Create Your Own Community with Ning

Back to my friend Pete and the cool online tools he’s introduced.  Another online and free tool that’s really fun to experiment with and very powerful for small business is Ning.

Think of Ning as a customizable Facebook.  A “create your own” online community, if you will.

The free version will allow you to create your own network and invite friends in about 5 minutes.  And it’ll drop ads onto your community.  For a mere $24.95 you can upgrade and go ad free (my preference).  However, with Ning, you go it alone.  If you’d like personal responses to your inquiries, you’ll pay $10/month for a personal account and $100/month for a professional account.

Once you’ve created a community, the site’s your oyster!  Feel free to customize all the tabs at the top, add or remove features to your community or create subgroups within the community.  These subgroups can be open to anyone or they can be permission-only to restrict access and content.  You can remain the moderator of these subgroups or you can give moderator rights to another member of the community.

The interface is customizable, you decide what people see on any given page.  Want videos front and center?  You got it.  Prefer the Forum up top?  No problem.  Again, you designate who is abje to view and post.

Like Facebook, each member gets their own page that they can customize as they’d like and can find “friends” within the community.  Also like Facebook, you have the flexibility to create events and have people respond to them.

Online communitites are a great way to activate your customer base assuming you’re providing an online forum for something in demand.  And think outside the box on this one.  Pass up the opportunity to offer just a “Company x’s Customers” community and instead use this portal as a place to figurevout what people really want out of your industry.  Then provide some great content, find some great moderators to help your content stay fresh and away you go!