A Checklist: Before you select that White Label Social Networking Site
I’m getting asked a few times a week to recommend a White Label Social Networking Site by excited entrepreneurial or the corporate evangelist. I mainly get asked because of this list I made of the players, and my frequent commenting on the topic.
Given that there is over 60 of them, I don’t believe anyone has an accurate idea of which one ‘is the best’ and considering they are releasing upgrades are versions a few times a year, keeping up is a full time job, there’s where an industry analyst can step up and lead.
I can never answer you over email or over a single phone call, why? Because there are different tools for different needs. It would be very irresponsible of me to recommend SoNet without first understanding your business objectives, your community needs, and gathering your technological requirements.
Every company has different business, user and technology needs. I’ve observed that the different White Label Social Networking vendors are starting to segment into different strengths and focus, therefore there is no “perfect” vendor
So I recommend the following checklist before you get started on this very important decision (How important? This is the infrastructure for your customer base, you’d better choose wisely)
Questions to answer before contacting any White Label Social Networking site (feel free to add additional checkoff points below)
1) What business problem are you trying to fix? What’s broken? What does success look like (without mentioning features)
2) There are different tools for different problems, Are you sure a Social Networking site will fix this?
3) Where are your community/market/users currently?
4) Not sure? Then look again, don’t proceed farther until you find them.
5) Have you considered joining that community before creating your own? You know of the Walmart 10 week fiasco right? Trying to recreate MySpace doesn’t make sense because it already exists.
6) How open/closed to you want your community? Think about long term, does it scale?
7) What incentive are you creating with this SoNet that will drive users to your site and share?
8. How do you plan to kick start your community, you know that just because you build it, doesn’t mean they’ll come
9) Consider joining the Web Strategy Group in Facebook to meet other web decision makers, you’ll be able to ask questions in the forum.
10) Leave a comment below if you’ve suggestions.
I’m a big believer in using my blog (a one to many communication tool) to make my life efficient, so I may refer you to this post in request.
Consultants please read
Are you a consultant that focuses on evaluating, choosing, and implementing a solution? I encourage you to leave a thoughtful comment below that adds additional knowledge that will showcase and impress others, please no raw pitches. Perhaps add some addition points a buyer should look for.
9 Comments so far
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I think it is important for buyers to be mindful of the financial stability and business longevity of the White Label company they select.
If 60 companies have started operations in the past few years a portion of them can just as easily end operations.
And I completely agree with your question 8, for a kick start plan. A new channel for customer interaction needs to be marketed strongly to build interest and nurture interaction.
[…] Get input from others - perhaps on a wiki, an email group, or an in-person meeting. You need to gather input from supporters early on. This can be from around the company or just within your group/organization. The more people on board at an earlier stage the better chance of success. The moment you start to sway and cater to an exclusive audience or make the barrier to entry really high, the overall quality and user satisfaction of your platform will decline. Once your list of features is looking reasonble, then you can move into the social media product evaluation stage. […]
A few other questions to consider:
1) People follow the direction of champions, leaders and key players within an online community / social network. Can you identify who will fulfill these roles for your community? If not, do you have a plan for identifying and
nurturing community members into these roles?
2) Are there any internal / external events or influencers that could impede your organization’s planned social networking / online community presence?
3) Have you evaluated your competitors’ online community / social media strategies?
4) Have you determined what metrics you will use to measure ROI? Do you have a plan to encourage adoption of the new community by your target audience?
Hershel, awesome!
Melany, these are great questions to include
[…] having taken on board the tips detailed previously , you might take time to read Jeremiah Owyangs Checklist […]
Edit to that comment - the “my blog post” should link to: http://www.openparenthesis.org/2007/08/13/checklist/
Here are the three I added in my blog post on the subject:
What is your plan to manage / moderate the community’s activities assuming a large community arises? What terms of service / acceptable behavior guidelines will you rely on, and how will they be enforced / cultivated?
How will you involve people outside your organization but from within the target community? What will you do to actively recruit, encourage, and even potentially incent “good” user behavior from your target community?
Consider assembling the community on a platform of open source software rather than licensing a commercial package or renting a service. You’ll get the rapid time to market of buying or renting but also the ability to customize in order to create a differentiated experience.
Ok, maybe the last one’s a bit of a pitch . . .
John thanks
Those are great points. Do you really think companies care about open source? I’ve talked to quite a few Fortune 1000 and sometimes they want the opposite –to control.
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