Back in 2004 I unknowingly created a private social network for my family. A few years later a coworker saw me using it and Zalongo was born.
This summer I was accepted into the 2013 class of the VentureSpur startup accelerator. This program has made me reconsider my service and given me a new perspective on what I have created. Here are 3 things I have learned from building a social network that can also help you build a great community around your product.
#1 – Have a Killer Feature
Of course! Don’t close that browser tab just yet. A killer feature can be way less than you think.
Think about Facebook for a second. What is their killer feature? If you look at just their “tangible” features, they have messages, photos and videos just like everyone else these days, but the real killer feature they have is stickiness.
I’ve watched my wife (who logs in with my account) scroll endlessly through the Facebook stream of life numerous times. I’ve also done the same thing myself which has led me to delete the app off my phone. I said I would stop checking it many times, but I keep coming back to just mind-numbingly browse people’s boring lives. It’s addictive. The photos, videos, and messages just enable the stickiness to exist.
If you’re a blogger, your killer feature may be something as simple as putting out a post consistently every Tuesday or having a very specific sense of humor that reaches certain people. It doesn’t have to be the perfect layout you’ve designed or which CMS you’re writing in. It just has to be killer enough for people to see more value in it than what someone else is doing.
#2 – Stop Dwelling on the Competition
This one hurts. It’s so easy these days. You’re following (or subscribing, or plusing, or whatevering) multiple techie blogs, and several times a day they do quick posts about who just raised a bagillion dollars or came up with the next killer feature. It’s overwhelming and hard not to get swept away in it.
Stay on target with your milestones or goals (you have these right?). Complete them and evaluate at that point. Occasionally you need to check over your shoulder to make sure someone is there, but don’t get caught rubbernecking.
Also, don’t blindly jump into new features just because your competition added the same thing. Be proud of what you’ve built and reflect that to your audience.
I’ve been marketing Zalongo as the “Facebook for Families” because people instantly recognized what I was building. It kills me to take this approach because I want to take ownership of what I have created and stop trying to compare it to something else. I know soon that this strategy won’t fly and I’ll have to change it.
Improve your customer service, write good posts or build awesome things. There’s plenty of the audience pie available for you to have a healthy piece too.
#3 – Small Changes are Big
We see what happens when Facebook shuffles their layout or Twitter requires you to get an API key — people complain, some may bail. Look past all that because these little changes are very important for your long term success.
I used to think making changes was just to keep people employed (ok sometimes I still do) but constant ongoing little changes create a layer of polish that adds professionalism to your product.
- Spending 5 minutes to tinker with the text color of your blog is worth it.
- Spending 15 minutes reading through your post for a fourth time is worth it.
- Spending an hour to make sure all the paddings and margins on your site are equal is painful but worth it.
Small changes like these take very little time and give you quick wins. It keeps you focused on your product and shows that you care about your users’ experience.
I have a specific Trello board setup with every idea or tweak that has come across my mind or been requested by others (you could us a Baton if you want to keep it local).
Set aside some time each week to critically look at your product or find some people who love to give their two cents and ask them to tear apart your service. Put all the ideas in one board and order them by the ideas that multiple people submit. Pick a few of the little ideas and fix them right away and write a blog about it for bonus points.
———
Thanks for taking your time to read this. I hope a few if not all of the items here can be beneficial for you no matter what your product or service is. Keep building great stuff and if you have privacy concerns about social media try Zalongo.
