I work with most of our key clients throughout the sales process and the initial stages of the product. I have seen many people do their evaluations right, and many more who have done it, well, less than right.
If you are looking into building a social network or online community, this is good advice, no matter what you are looking to build, who you are looking to build it for, or the platforms you are looking to build it on.
Choosing a Social Networking Platform
For many companies, choosing a social networking platform and vendor is a critical strategic decision - for others it is THE critical strategic decision. The success or failure of your online strategy can rest on that vendor decision.
You Need a Social Network
Nothing builds engagement like the interactivity of a social network. It creates a dynamic, compelling web experience - whether it is your customers, readers, listeners, viewers, colleagues, - any group with a shared interest.
You Need a Platform
Leveraging a platform provides several key advantages over simply trying to build something from the ground up.
To engage in-house or third party resources to create, customize, and maintain a custom solution requires a tremendous level resources and energy, and often times results in an inferior product - not because of the skill of the people involved, but because of the focus - Platform companies are built around creating a killer social networking product, it's our focus.
You have much less flexibility with something developed in-house, were you are relying on those resources. A hosted solution allows you to tap into the flexibility and extensibility of a platform being driven by the feedback of thousands of customers with an extensive development team providing the work. It provides much greater depth in functionality, and ultimately much more flexibility.
In terms of hosting, any sizeable community is going to incur heavy hosting costs - regardless of where and how it is hosted. By using a SAAS platform like ONEsite, you are actually getting greater access to resources for a much reduced cost.
There is no quicker, cheaper way to market than to leverage a platform. Once launched, you will have to be fiercely competitive, nothing will give you that edge like having a nimble platform, constantly being adapted and enhanced, behind you.
Know What You Want
It will determine how you engage with vendors, and how you communicate your ideas to them. It's the basis for how you will evaluate your options.
Develop your concept. Understand the community you want to create and the audience that will be its members.
Get an idea for the features and functionality that will be important to your audience. Prioritize the list.
Expect the list to change, as you see what others have done, as you speak with vendors, expect your idea of what works and what is possible to evolve.
Know Your Strategy
Know your business and revenue models. It is critical that the platform support your strategy. If it is ad driven, determine the level of control you have over advertising. If you are looking for subscriptions, make sure that the platform can handle subscription-based membership and can integrate with your payment system. If you require ecommerce determine if it is built into the platform or you can integrate with your existing system. Be able to communicate how you will measure success, and be sure the platform provides the functionality you need.
Plan your assets - You need to own the content and the users (make sure you do). Make sure you have easy and open access to that data, it's yours. Know your exist, it may determine whether you need to own or have unrestricted access to the code, or can have a simply use a hosted solution. If you are planning on bringing proprietary IP into the system, ensure these components are protected.
Know Your Plan
If you are planning on picking up a shrink wrapped platform and handling all customization and implementation yourself, make sure you have the talent on-hand to handle the implementation.
My experience has been that most individuals want to engage our professional services group for the initial launch and then have the site handed off to their team.
Different vendors provide different levels of support and services, you need to ensure that you will have access to the effort from the vendor team you need.
How are you going to promote and grow the community? What tools will you need? What support? Have an understanding of how you are going to promote your community, and what you need from a platform to support those efforts.
Have a budget. Not just for the launch, but for ongoing support, maintenance, and promotion.
You Decide
Armed with a strong understanding of your strategy - what you want to build, who you want to build it for, how you will build it, how you will promote it, how you will measure success - you need to go engage vendors.
Get Interactive
There should be someone more than happy to get with you on the phone, email, over webex, or in person at any vendor to work with you. Talk to potential platform vendors, have them work with you through your ideas and what they have done - you will learn a lot from their responses.
Evaluate the People
Technology is only as good as the people behind it. You need to be as comfortable with those who are building the platform, as you are with the platform itself.
Understand the company behind your platform - their number of employees, that there is a healthy proportion of people working on the product, to people marketing the product. The background of the company's founders and key management can reveal much about the platform and company they are creating, understand where they came from and the experience they brought with them.
Get a sense for not just how long the company has been in business, but how dedicated they are to the future success of the business. If your idea is long term, you need to ensure the platform you go with is going to be there for the long haul.
Make sure the people are in place to support you in your objectives. If you are using your own resources to build out the platform, make sure the support you need is ready, available, and competent. If you are engaging the services of the company, make sure they have the proven ability to deliver on their promises.
