[winnie]

sorryy i think i was posting on the wrong section of the forum before.. so here it is...

hi all.. im new here.. my husband and i have a website business for about 10 years now and we want to create a networking/community site such as friendster,my space,face book etc.. but in a more focus target market. i believe that we can build a really good site with lots of great features aswe have the skill on programming so we can build as much features aswe want, but we have more questions on more how to get the people to use the site.

we're in australia and there's none website that is sucessfull like friendster,my space,you tube,etsy or anything like that.. i guess because there's not much people in australia compare to us market.

our questions is, if anybody can give us advise on how did those sucessfull company started marketing their site ( when they first started ) other than telling friends around to spread the word around? is there a marketing company that is specifically handle "community website businesses" ? where should we look..? where should we go to get more info about this...?

Money is not a problem for us.. ( ie; we dont need investor or anything like that.. ) what we are hoping to get answer from your help is more on ... what does a startup " sucessfull community website business" normally do on the beginning of their business? ( on the marketing side of it )

your advice and help are very verymuch appreciated. thank you very much.

[ltressel]

Winnie,

I think the success of social networking sites now a days is really based on what your sets them apart from everybody else.

For example, I was reading Time Magazine's article on Facebook's success. What they say is that it's more for grown ups. Thirty-somethings are sort of their target audience. There's also myyearbook.com which is more tailored for the high school crowd.
Apparently there is another one yet to come which is more geared for the boomer crowd.

The point is you have to figure out what would be your specialty and that's how you can PINPOINT your successful marketing campaign. Marketing formula is pretty much the same mixture of tv, print, internet, etc...it works if it's executed to the right market.


LT

[winnie]

thank you so much LT for your reply.. I really really appreciate that...

if i may ask..did those community sites ( facebook,friendster,you tube,etsy ) do advertising on their early start? ( as in tv,print, newspaper etc) there in the US? i just want to get an idea since in australia there's no sucess story of a community-networking site. they're all pretty much just so .. so... the busiest site is probably only attracting like 1700 members active etc...

so im pretty much clueless on how to "market" this business. say if i do have a really solid idea thats different than other and have potential....i wanted to know how will a "US business person" do it normally?

do they normally use like a marketing agent thats specialise for "internet businesses" for example..? or they purely just do comemrcial advertising them self?

if you have some spare time it would be really appreciated if you could share your thought about this.

I thank you in advanced for your attention....

kind regards, winnie

[akula]

Originally Posted by winnie

sorryy i think i was posting on the wrong section of the forum before.. so here it is...

hi all.. im new here.. my husband and i have a website business for about 10 years now and we want to create a networking/community site such as friendster,my space,face book etc.. but in a more focus target market. i believe that we can build a really good site with lots of great features aswe have the skill on programming so we can build as much features aswe want, but we have more questions on more how to get the people to use the site.

we're in australia and there's none website that is sucessfull like friendster,my space,you tube,etsy or anything like that.. i guess because there's not much people in australia compare to us market.

our questions is, if anybody can give us advise on how did those sucessfull company started marketing their site ( when they first started ) other than telling friends around to spread the word around? is there a marketing company that is specifically handle "community website businesses" ? where should we look..? where should we go to get more info about this...?

Money is not a problem for us.. ( ie; we dont need investor or anything like that.. ) what we are hoping to get answer from your help is more on ... what does a startup " sucessfull community website business" normally do on the beginning of their business? ( on the marketing side of it )

your advice and help are very verymuch appreciated. thank you very much.

sure, I'm in sydney
I was part of the cofounding team to launch studentface.com.au (an australian version of facebook)
this was a venture backed company and I can answer all your questions
you'll need to schedule a skype/phone conference with me
dannynerezov@gmail.com