My First Social Network – Things I’ve Learned
Believe it or not, Science For America was my first website. I’ve created four now- definitely still a newbie- but I’ve come to appreciate the relative ease of creating websites and applications using technologies like content management systems, blogging platforms and development frameworks.
While I think the design of Science For America is strong, and the platform I built it on is even stronger (Joomla! CMS), I’ve learned a few things about trying to create a social network that I’d like to share with you.
One…
Creating social networks takes time. Both time on a day-by-day basis, and also time in the sense of building up the site and brand to get passionate visitors who come back for more. I would attribute the relative success of Science For America to its tenure on the web, now 18 months. I found that initial traffic and getting the word out was critical in the beginning, but that after this had started, it simply took time for traffic and users to arrive at the site.
Two…
Creating social networks takes planning. I used a 20 Questions document to develop the underlying principles for the site. Who are we targeting? What are the sites’ competitors? What type of content will be included? All of these were important in deciding the direction of the site.
Three…
Creating social networks takes organization. Proper layout is critical, because you want your user interface to be intuitive. Where can I find science worksheets? Where do I go when I want to find links to science websites? All of these questions should really be answered BEFORE you start on the site and throughout the beta phase of development. There are many platforms out there- Joomla! and Wordpress to name a couple- that make it relatively easy to rearrange content and links on websites, but it is still a critical step to develop at least a rough sketch, wireframes maybe, of where you are going to have visitors click to navigate certain parts of the site.
This is simplifying things a bit, but I believe if you focus on these three areas, you’ll have a solid site ready for visitors.