Once you've had your Niche Idea for your Niche Social Network site, that comes to finally start your own social network, you should fully aware that the hardest part is not how to make the network available, but how to make people stay and use your network. Definitely, creating a social network is not something you can do in a day, and so oversee functional strategy for your social network is a must to prevent failure and get your network out to the world. In this blog, we will discuss how to build up a solid functional strategy for your Social Network.   Develop Functional Strategy Based On Core Values Of Your Social Network First thing first, you have to decide what your unique value proposition is for your users. How are you going to entice someone to leave the social networking they already use on a daily basis and decide to instead spend time on your network? The answer is that not all social networks boil down to the same recipe for success. Different users will have different demands and requirements on a network. As long as the features and functionalities of your network satisfy, or at least are appropriate to users' preferences, they will stay and enjoy your network. Research indicates that every successful network has only about 20% of functional features identical to existed networks, the impact which makes people keep on coming to a network is from 80% of its unique functional features. Therefore, you should focus on developing specific features which directly identify your site purpose. For instance, LinkedIn takes 'connection' into account as the primary functional trait of the network instead of 'friend' just like on Facebook. This is because LinkedIn is different from other networks as it's specifically designed for business and professionals, making it one of the more important platforms to use for those in B2B. Build Functional Tools To Directly Serve Users' Intentions The next thing to consider is to understand users' behaviors on your network. In other words, the way users utilize the provided tools will determine the direction you should develop your network. Providing users with what they are looking for gives you chances to connect with fans, customers, and prospective customers on a more personal, human level. These unique functional tools don't need to be complex. It just needs to be straightforward, useful and most importantly, it should work well. For instance, Instagram is dedicated mainly to photos while Facebook is inclined towards recent updates. Facebook encourages users to share daily elements, whereas Twitter is more about sharing serious issues such as news and updates. While Instagram uses photo collections as the way to connect people, Twitter triumphs the relations using hashtags. Bottomline Going through this brainstorm you can definitely have your idea about your Social Network – the strong start to build, maintain and monetize your own community. Don’t worry about how strong or weak of your idea or how to make it happen, you can contact us at hello@phpfox.com – number one Social Network Platform! Our experts and partners are happy to assist you from the day one toward your successful community

When you are aware of the benefits of Niche Social Network, it is also time you face those questions: How to create your own social network? Where do I start to build a website like Facebook? How to successfully create Social Network from scratch and monetize it?... Don’t worry or feel loss, isn’t everyone so? Let's step-by-step figure that out by going through our how-to series: How To Create Niche Social Network Why Niche Social Network? Niche networks are, by definition, groups of people who are intensely interested in a certain topic. People will be able to discuss the topic at hand without countless clutter and posts on other subjects getting in the way (e.g Facebook, Twitter…) Linkedin, the world largest Niche Social Network started by the idea of business-oriented community. It helps users create profile as resume like, invite and connect each other instead of friending, sharing and discuss expertise topics, experiences Nowadays, users tend to use more Niche Social since the concern of privacy, communication, knowledge, and interests. On the other hand, owning a Niche Social Network means you own that niche market. Community management will be much more effective and efficient with lower cost and efforts [caption id="attachment_5488" align="aligncenter" width="671"] How to create your Niche Social Network?[/caption] Let’s start from the very first step of creating your own Social Network: Niche Idea Steve Jobs 1996 famous quote: "Picasso had a saying -- 'good artists copy; great artists steal' -- and we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas." I mentioned that so even when you don’t have your breakthrough idea yet but still you can plan to have one base on the compiling others ideas, nurture, adding value and make it your own With Niche concept, you don’t have to target large community. It could be your own interests and meet others in term of hobbies, expertise or situations. You can start your niche idea by identifying niche community, this can base on 2 important factors: (1) psychological factor, (2) demographic data Gather all the information, data you have on the targeted community including what do prospect members sharing about common interests? What are their preferences? Like and dislikes? Incentives? Where are they?... Let’s say you have your own customers that use your products or services, this is the easiest way to approach since you know their wants, needs and how to cater them. Or you are one of the fans in specific activities, professional group member and you understand who are also like you, where are they and what brings them together, it’s great to define that community and lead it. Engaging your niche community: Since you identify your community and its preferences in your idea, great start! Now let fine tune it by deciding how you would approach them. There would be 2 common practice approaches - Narrow group approach: Focus on small but value prospect group of members in your community first. Apply the best understandings to add value, benefits and set a clear path to investing on how to promote and encourage this group expansion Even Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg started with a group of students from Ivy League Schools, using their reputations and relationships to develop a much bigger networking later on With this strategy, you can narrow down investment and effort from the beginning stage. Focus on functions, marketing and values adding on the platform you would build - Large-scale approach: normally this is borderless demographic approach, focus on general interests and recruit as much as members from the beginning Instead of just Social Network for Tax consultants, you can start with Consultants Social Network where any consultant can join and showcase their works from legal, accounting, healthcare to psychology...This will help you more opportunity to approach larger targeted members base Each approach has its own pros and cons and you can choose one, mix them or selectively use in phases as well. This has to be carefully planned as it fulfills your original idea and shaping how your Social Network Site functions. Conclusion: When niche social network and its benefits are clearly adding value to your vision and business, you can start building your own Social Network easily. First of all, it starts with a Niche Idea, where you identify your niche community base on psychological factors, demographic data...Then plan out how you can engage to that community by which strategy. You may now asking what to do next base on your idea, please check out our post for the second article on how to oversee functional Social Network. You can subscribe to our newsletter mailing list or our social channels   Bottomline: Going through this brainstorm you can definitely have your idea about your Social Network - the strong start to build, maintain and monetize your own community. Don’t worry about how strong or weak of your idea or how to make it happen, you can contact us at hello@phpfox.com - number one Social Network Platform! Our experts and partners are happy to assist you from the day one toward your successful community