Exclusively Setters is a network for owners of Irish Setters, whether you breed, show or simply love them! Irish Setter owners have a lot to be proud of; Irish Setters are beautiful, lovable dogs with wonderfully silky fur. Members proudly and lovingly showcase their four-legged companions in more then 10,000 photos.

Videos are a terrific way to show your adorable setters playing on land and water or struttin’ their stuff in a dog show. Members reach out to help, comfort and get to know one another on the active forum. Discussions cover a wide range of topics including the inheritance of osteosarcoma (bone cancer) in Irish Setters, brainstorming great pedigree names and arranging to meet each other at shows around the world!

It’s wonderful to see Irish Setter owners making the most of their network, forming friendships all along the way. Setter owners everywhere should check out Exclusively Setters and join this friendly family today!

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.

As your network begins to take shape, an important step in taking it to the next level is customizing the appearance of your network. A quick, easy way to make your social network stand out is to design a custom header.

I decided to make a network on Ning called The Clubhouse, a place where golf aficionados could hang out and talk golf. Making a custom header was simple. All I had to do was choose a theme, find a cool photo, add a logo to it, and upload it to my network.

Choosing a Theme

As a Network Creator you know what your social network is all about. When choosing a theme try to think of a color pallete or design that you can use as the background and body color for your social network. Then, choose a theme from the “Appearance” page and customize that theme. Here’s how:

A. Log into your social network.
B. Under the ‘Manage’ tab, click on the ‘Appearance’ link.
C. Now choose one of over 50 preset themes for your social network

Since my network deals with golf and the outdoors I chose the ‘Blue Jeans’ theme. The blues and whites of the theme are simple and clean, and easy to build upon.

Adding a Header and Logo

The first thing your members see when they log onto your network is the page header. This is your chance to show off your network theme, add a logo and throw in a clever tagline. Network Creators can easily add their own headers, logos and background without having to program in CSS. Of course, that option is still available for those who wish to do so by simply clicking on the ‘Advanced’ tab in the ‘Appearance’ settings.

Here are some things to think about when making a custom header for your network:

1. If you have a Mac or Windows machine, download an open source image editor like Seashore (Mac) or Gimp (PC). These are free to download and easy to use.

2. Create a header background that encompasses the theme of your social network in one glance. Remember, a picture says a thousand words — you should definitely make this one count. For my golf network, here’s what I chose:

3. Once you’re done creating a header background make sure it has a maximum width of 955 pixels. A good rule of thumb is to keep your height around 150 to 200 pixels.

4. Create a logo that will be placed on top of your header background. Keep the dimensions of your logo smaller than your header background to prevent your logo from going over any edges. You can export images in .png format to make the background transparent, so the logo blends in with the header. Here’s the logo I used:

The white text and transparent background work well because your logo will be placed directly on top of the header background. Here’s what my header looks like now:

Here are other examples of great custom headers on Ning:

Want to make a Background Header and Logo like this one? It’s a breeze!

Making your own Background Header/Logo

A. Log into your Ning network.
B. Click on the ‘Manage’ tab
C. Scroll over ‘Header Background’ and click on the ‘Image’ tab.
D. Click on ‘Upload an image from your computer’. Make sure the image has a maximum width of 955 pixels.

E. Repeat this process for the “Add a logo” section.

Here’s what my Network looks like now:

A little bit of work goes a long way in making your network stand out and look great. Good luck!

There is a powerful element in your network’s layout that you can leverage to many purposes: the right-hand column. Its power lies in the fact that features you add to the yellow area of the right-column on the Features page will show up on every page of your network.

Network Creators can do a lot with the right column, such as:

1. Link out (with a nice-looking banner or with plain links) to Notes on your network such as FAQ, About Us and Community Guidelines, that you want to have visible across your network. It helps members find a place where they can conveniently get informed about the network and the rules that govern it.
2. Add a “Digg This” widget to allow your members to add pages from your network to digg.com. Other viral elements, such as access to the network’s badges and any instructions on how to spread the word about the network should ideally be placed in this column.
3. If you run your own ads placing them on the right-hand column will typically offer your members a broader range of ads to click on as the context for each page throughout the network is going to be different, thus resulting on varied ads getting displayed. Also, studies have shown a significant increase in average click-through for ads placed on the right side of web pages.

Why don’t you share other creative tips on how to make the most of your network’s right-hand column?

Creating Your Own Network for Anything and inviting members is easy, but there’s more to having a great network. You should also keep your members coming back. Besides continuing to take advantage of new features, one of the best things you can do is recognize your members and reward them.

Continue reading Contests can drive membership…

Choosing a good network name may be one of the best things you can do to help your search engine rankings and increase visits (and hopefully new members) to your network.

A few weeks ago when we dealt with Search Engine Optimization, one of our tips was using relevant keywords in the titles of your posts, photos and other content items. This tip also applies to the selection of a name for your network.