Evaluate the Technology
You have a prioritized list of the features and functionality you need from the platform, now you just need to determine how it measures up. It will come up again in a few moments, but your priority here is to see it in action. Get the feature to feature comparison done, but make sure a company has the features they tell you they have.
If you are looking for a hosted, SaaS Platform, you have to understand the architecture and hardware of the platform itself. Press the vendor to give you anything they can offer to show operational excellence - their ability to keep the platform up and running, and running fast, no matter how much traffic you throw at it.
If you are hosting the platform itself, get a clear understanding of just how much and what hardware you need, how you will need to scale that hardware given your expectations, and what or who it will take to manage it.
The key to successfully using a platform is making sure it gives you the customizability and extensibility you need.
You users are going to demand a customized experience, tailored specifically to them as an audience, make sure the platform can deliver. You need more than a few color changes and your own logo.
If you have your own existing website, signup system, ecommerce system, ad system, tracking, etc ensure that the platform has the web services and widgets to integrate it tightly into your overall online presence.
If you are looking to bring in custom modules and components, ensure the platform enables you to bring those in seamlessly.
Look for a control panel. Even if you are engaging the vendor's services - you will want the ability to manage and moderate the social network on a day to day basis.
Expect Pushback -
If they promise you everything you wanted, with no discussion or pushback, don't take it at face value. Contracts aside, you need to trust their ability to deliver. Expect some compromise and pushback with a platform - you'll need to fit what you want within their framework. Anyone telling you something different is lying.
Platforms benefit from the collective experience of all of those who use them, the result is something that will likely have a lot of flexibility, but will have its limitations as well. Be open to changing your vision.
See it in Action -
It is critical that your site not just be a bunch of features, but a total user experience built for your audience. You don't want something cookie-cutter. Take at sites that have been launched on the platform.
If the platform lists a feature, make sure you see it in action. Make sure they give you access to their showcase social networks.
The Platform is only as good as what has actually been implemented.
Evaluate the Results
USE the social networks that have been launched on the platform. Experience the platform as your users will. They are going to be incredibly demanding, so you must be even more demanding as you evaluate platforms.
Evaluate their clients. Anyone can put a logo on a site. Take a look at the sites actually implemented for their showcase clients. Make sure those sites were adopted and are still actively being used. See how successful they were for their showcase clients.
With every customer we tell them to look at our social networks, and look at those of our competition. Actually look at the level of participation - how many users there are, how much content those users are adding. Social networks are dead in the water without participation. All the viral widgets in the world won't build you traffic without a community there to drive them too.
Ask for references
A vendor should have clients ready and willing to speak with you and provide you with an honest opinion.
Evaluate THEIR Business Model
Measure their pricing against their expectations. Does their business model fit yours? What flexibility is there? Certain platforms can have much clearer pricing than others, make sure the pricing model follows how YOU will measure success, and that it fits your expectations. Watch for hidden costs or over-promising.
The business model will tell you much about a company's strategy and likelihood of being around for 5 or 10 years. You are in this as serious business, make sure the company behind your platform shares that gravity and foundation in reality. They can dream, but they have to have the roots in building a solid business.
Review their Roadmap
Get a copy of their roadmap. You have a vision where you are going, get the vision they have. Ask how much of that roadmap is customer driven. Make sure you will receive ongoing updates and support. You will need them to stay competitive. If you don't see something you plan on having, ask where and if it would fall in the vendor's own plans.
Get Their Feedback
Listen what they have to say about your idea. Listen to the suggestions they provide. The more collaborative the sales cycle, the more collaborative they will work with you throughout the implementation.
Not every vendor will fit every situation (believe me, we have turned projects down) - they should be open an honest about what they can do for you. Platforms and vendors are different, they may have similar features but the technology, the process, the team, the approaches - all of those will be different and better suited for some projects and not others.
In Social Networking, more than almost anywhere else, there must be an incredible amount of collaboration between platform providers, and those using their platforms. Online communities are naturally organic - they change and grow. Not only does the technology have to adapt, but the business processes and relationships must evolve as well.
A Social Networking platform is a keystone, it's a foundational piece of a site. It is a critical component that is only going to become increasingly important. Be aware, be informed, and put in the effort to really dig in to the platforms you are considering. It's too important to do anything else.
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