumblr, SnapChat). These platforms allow posting and sharing different kinds of media on the web.
- Social networks (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn). On these platforms, users can reach brands and other users, establish online communication and build productive relationships.
So, if you set yourself up as a philosopher and cannot image spending a single day without sparking or indulging in a heated discussion, then you may be interested in creating a channel or starting a blog that will promote sharing opinions and news, discovering and discussing different kinds of information, etc. But if you’re more into entertainment, you may want to learn how to build a social media website geared to media sharing.
You also need to be able to see your target users willing to use your platform or app in your mind’s eye. This means you need to picture them, you need to know what they look like, what they want and expect from the product you’re going to create. It’s also critical that you take a reality check. Is it a profitable exercise you’re doing? Are your niche and your target working together to actually make money? If not, you want to come back and redress these items to make sure they’re profitable.
# 3 Define the Features
Knowing how to create a social network website alone isn’t enough. To ensure your site is a success, you need to take care to pack it with the essential features and functions.
You need to be fully aware of your target audience’s wants and need to decide on the features that are going to appear on your website. What procedures do you want your users to be able to perform? What can you do to ensure security of your users, as well as the privacy of data? Make sure to determine the type of data that will be circulating on your online resource, think through the implementation of the registration features, and sift through the available automation options to figure out which may best suit your needs.
Furthermore, you may need to hire a professional consultant that will help you define the platform, pick the company where you can create your own network, and finally select a particular building technology that will come a long way in ensuring your project’s success.
It’s also a good idea to do some research on the existing social media. Check what technologies other popular social media sites use and determine whether the similar tools and technologies can be applied for the creation of your own site.
# 4 Incorporate Must-Have Features
But there are the futures that are commonly considered must-have for any social media website. Take care to implement them when building your site from scratch and the success of your undertaking won’t be long in coming.
- Activity Stream. You won’t be able to create a social networking website if you fail to ensure that each and every user can keep abreast of what other users are posting, sharing, and commenting. Take care to build quality activity stream wherewith you’ll be able to boost your website’s popularity. You can opt for the activity tracker created by Drupal or opt for Joomla’s tools when creating your activity stream.
- Status Update Features. One of the most enjoyable things about using social media is the ability to keep others updated on your feelings, emotions, activities, and plans. So, never economize on status update tools. You can use out-of-the box solution like Ning or make use of such popular frameworks as CakePHP or Django.
- Data Viewing Features. Everybody wants to interact and be noticed, which is why so many people are using social media. Another important mainstream aspect of social networking websites is data viewing features. Make sure not to restrict your users to viewing only the most popular or recent stories. To boost the engagement level and attract new visitors you need to increase the visibility of the content circulating on your website. Providing access to different types of data, such as story views, history, or view time, will definitely pay off.
# 5 Attract the Right User
Undoubtedly, over time you’ll want to get your business to the next level, which is impossible without creating awareness on your market. Therefore, you need to use every possible means to reach the individuals that can become your loyal users.
Though you’re the one who intends to create a social media website, you may benefit a great deal from other social media. Use social groups. And we’re not talking only about Facebook groups which are usually the first to come to mind at the mention of social groups.
We highly recommend that you take advantage of Pinterest groups. They are essentially collaborations where a groups of people share links, images, and videos on a specific topic. You can identify the right board’s followers and reach them with your content. Don’t lose your chance to tell a wide audience about your upcoming project!
Furthermore, you can create a free resource or tool and promote the heck out of it. Knowledge is power and if you can make attaining knowledge easier, then all the power to you. It doesn’t have to be anything fancy, it just need to provide value. You can come up with a tutorial that will teach users how to create a social network. Of course, you want to tell your website’s story and provide links to your resource in your tutorial. Alternatively, you may create a blog where you’ll be outlining the benefits of your social media platform and convincing people to join the ranks of your followers. Also, don’t forget to cooperate with other portals that can help you promote the newly created website.
