INTRODUCTION

When you start your membership website, the first thing that comes to mind is that it's too lonely. You feel so alone and you want so badly that someone can interact with you.

You see yourself posting articles, liking it and commenting on it all by yourself.

Then you start sharing your links and you started getting visitors but that's all!

No one is registering!

All they do is come in, read whatever you share and they are gone.

If you are the type that checks Google analytic regularly, you'd almost give up and go to bed.

But how can you make your website engaging in this modern era where all everyone knows is Facebook, Instagram and Nairaland.

Well, I have that question too until I did my thorough research and here is what I came up with.

Please note that this article is very lengthy so it has been divided into THREE parts which you will get a link to at the end of each parts. If you feel you can't read it, that's just okay, you can get summary from anyone that is kind enough to share it with you.

But if as a blogger, you can't read a lengthy post, especially one that will help improve your website, then you shouldn't be blogging in the first place.

Let's get into it.

SOURCE: https://www.zealnut.com/blogs/entry/How-to-get-the-first-1000-real-members-to-join-your-social-network-With-zero-budget

PART ONE

ZERO!

That’s how many members your “community” site has right after you've completed installation, initial setup, branding and customization. Not much of a community after all right?

Abi what is a community when there's no one in it?,

In this post I’ll show you how to get the first 1000 real members to join your site. Step by step, with breakdown of impact significance of each step. This guide will work best for a community site, but really can be used for any kind of website or blog. Even on social media pages for those that wants to build a robust social media fan page.

BEFORE WE GET DEEP INTO IT, LET'S HAVE A LITTLE REALITY CHECK: If you are too lazy to or can’t perform all these steps, then you should stop paying for hosting, sell your domain name on eBay or Nairaland and go back to teaching or breeding chicken.

Breathe in, breath out and let’s get to work.

When people come to a new social network they look at two things - content and community. Mostly content. Unless it is a dating site where people are the content, you should not worry too much about the place looking “lonely”. It won’t look lonely if you get the first step right.

Step 1. Become your own dream member.

30% SUCCESS IMPACT

You are your own first site member. Make it a good one. This will be the profile that greets new people, profile that will set the tone and theme of the site, profile that will show if you even care about getting your community off the ground.

a) Join your own site. Just a simple sign-up to start with. At this stage you only need to make sure that you write your “Name” the way you want other members to do it. Anonymous “username” or real “full name”, depending on your niche and Dolphin settings.

b) Write a killer description. Your profile description is a piece of text that thousands of people will be reading every day (fingers crossed). Keep it in 50-200 words range and relevant to the context of your site. Remember, it is the “about you” write-up that is actually not about you. It is about how your presence makes the site interesting. Don’t write - “I love paper planes…”; write - “I invented a paper plane that can fly for 25 seconds and I’ll show you how to make one”. People don’t care about you. They care about paper planes that can fly for 25 seconds.

c) Add a great profile photo. No, you don’t have it in your photo archive. Well, maybe you do, but most likely you don’t. Go ahead and make one. Don’t skimp on this. It’s more important than your site logo. Good light, friendly smile, open look. Fill the frame with your face, not with your body or scenery. Make it sharp. Dolphin profile photos show in retina resolution, so even small thumbnails will reveal your face features. Perhaps have a good sleep before the photoshoot. If you can’t make it look sharp and clean - send your photo to one the artists at Fiverr to make a drawing.

d) Upload a striking profile background image. It’s a large picture, right on top of your profile. Don’t use anything with too many details, texts or contrasting color-combination. Plain, but beautiful. It is OK to use a generic pattern, landscape or illustration, but you can make the splash amplify your message or tell a story. Back to the paper-planes example - it could be a picture of your best model up in the air, with awestruck kids in the background.

e) Make 5 compelling blog posts. It will have to take you at least a week to do this, but it must be done. Not 1 post. Not 3 posts. Write 5 different ones, with pictures, with meaningful insight, fun stories and useful links. This is going to be the main body of content for your site. Keep the posts relevant to your niche. Be as open and giving as you possibly can. Use engaging titles and don’t forget about style. Proofread!

f) Create 5 albums with 10 photos each. Each album is a story. People love photo-stories. When you were making photos, you should have thrown out 9 out of 10 shots. Now go through the ones that’s left and choose the best ones - 1 out of a thousand. Upload and annotate. Each photo caption should be 5-20 words that add “soul” to the moment. Think to the tune of - “The red smudge on left wing is blood from my fingers. Had to get the creases right!”.

g) Upload 10 fascinating videos. It may prove to be the hardest step, but it may as well become the most rewarding. If a picture is worth a thousand words, a 1 minute video at 30 frames per second is worth 1,800,000 words! That’s a lot of words. That’s about 2000 lengthy blog posts, in just 1 minute. You could embed existing relevant Youtube videos, sure - but those count as 0.0001 of your own original ones. Don’t cheat! Make 10 awesome videos, edit them (it's easy now), annotate and upload. Your website to blog will convert them for you, but make sure to set up high-quality conversion and playback.

h) Post 50 mixed-content items. Take a 2-week vacation with resolve to post 5 amazing items a day, with 4 extra days for interlinking them. Depending on what modules you’ve on your website, they will be Polls, Events, Sounds, Files, Ads etc. Don’t make any “test” posts. Your site is already live, the game is on, it is all for-real! All items should be tidy, engaging and relevant to the site goal. Once you have them all posted, go back to each one, edit and add links between them. Link to a Poll from the Blog post, to an Album from Event, to Event from from Group. Link from within content.

i) Create 2 topics in every section of your Forum. If you have a forum website or you run a multi-functions site with a forum category like https://www.zealnut.com, you ought to have something in mind you want to discuss about it. Keep the first posts at 50-200 words limit. Ask real questions that you actually care to contemplate. It’s hard to be asking into empty space at first, but get over it! You’re spending time and money for domain name and hosting. You must make good use of it. Ask into empty space and move on to the next step.