Finding a good name for a social network is almost an art. It can definitely be a very interesting exercise as you create your social network.

A good name for a social network meets the following criteria:

1. It consists of both your network’s brand name and some keywords to describe the network. A good example of this is “Firefighter Nation - Social Network for Firefighters and EMS.” The name should consist of three to 10 words and use no more than 70 characters.
2. It is unique and targeted. The name of your network needs to be relevant to the niche around which your social network revolves.
3. It is catchy, but still easy to understand. It is great to come up with a fun or cool name, but don’t make your audience think too much.
4. Unless very applicable, avoid using just your name. Unless you are a Fortune 500 company or a celebrity, including only your name is a waste of valuable space in your network’s page title.

Here’s a list of a few other good names created by a few of the networks on the Ning Platform:

• A Netflix Community
• Hindi Lovers and Learners Social Networking Place
• Black Business Women Online
• kiwipulse - The New Zealand Social Networking website for Kiwis
• The Spill Movie Community

Book Place is a network for authors and readers to connect and a place where promotion is encouraged!

Network Creator Morgan Mandel is an author herself and prominently features her book Girl of My Dreams on her profile page. A funny take on current television, it’s the story of a reality-show contestant who falls in love with the show’s producer, rather than the eligible millionaire.

Authors use forum discussions to post updates on the progress of their books and to share exciting news about reviews and publishing deals. Members have also created groups to discuss different aspects of the writing process, from getting started to being reviewed.

Members also use photos to promote their books, posting book covers and comments. The photos section becomes a sort of catalog of authors on the network, showcasing the wide variety of writers that participate. From the juvenile fiction work of Likai Chen and his recent Shuisheng the Mallard to Betty Ann Harris’ mystery Eureka Point.

So for all you writers out there looking to connect with other authors and promote yourself as well, Book Place is the place for you!

One of the great things about having a network on Ning is that it’s fully self-contained. You have a place to host discussions or share videos and photos, all in one place.

That said, many people have external blogs and have set up a network as a way for readers to get to know each other and interact with the blogger. Here are some tips you can use to integrate your blog — or external Web site — even more smoothly with your network.

• Does your social network look like your blog?
  Having a consistent visual look between your external blog and your network goes a long way in establishing your personal brand. We’ve blogged about it before, but EpicFu is a great example of this - their network on Ning, MIX, has a similar visual style to their main page and takes advantage of domain-mapping to map a sub-domain to the network.
  Rawkus has implemented similar design between its site and its network.




• Badges are your friend.
  Badges are a way to broadcast stuff on your network to other places on the web, and that includes your external site. You can get network badges by going to the Manage tab and clicking on Badges & Widgets. You can get badges for your video, photo and music players on your network as well - just click on the “<> Embed” link and paste the resulting HTML to your Web site.




• RSS Feeds? They’re really your friend.
  Most blogs out there have a RSS feed — a way of delivering rapidly changing content on your site. And, what do you know, your main page on Ning has a RSS module; if if you’re the Network Creator, just drag in RSS modules on the “Features” page. Network Creators, which pulls in the feed from the blog you’re reading on its main page, is a great example of this. Just remember that while adding a RSS feed of your blog can be incredibly useful to your network, too many RSS feeds could hamper the performance of your network.

  It goes the other way, too - because networks on Ning offer RSS feeds on things such as recent activity and forum discussions, you can usually find a blog plug-in that will help integrate RSS feeds into your weblog as well.




• Using Wordpress? This requires a little bit more knowledge of development, but it’s worth bringing up. For bloggers using Wordpress, our team of developers have come up with a way to import Wordpress blog entries into your network’s blog. You’ll need to know PHP, but it can save you a significant amount of time if you want to import your blog.

A little integration is easy and can go a long way toward improving the connectivity between your network and outside site or blog.

Flickr photo by Taroy.

We’ve all arrived at parties where we barely know anyone. There’s the uncomfortable sense that people are staring, wondering who we are, yet we keep on walking in. We see the food table and help ourselves. Fifteen minutes later, after not seeing any familiar faces, we finally connect with someone by talking about the food.

Letting days go by before someone welcomes a new member is no different than letting guests wander around your house without introducing yourself. Being a good host goes a long way!

Continue reading The importance of saying “Welcome!” to new members…

Here at Ning, we spend a lot of time making Your Social Network for Anything as fast as possible. By default, your social network on Ning is speedy. Why? Because there is a direct relationship between the performance of a network and how much time people spend on it.

Conversely, we also enable you tremendous freedom and control over what you put on your social network. In fact, we offer a number of ways for you to add things that will slow your network page load down to a crawl. We want you to have the freedom to make your social network exactly what you want it to be. It’s your choice. That being said, if you’re feeling like your network is a little sluggish, we’ve got a few suggestions for keeping things speedy.

Continue reading Make Your Network As Fast As Possible…