If you are interested in offering a social network environment to your customers, prospects, employees or for a non-profit group and don’t know where to start – consider building one with a white-label social network system. White-label systems are designed to give you the basic building blocks for a system which you can modify and customize with your own brand and logo.

There are millions of reasons to have a presence on Facebook or Myspace but there may be times when you want to narrow your focus to a smaller group. Until recently you would need to hire a team of web and application developers for a long period of time in order to have your own social network. Or even a subset of functional services. Just the time to bring this to market not to mention the costs keep small and medium enterprises from even considering their own system. With the white-label systems now available out there, you can build a fully functional social network with a developer and within a short time frame.

NING is our favourite. NING for Businesses  gives the SME a fully featured white-label social networking system.

What does it cost?

• low monthly fees for the NING premium services,
• yearly domain registration fees,
• time dedicated for initial planning and design,
• a web specialist to handle the programming tasks,
• a project manager to ensure the system project stays on track and on budget,
• some ongoing maintenance to add new features as they become available.

What do you get in return?

• your own branded social network just like the large multi-national enterprises offer their customers,
• the opportunity to communicate with your customers in the world of the new web,
• the tools you need to connect and share information with your employees,
• the ability to reduce barriers in working with partners and business associates,
• e-commerce functionality,
• integration with your current web offerings,
• low maintenance – NING worries about the hardware and software infrastructure, so you can pay attention to your business.

DIY or contract out? If you have the skills and the time to develop your own social networking site, a do-it-yourself approach would work for you. On the other hand consider where your time as a small business owner is best spent. You are better off dealing with your customers and pursuing new business and let others perform the tasks which will support your business goals and objectives and activities.

BRASSmedia will work with your marketing folks, graphic designers, web developers and you to bring your business into the world of social networking. BRASSmedia can help you do it your way!

Dean Owen