SOURCE: ZEALNUT

PART TWO

Step 2. Bribe your family and friends into joining.

20% SUCCESS IMPACT

Your own social site or blog starts from your own social circle. If you can’t get them to join, you won’t get anyone else to join. Don’t nag, bribe them!

And be cool about it. If you take it as a fun adventure, it is going to be a fun adventure for everyone involved.

a) Give your wife / husband / partner a foot-massage. …while they’re signing up. Then bring hot chocolate, sit close by and challenge them to make a profile that rivals yours (see Step 1).

b) Talk about your website at every common gathering you find yourself.

If you started a site about something, you should have real people you already know that care about this theme. Invite them to a part you're also going, free beers and all and as they party, you work. Before things go out of control, sit everyone down and tell about your new site. Show it. Ask their opinion and make them feel like insiders of an elite club. Explain how they’re primed to become the top influencers in the entire niche when they join the site. Start a competition common among you guys on the site and ask them to sign up to see who wins. If they like women, create a female profile of an attractive girl and tell them about her. Make them believe you don't have her contact and the only way they can reach her is on your website. Trust me, every single one of them will create a profile the next morning.

c) Connect and infect them. Over the next week or two get your first few members to “become friends”. Keep posting new content, show it to them and ask to post something, too. Even small bits will do. You would really get them engaged if you post about them and their content. This is a micro-social-network already and you need to put the first wires together. Post things like “Who do you think will win 2019 electIon" PDP, APC or a new party?” and link to their first photos. Ask questions in forums that you know your friends can answer and send the questions to them directly. If they don’t reply, call and make a fuss. They may think you're crazy but you are on your way to your target.

Step 3. Use your first profiles as bait.

20% SUCCESS IMPACT

Now that you have your first few connected profiles with great content, it’s time to use them to scale up. The big busy world may not really care that much about your friends, and they may not be eager enough yet to promote your site on their own. Their friends care.

a) Praise, show-off and flatter your friends publicly. Take their profile and content from your site and share it to social networks - Facebook, G+, VK, Pinterest, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc. Promote via your profile, carefully tagging and referencing. Promote on their profile, commenting on how cool the content is and how shy your friend is to not share it yet. Your goal is to make THEIR friends itch for the same treatment.

b) Promote relevant content, posted by others. You are not a spammer. So, you won’t go around posting links to your site in comments and forums everywhere. You’d be hated, damned and kicked out. You will see a much better tolerance for posts like “my friend Wale tried to make the same model and we made _this funny video together_”. Naturally, you would only post such links in places where it adds value to discussion and context. Don’t embellish your posts with spammy promo words. Just be casual, like it’s not even your site. You can do it in various groups, forums, blogs and communities that are in same interest-group as your site. Don’t post links right off the bat! Get involved first, talk to people, feel the space. Good rule of thumb is to focus on 10 such places in the first 2 weeks and start posting links not sooner than the first week. You want admins to get a bit more comfortable with you first.

Source: ZEALNUT

PART THREE

PREVIOUSLY: INTRODUCTION, PART ONE, PART TWO



Step 4. Engage like a horse-fly...

READ THE LAST AND MOST IMPORTANT PART HERE

cc: Lalastica
cc: Mynd4
Help me to push this to front page... I no try?

...

Kelvin30286063:
INTRODUCTION

When you start your membership website, the first thing that comes to mind is that it's too lonely. You feel so alone and you want so badly that someone can interact with you.

You see yourself posting articles, liking it and commenting on it all by yourself.

Then you start sharing your links and you started getting visitors but that's all!

No one is registering!

All they do is come in, read whatever you share and they are gone.

If you are the type that checks Google analytic regularly, you'd almost give up and go to bed.

But how can you make your website engaging in this modern era where all everyone knows is Facebook, Instagram and Nairaland.

Well, I have that question too until I did my thorough research and here is what I came up with.

Please note that this article is very lengthy so it has been divided into THREE parts which you will get a link to at the end of each parts. If you feel you can't read it, that's just okay, you can get summary from anyone that is kind enough to share it with you.

But if as a blogger, you can't read a lengthy post, especially one that will help improve your website, then you shouldn't be blogging in the first place.

Let's get into it.

SOURCE: https://www.zealnut.com/blogs/entry/How-to-get-the-first-1000-real-members-to-join-your-social-network-With-zero-budget

Pls after paying for site hosting and registering domain name,what next is required to put your site up for everyone to see and visit?

sweetilicious:
Pls after paying for site hosting and registering domain name,what next is required to put your site up for everyone to see and visit?

Then you have to decide whether you want a CMS website or PHP or HTML... The list is endless abeg.
Whatever you choose determines what next. Personally, for a website like ZEALNUT, you will need a lot of html/PHP knowledge. The easiest way to build your website is CMS though. Just use WordPress or probably Joomla, they are WYDIWYS (What you do is what you see) platforms that can develop your website withing a short time.