If you build it, they will come. A state­ment ingrained in America’s psy­che thanks to the 1989 film Field of Dreams. But while the film gar­nered numer­ous awards and acco­lades from crit­ics and movie­go­ers alike (three Oscar nom­i­na­tions alone, Best Pic­ture, Best Music, Best Writ­ing), not even Kevin Cost­ner can save your social net­work­ing site from fad­ing into obscu­rity with­out the right stuff.

If you build it they will come works well for build­ing base­ball dia­monds in Iowa corn­fields, but when it comes to social net­work­ing sites, it takes a con­certed effort of seed­ing, pro­mot­ing, and man­ag­ing to get things off the ground.

I’ve been scour­ing the web for other authors and orga­ni­za­tions who have addressed steps to build­ing suc­cess­ful online com­mu­ni­ties. Aside from a hand­ful of per­sonal blogs dis­cussing this issue, there isn’t a whole lot of offi­cial research on what fac­tors are nec­es­sary for suc­cess­ful social networks.

I did, how­ever, find an excel­lent resource from the Kick­Apps team. Kick­apps recently pub­lished a whitepa­per titled “Nine Steps to a Suc­cess­ful Online Com­mu­nity.” They’ve put together a list of guide­lines to help social net­works reach their fullest poten­tial. The nine steps nec­es­sary to pro­mote good plan­ning and best practices?

1. Define your community’s pur­pose and audience.
2. Get a Com­mu­nity Manager.
3. Choose the tech­nol­ogy that’s right for you.
4. Seed your com­mu­nity with great content.
5. Cus­tomize your community’s look and feel.
6. Pro­mote it!
7. Encour­age active participation.
8. Man­ager your com­mu­nity with fair-mind consistency.
9. Lis­ten and optimize.

I’ll be writ­ing about each one of these in sep­a­rate blogs in the next few weeks. In the mean­time, read up for your­self here and also check out some of these links.

Inter­ested in learn­ing more about mar­ket­ing and the art of brand­ing? Check out Seth Godin’s web­site at http://sethgodin.typepad.com/.

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.

Where are all the sci­ence teach­ers? It seems log­i­cal that those who teach tech­nol­ogy should be using tech­nol­ogy to con­nect and share ideas on the web. I’ve been reflect­ing on why, after 18 months on the web, my web­site Sci­ence for Amer­ica only has 350 reg­is­tered mem­bers. While the site gets 200 vis­i­tors PER DAY, really only about 5–7 peo­ple will sign up per week. (more…)

One of my favorite reads this fall is Daniel Pink’s A Whole New Mind. Besides being an excel­lent read on design and devel­op­ing your cre­ative side, it is a quick read well worth your time. I read it through once, then skimmed it again look­ing for ideas to incor­po­rate into my weekly rou­tine– things like keep­ing a design note­book, read­ing my wife’s Real Sim­ple mag­a­zine, and check­ing out var­i­ous right-brain games on the Internet.

Daniel Pink’s ele­va­tor speech…

The future belongs to the per­son with a very dif­fer­ent kind of mind– one that empha­sizes cre­ation over rep­e­ti­tion, rec­og­niz­ing and draw­ing mean­ing from pat­terns rather than merely fol­low­ing them. While the log­i­cal, left-brain abil­i­ties will con­tinue to be nec­es­sary for suc­cess in one’s career, they are no longer suf­fi­cient. When choos­ing a career path, one must con­sider the fol­low­ing questions:

1. Can some­one over­seas do it cheaper?
2. Can a com­puter do it faster?
3. Am I offer­ing some­thing that sat­is­fies thenon mate­r­ial, tran­scen­dent desires of an abun­dant age?

Abun­dance, Asia and Automation…

These three fac­tors are chang­ing the world in which Amer­i­cans live. For exam­ple, take abun­dance. Self-storage is a bil­lion dol­lar busi­ness and promises to only grow into the future. Think there were self-storage facil­i­ties in the Great Depression?

Asia is chang­ing the face of the work­force because of the inex­pen­sive, well-trained labor wait­ing to draw repet­i­tive and pro­gram­matic jobs in India and China. Rou­tine func­tions and pro­gram­ming have been turned over to com­put­ers and robots. Indeed, much of the work per­formed by doc­tors are fol­low­ing deci­sions trees when diag­nos­ing patients, some­thing slowly be turned over to the likes of the web­sites Web MD and some 23,000 other med-related sites.

Pink’s Six Senses…
The book does a great job dis­cussing each of Pink’s sug­gested senses– design, story, sym­phony, empa­thy, play, mean­ing– then list­ing ideas in his port­fo­lio sec­tion where you can develop each of these skills in your own life.

(1) Design. Pink brings up an impor­tant point in this sec­tion… we all start out in child­hood as design­ers. We are not afraid to make mis­takes and fol­low wher­ever our imag­i­na­tion takes us. It is through the often­times mind-numbing expe­ri­ence that is high school and col­lege that we lose this ini­tial courage to design. Says Pink– “Design is a high-concept apti­tude that is dif­fi­cult to out­source or auto­mate. Some of my favorite sug­ges­tions to grow your design apti­tude– visit a design museum (Pink lists 10) and check­ing out open houses for design ideas and elements.

