How To Make a Social Media Website? Points to Consider

The Fame that social media possess need no description. It is a platform where different people meet to share their ideas, thoughts, and give an insight of their social life.

But have you ever thought of making a social media platform of your own?

The idea of creating a social media website might sound crazy. But have your ever thought about the factors that need to be considered?

Let’s have a look.

1. Determine Your Target Audience and Develop a Concept Based Upon Their Value

Considering this first most step will give you a push towards the journey of creating a website.

Moreover, this start-push does not show result instantly but will surely pay off after you are finished.

Once you think of getting started with creating your website, you must define your target audience, i.e. determine what kind of audience you intend to attract and influence.

This phase is very important as it helps you establish your social media network on solid ground for the future.

Additionally, this approach reduces the level of failure in the future. You can either choose online research or create a demo version of your website to determine the target audience.

However, it is suggested to choose the first option because a demo version includes many additional costs attached to it.

When creating a social network site, you get limited resources; therefore, the demo version method might show a consequent increase in your respective budget.

However, one should not forget that the approach is capable to provide you with 100% reliable results.

2. Development of Your Social Network Based On Your Audience and a Proper Growth Strategy

In the presence of so many competitors in the market, it is quite a struggle to come up with a website that is unique and out-of-the-box.

In order to stand and make a separate identity of your own, you need to prepare a good growth strategy.

Till now, you must be finished with the determination of your target audience. Its time, you make them aware of your services.

The future of your social network site’s success depends highly on your definition of a consistent growth strategy.

The choice is on you, whether you want a site or a mobile app as your platform. However, either of them is highly effective and successful nowadays.

The choice further depends on if you want it to be operative on Android, iPhone or both. Moreover, you can start with locally and on a small scale and then expand slowly.

Or otherwise, you can proceed further focusing your efforts on big demographic and get started with marketing on large scale at the very beginning.

However, what is suggested is to always start with a small base- in the absence of a unique idea.

Beginning with an approach to the large base will increase your presence in the market more quickly, as a result of which, you will be exposed to other competitors. Hence, the growth of your social network site will become tougher than usual.

3. Consider Determining Various Checkpoints Prior To Getting in Touch With Your Developers

A social network site is a complex programme that requires a right team of experts to be developed successfully. The next step towards creating a social media website is to get in touch with developers and discuss everything with them. But prior to it, you must consider determining certain checkpoints which are as follows:

The Money:

This step towards development is all about the money. For a site similar to Instagram, the cost can easily run up to $300,000 while social media websites like Facebook can go to $500,000. The cost of your website depends on how complex features you want to develop on your website. For a site with fewer complex features, the cost will be down to somewhere around $1, 00,000. Always remember that a site with low complex features will always be low in cost.

Traffic Estimation:

It is quite a difficult task. Moreover, it is impossible to evaluate or judge the traffic of a website with full accuracy. Hence, if your development team could manage to estimate somewhere to the closest number of the actual traffic, wouldn’t it be wonderful? Therefore, once you are finished with a proper marketing research, its time you give a rough number, pertaining to the estimation, to your respective developers. This rough estimation will help you determine your database and cost. Following are the choices:

• You can start with MySQL or PostgreSQL for your structured data.
• You can start with NoSQL databases, like MongoDB which supports high-traffic and high-load surges.

You need to discuss with your development team about which one to consider. You would not want to spend on something which is expensive and does not show the expected result.

The Platform:

The next following decision involves whether you want a mobile app or a website. You need to determine such things before you sit for the big talk with your developers. The data from the Research can be taken into account to support the decision.

4. Development Phase 2 i.e. the Design and Features

In this phase of development, you must focus on implementing designs on the website that are functional and user-friendly.

It is recommended to use less and simple designs in order to increase the efficiency of your social media website. User experience is what matters after all. Remember to use an approach which is user-oriented.

The design and features should be easy to use and capable to provide an enjoyable experience. A good development team is what might come of a great help in achieving this.

They must keep the architecture, the overall design, and layout consistent and logical. You are required to include some basic elements prior to starting your social network site’s advanced design and features such as Chat option, Connect Buttons, Comment Section, Standard profile elements, News Feed, Engagement Buttons, and Social Group options.

Additionally, In order to successfully create a user-friendly social media website, you must heavily invest in your app or website’s architecture.

5. Development Phase 3 i.e. Assembling a Good Team

Generally, a social media website includes a Senior/Middle UX developer, Junior UI, Senior and Middle Back-end developers, 2 QA’s, Senior/Middle UI designer, 2 Senior/Middle Front-end developers, DevOps, and last but not the least, a Project Manager who oversees and supervise the whole project.

Here again, you get a choice between if you want to hire all the above mentioned, or you want to contract with a site development firm.

For your information, the average cost of hiring these in-house (depends on your locale) can get to some around $250,000 per year. Moreover, outsourcing is far cheaper.

Read also : Top 10 Web Development Companies In India

6. Effective Promotion and Marketing of Your Social Media Website

This is the time when you will be holding the final product in your hands. Just like any other business, it is time to promote and do the marketing of the product. Consider using the AIDA marketing model.

AIDA stands for attention, interest, desire, and action. This will ensure that your efforts on the targeted audience meet their desires and needs. In this phase too, you again get options to choose from i.e.

• Develop marketing expertise
• Consider the use of SEO tools
• Include taking lead from LinkedIn with any of the above options

7. Monetizing the Efforts

A social media website business is a serious affair. It involves struggles and efforts with an aim to earn money. Moreover, it requires a lot of investment. This is the phase where all of your efforts and investments will finally pay off.

Seek partnership opportunities. Look out for a retailer who might be interested in advertisement their business in your website.

Considering this will relate to the fact that when followers see brand name and placements, they get an impression of being in a popular place, thus, get encouraged to join in.

You can also pursue potential advertiser. This can be done by mentioning their products and services on your website.

Furthermore, through following and publishing their content on your site, and stating comments with back-links to your website, and many more.

However, if you don’t want to do all this by yourself, then you can consider hiring a marketing/promotion specialist. Be careful and hire reputed advertisers as it holds the ability to directly impact your website.

8. Maintenance and Scaling of the Website

If you have considered in-house staff, then you don’t really need to consider this phase. However, if you have outsourced the development of your social media website, then you must ensure that the firm you hire offers you maintenance, solutions and scaling whenever needed.

A good firm posses and follows such approach and provide you with regular recommendations and consults, whenever required.

Developing a social media website can take up to six months. The steps, mentioned above will allow you to create your own website successfully, effectively and efficiently.

A website is nothing without its users. Therefore, always remember to focus on meeting the demands and desires of your target audience.

Read also : How To Create A Chat Application Successfully