ULS presents: February Entrepreneur's Forum
Keeping in line with Social Media Week, Ultra Light Startups brought in four experts to discuss how to design your website to promote social interaction among your users for this month’s entrepreneurs forum.
This month’s panelists included:
Bryan Hamilton with Razorfish
Dan Maccarone with Hard Candy Shell
Alex Rainert with kgweb
Christopher-Ian Reichel with Viacom/MTV Networks
The panel broke down several questions including: What is a social website? What makes a site social? Why do people participate online?
The panel addressed the fact that adding social features to your website has never been easier because of powerful platforms such a Facebook and Twitter. However, just because the tools are available, doesn’t mean anyone should rush into it. The panel says that there are a variety of things to consider before launching any social media campaign. For instance, if your company sells lawn mower parts, is it really necessary to really have a social media strategy in the first place?
Bryan Hamilton with Razorfish says it’s important to set goals before designing the social features of your website. Map out the people, businesses or community where you want to direct your efforts. Once priorities have been set, then decide how you want to reach them.
Once your social website is up and running, Alex Rainert with kgweb says business owners must find ways to get their users to interact with them. He says that customer/user feedback is critical to keep any site moving forward. Rainert says the feedback should be used to shape and mold the most effective message possible.
Dan Maccarone with Hard Candy Shell singled out Twitter and Foursquare as particularly good designs, because one gets to choose who they interact with. Bryan Hamilton added that one should be very wary of their first 10,000 users, because they are the people who will shape and define each site.
Dan Maccarone advised new businesses to integrate Facebook via Facebook Connect, because it’s already established and you are more likely to find people the people you are trying to reach.
The panel pointed out that eventually, people would be forced to understand that the very concept of privacy is changing because of social media. The concept of privacy is changing daily as the information highway gathers more and more data.
Later, during the question and answer session, someone asked if there was room for a new social media network, besides Facebook or Twitter?
There was some disagreement, but the consensus was that someone might come up with a better site than Facebook. However, overtaking a site like Facebook wouldn’t happen overnight, because the site is already linked in (no pun intended) with a wide variety of partners and social media sites.
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