One of the things I love the most on your own social network for anything on Ning is featuring.
We’ve made it incredibly easy for you to feature members and content on your network and feature homepages. This let’s your members discover the things that you love while keeping things fresh and interesting across your network.
Here’s an example from Network Creators of us featuring a few of the 14,000+ members of this network for people creating networks (how meta of us):
How do you take advantage of this on your network on Ning? Simple. Just click the “Feature” link you see under any of your members here on the members page and they will pop up to the top of the page. It’s there by default and essentially “one-click” to bring the feature option to life.
Beyond members, you can also do this for Photos, Videos, Groups, Discussions, Events, etc. Imagine a few possible ways of using this:
1. Run a contest. Run a contest on your network and promote the winners in this featured section.
2. Use it as an excuse to make new friends. Feature a few of your members and send them private messages to let them know that you’ve featured them. It’s a flattering way to get folks back to your network. Everyone loves to be loved.
3. Use it to keep things fresh and interesting. Choose the best content and interesting members and continually swap them in. This will not only keep your homepage fresh but provide a reason for folks to wait with anxious anticipation for what you’re going to feature next on your network.
So, try it out and see what you think. We’d love your feedback and a comment on any of the great ways that you’re using it right now on your network.
3 Responses to “Favorite Feature #456: Featuring Stuff”
I agree. I use the Featured Members option ruthlessly to make sure that the thumbnails on the front page of gaytravellersnetwork.com always feature a mixture of new and long-term members. This encourages new members to explore the profiles of people who joined a while back.
Additionally, I make sure that the front page thumbnails reflect the diversity and dynamism of the network membership, as well as my aspirations (as Network Creator) for the “look and feel” of the community I’m building.
I think the member thumbnails feature is a hugely important - though subtle - marketing tool. It really sends a strong signal to visitors about whether or not they’ve arrived at social network they’d like to be part of.
By Tim on Jul 15, 2008
I couldn’t agree more
By Gina Bianchini on Jul 16, 2008
Right on Gina - we use it to highlight the best cars within our thousands of photo submissions. Now all we need is the photo slide show widget (the embeddable one) to allow us to choose to display the featured photos instead of the recent photos!
By Bana on Jul 16, 2008