How to market a web 2.0 social community

Hi there. Im going for a meeting with my business partner in 2 hours time about the marketing strategy's of our new project - Sceneparty.com. The site is not really complete yet, its only in beta mode. It currently has just over 200 members and will soon be completed with a fully working forum,video uploading, blogging,classifieds,events listings ect.. The site will also have 10 blogs which will be updated with 30 unique articles daily. Im wondering... Does any one have any suggestions for marketing the site? Once there is 1,500+ members i will integrate an AJAX IM and chat function so that members can chat live.

We mainly need members and lots of them too, to make the site work better

Any suggestions, will rep for good ones

Thanks

 

............... well im off to the meeting now, thanks for all the help

 

Hi JasonB , your site has nice design.

AS a user i must say that before marketing, you should fix the site

Why should i upload videos to your site instead of youtube?Or why should i register?You Really need Lots of ajax stuff.(LOTS means LOts , not only for ratings.i think you are using premade script.Play big,customize it )

 

alot of it is custom, we're working on it very hard. we just need marketing for it.

 

Looks VERY nice! But again - u need that USP - something that sets you apart - what will make people feel inspired, even obligated to use your site over any other social network?

Its a nice looking site definetly - hope it works out! let us know if it does have some sort of amazing feature and I'll stay looking out for it!

 

I think it would be best targeted to a particular music genre, to be honest. The design is ok, a little generic though. If you plan on marketing it I think you should get a proper logo with an actual symbol as well as text

 

yeah well were working on a few things now which are listed here:



its currently in beta test, so we want 10,000 members before launching all this.


1. live chat / instant messanger (AJAX,ruby on rails)
2. faster image,video uploading (use of AJAX image upload)
3. better image browsing, zoom in feature and draggable images ect..
4. bookmarking (like a sort of delicious tagging system but just for our site)
5. all events posted will have a google map to the venue
6. really quality, easy to use control panel (bits of AJAX and ruby on rails)


many more to come too ...

If you want to sign up, please use this link: SIGN UP NOW

 

sounds good, are you sure scene party is a good enough name? The site you have planned and the design seem 1st rate but the name kinna falls short... scene party like faceparty you know - id have gone with 2.0 name - catchy brandable and maybe keep it one or two syllable.. prob dont wanna hear that so just ignore my ramblings LOL!

 

dont worry about it buddy, yeah it is quite similar but i think with the right promotion we can be better than faceparty

 

I think that marketing should come before technology. You have to figure out your value proposition, target market, differentiators, etc. Then you design a product/service that addresses the market. Of course, you can just build something and advertise the heck out of it and hope that the advertising dollars/volume is sufficient, but this is generally very costly.

For example, anyone that is trying to compete against a first mover, e.g. YouTube, MySpace, should have a very good idea how new idea is being introduced and whether it is sufficient enough for someone to move someone off the other sites. I am facing the same problem with my site. That is, what can I develop that has differentiators that will draw eyeballs and time away from the more popular sites that dominate viewers time?

So the question is, I guess, what do you see as your key differentiators, what is your value proposition, and who is your target market. That would be the lead to any marketing effort.

Rich

 

thanks rich, were working on our new ideas now, unique features only for our site, then we will build a buzz about the new features and hope that there good enough so people can start using our site alot, good luck with your site aswell

 

Hi Jason,

If you believe that you have substantial differentiators, here are a couple of ideas:

1) Invite users of competitive sites to try out a "Sneak Preview" of your site. Pay them for their time, and solicit feedback. Ask for testimonials and if they would provide referrals. See if you can get a bunch of "We Switched" members.

2) Invite influential bloggers and media writers for a "Sneak Preview". Detail your differentiators and use testimonials to substantiate your claims.

3) Write some blog articles for sites like BlogCritics.org and see whether your story is good enough to get printed.

Just some thoughts. Good luck with your launch!

Rich

 

I would hit mid level social sites and do cross interviews and paid sponsored articles...I would also scrape members and posts from the big social sites that are similar to yours (sorry, but it would be the fast way to kick off your site!) ....

 

Rich has some good points here.

Think about your unique selling position. Why would someone come to your site instead of youtube? Why would *I* do it (I go on youtube)

If you cannot effectively, accurately and powerfully address this issue it will be an uphill battle. Why? Because even if you get people on there, as soon as people discover YouTube (I mean if you can believe that people don't know what YouTube is) what will they do?

Will they stay? Answer honestly.

There is no such thing as loyalty in customers. People flock to where it is best, easier, more fun, with so much choice on the net it is easy to see how this works.

And don't think of advertising budgets, this is not how hotmail was built, youtube OR facebook.

They were built on powerful and solid viral marketing techniques and strategies that spread like wildfire.

But they had a unique selling position that differentiated them from everyone else in the first place.

People spread things they value as being the go-to-place for a particular thing. You have to occupy that space in people's minds.

If I have the choice between going to Youtube, Yahoo Videos or Metacafe... I am *ALWAYS* going to pick Youtube.

Understand I am not the only one. But why is that?

Because YouTube is the go-to-place in my mind when I want to watch videos, am bored or whatever.

Yahoo has done a very poor job at positioning themselves differently.

Metacalfe has done a good job at it. If you look closely you'll notice they have an incentives program that rewards people who get a lot of hits with REAL money.

Now that's nice, it sets them a part from other sites as well. Enough so, to have a significant market share in the videos market.

Now the question you should ask yourself is, if I were a surfer, would I come to my site to watch videos or YouTube?

If you cannot effectively address your positioning issue, you cannot expect other people to.

My 2 cents.

 

thanks drkirby, rep added

some great points there. i will focus on the sites unique selling points and try making sure i tell them to everyone.

 

Couldn't have said it any better.

Definitely set long term goals as it will probably take some time before it gets to the size you are happy with. Good luck!

 

It looks so much like MySpace's gui. Bro you need to make it look different and unique. What are you offering that is unique? I know five other sites that offer almost the same thing. I am not bagging on your website but being honest as a prospective user. Give us something unique (plugins, apps, etc). Good luck with your project.

 

Yes, I agree. These are the fundamental questions that any business owner has to answer:

1) What problem am I trying to solve?
2) Does my product/service effectively solve this problem.
3) Is the market large enough to support a business and is it growing?
4) How am I different from my competitors?

Rich

 

just looks like another bad myspace clone to me.

 

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