(2) Story. There’s a rea­son why you can remem­ber the sto­ries your grandpa would tell around the fire­place 20 years prior but have trou­ble remem­ber­ing your combo to the lock at the gym. Our minds are wired to make as many con­nec­tions as pos­si­ble, and sto­ries fit much bet­ter with this model that rote mem­o­riza­tion. But while remem­ber­ing sto­ries may be every person’s forte, telling them is a bit trick­ier. So how do you develop this skill? Pink sug­gests writ­ing a mini-saga of your life, whip­ping out a tape recorder and inter­view­ing a rel­a­tive or friends, and turn­ing your cell­phone into the story teller by snap­ping a pic­ture story of your day (I plan on devel­op­ing this one into a post in the near future). Story is impor­tant with social net­work­ing (have you heard how Face­book got started ?!?!)

(3) Sym­phony. This could be one of the most under­rated skills on this list. Pink calls sym­phony an “essen­tial apti­tude” for a grow­ing pop­u­la­tion of work­ers. While entre­pre­neurs and inven­tors have tra­di­tion­ally done a good job at incor­po­rat­ing this into new ven­tures, those who want to stay ahead must see sym­phony for what it is– devel­op­ing rela­tion­ships. Some advice– keep a metaphor log (and read this book) and prac­tice good brain­storm­ing habits. That is:

• Go for quantity.
• Encour­age wild ideas.
• Be visual.
• Defer judg­ment.
• Take one con­ver­sa­tion at a time.

(4) Empa­thy. Many of us can boost our pow­ers of empa­thy. Doctor’s are tak­ing class to help put them­selves in the posi­tion of the patient, lawyers are try­ing to warm up to their clients (hard to believe, huh?) and yes, women still take the cake when it comes to empa­thy. So how can men get a leg up on their com­pe­ti­tion. Vol­un­teer at a local char­ity and eaves­drop at the local cof­fee shop.

(5) Play. Hap­pi­ness is an excel­lent stim­u­lus for the brain. Amer­i­cans have seen a shift in the work­place from a rigid place where busi­ness does not get mixed with plea­sure, to one where, work and play are inter­twined to cre­ate a more invig­o­rat­ing envi­ron­ment where work­ers are happy and yes, more effec­tive in their jobs. Look at Google as a shin­ing exam­ple. Employ­ees enjoy mid-afternoon sand vol­ley­ball, ping pong, and video games, and still man­age to con­tinue to take over the world. Look for a laugh­ter club near you to stim­u­late your brain with the fun stuff.

(6) Mean­ing. Aren’t we all look­ing for mean­ing? Vik­tor Frankl went look­ing for mean­ing while impris­oned in a Nazi con­cen­tra­tion camp and devel­oped his the­ory of logother­apy– an influ­en­tial move­ment in psy­chother­apy. Mar­shalling the ele­ments of hap­pi­ness and spir­i­tu­al­ity may even­tu­ally help find that mean­ing, but these books could help you get there faster: Man’s Search for Mean­ing by Vik­tor Frankl, What Should I Do with My Life? by Po Bron­son, and The Art of Hap­pi­ness by His Holi­ness the Dalai Lama and Howard C. Cut­ler, M.D.

Design. Story. Sym­phony. Empa­thy. Play. Mean­ing. Devel­op­ing a higher facil­ity in all of these will not guar­an­tee suc­cess, but they will cer­tainly move you closer to becom­ing bet­ter pre­pared for the next decade two years. Our world will only con­tinue to change faster. Will you be ready?

Author: Daniel Pink

Pub­lished: 2005, updates in 2006

My Rat­ing: 3.5 out of 4

Once upon a time peo­ple used to com­mu­ni­cate face-to-face. They still do, but we’ve added a few more options. Early forms of com­mu­ni­cat­ing included cave paint­ings, then papyrus, paper, tele­graph, tele­phone, radio, tele­vi­sion, and the Inter­net. I’m sure I’m for­get­ting a few, but con­sider if you will this list. Con­sider how fast we’ve moved from the tele­phone to the Inter­net com­pared to the speed at which we devel­oped from cave paint­ings to the tele­graph. Com­mu­ni­ca­tion is speed­ing up, but the point remains the same– con­nect­ing with others!

Wel­come…

to M is for Min­i­mize. This site is the blog and pro­fes­sional web­site of Bret Wag­ner, a for­mer sci­ence teacher and engi­neer and cur­rent web apps cre­ative exam­in­ing the dif­fer­ent ways to remix appli­ca­tion devel­op­ment and busi­ness strat­egy to cre­ate new experiences.

My expe­ri­ence…

in web devel­op­ment has me com­ing back to the same point– social net­work­ing will con­tinue to play the most impor­tant role in the future of the Inter­net. With appli­ca­tions like Face­book and MySpace help­ing to bring together friends, social book­mark­ing sites like Del.icio.us and Digg bring­ing together knowl­edge, and web appli­ca­tions like Ning avail­able for users to cre­ate their own social net­works, it’s dif­fi­cult to deny the momen­tum social net­work­ing has gained the last two years.

This blog…

will explore the devel­op­ment cycle I’ll take to com­bine exist­ing ideas nobody else ever thought to unite. It might be tak­ing a cur­rent appli­ca­tion, such as the social net­work­ing I’ve cre­ated over at Sci­ence For Amer­ica, and mak­ing it bet­ter, or it might be cre­ation of a new appli­ca­tion. My expe­ri­ence has shown that there are thou­sands of great ideas out there… the break­down is in get­ting the mar­ket­ing, busi­ness, and pro­gram­ming sides to gel. Pro­gram­mers are not usu­ally strong in design, while design­ers may not be the strongest in pro­gram­ming. Mar­ket­ing and busi­ness model are usu­ally left by the way­side. The most effec­tive appli­ca­tions have all of these ele­ments work­ing together.

Enjoy!