Starting and managing a Social Networking Site Part 1 – Your Niche

Starting and managing a Social Networking Site Part 1 – Your Niche

Many individuals visit social networking sites that support the general population on the Internet. We find ourselves searching through groups and individuals to find someone with our same interest. The need and requirement of millions of Internet users to find groups that share the same interest has created a huge market for specialized social networking sites. Long gone are the days of just MySpace, FaceBook, HI5 etc..

Many individuals visit social networking sites that support the general population on the Internet. We find ourselves searching through groups and individuals to find someone with our same interest. The need and requirement of millions of Internet users to find groups that share the same interest has created a huge market for specialized social networking sites. Long gone are the days of just MySpace, FaceBook, HI5 etc..

Internet users require immediate access and information related to their specific interests. The goal of this article is to show you how to create a social networking site that is geared towards your specific interest or niche, find webhosting, receiving installation services, marketing, and ongoing support. In Part one we will cover finding your niche. Are you ready to enter the world of owning and managing a social networking site? Hopefully after reading all of the segments you will have the answer to that question.

Finding your niche

It is safe to assume that the social networking giants, MySpace and FaceBook have the general social networking market wrapped up. If you are thinking of launching just a regular run of the mill general social networking site it would be in your best interested to rethink this idea. It will save you a lot of time and money in the long run.
The key is to find what interests you because if you launch a site that is aligned with something you are passionate about you are more likely to be dedicated to its success. Let’s say for instance that you are an avid golfer, you love playing the game and you love watching the game on television. If you have that much interest in golfing you will probably find it very easy to work to build and manage your Golfing Social Network.

Assessing the competition in your niche

As an example we will use the niche “Golfing” as our niche. Now you will need to visit google.com and enter these terms one at a time to determine the results. You will notice that “Golfing” returns 9,700,000 results. This is acceptable as when you start reaching 15,000,000 results and higher as this will make it very difficult to compete in the search results. Now you have a niche that allows you to target a specific group on the Internet and chances are that you will get very good rankings over time on Google. But that’s another story…

Where do we go from here?

In part 2 we will discuss the best software to use. Please keep in mind that this is a very important step as it will form foundation of your social network. Bad software equals disappointing results. Until part 2, Happy Networking!