5 Tips for creating a successful Social Networking Site

5 Tips to making a successful Social Networking Site

1. Users must feel part of the group – start niche

2. Create small actions that easily connect to one another – avoid the “now what moment”

3. Always notify users of changes – keep things fresh

4. Have Community Managers – make it social

5. Pay attention to the details – user experience is EVERYTHING to the user

Mousetrap on Termites: Build What Your Customers Want

(Viddler Screwed Old Users by deleting all their videos, so no video here 🙁 )

Don’t create the perfect product. Create what your customers want

A lot of times, teams try to produce the most perfect piece of product they can imagine. They want all the features, all the bells and whistles, and all the design implemented before they can launch it to their audience. By doing so, they spend a lot of time and money. When they finally launch it into the market, often times they realize that this is not what the customers want, and they have to revise it anyway.

Don’t make the perfect mousetrap if your customer has termite problems

Some people can spend years trying to build the perfect mousetrap, and then realize that their customer only has termites at their place. Now all that work is wasted. It would be much more efficient if you talk to the customer first, see what problems they have, go visit their house, or even live there for a few days to see the problems!

Building the best product by yourself means you assume that you are 100% like your customer

When you are trying to build the best product by yourself, you are building something that pleases you, not your customers. The only way this can work, is if you are 100% representative of your customers, which is rarely the case. Don’t be arrogant and think you know more about the customers than themselves. That might be true, but you would have better odds talking to them first about it.

The Art of Being Bad but Good Enough

The first launch is usually crappy

Whenever we first launch a product or make a business plan, we would be so proud of it and send it to everyone. A month later, we think it’s so crappy that we are embarrassed to send it to anyone. Then we make a super improvement and think it’s the best thing in the world again. After a month of sending it to everyone, we realize it’s so hideous that we don’t want to send it to anyone again. We did that for half a dozen times.

Sometimes we tell ourselves, “If it’s good enough to be sent to everyone during the first revision, it should be good enough when it’s version 4. We don’t need to wait 2 weeks for version 5 to come out.”

Improve your product with your users/customers

If it takes a year to create a good product, taking a year and improving it at home will not be anywhere close to launching it early and using the rest of the time to improve from customer feedback. As long as you are responding to them and improving fast, they will be patient with you.

Even if you disappointed the first 100 people who used the site, you make sure that the Millions of others use a good product later on. Plus, the first 100 will hear it if you do a good job a year later and come back to it.

Take rare criticism seriously

Most of the time, you will hear people saying how good your stuff is. However, pay extra attention when someone says you need to improve, especially when it’s someone with more experience.

People don’t like to tell you negative things, so when you happen to hear one, it might be a rare opportunity for you to realize what are the biggest things you need to work on.