Six Benefits of Building Your Own House Social Network

You have a choice about where you build your social networking community. As described above, platform ownership matters, and building a community on your own site has advantages. Below we outline six benefits to house social networks.

Benefit 1: Control of Community Features
When you build your own social network, you have the opportunity to construct the site to best meet the needs of your individual. You have more leeway with tools and how you incorporate social networking features into your web site. For example, you might accentuate commenting on articles, or choose to focus more on blogs and blog commenting. You could highlight discussion groups on the homepage or feature your most active bloggers. You have complete freedom to design and construct the site to best meet your community objectives, and to bake your services and content seamlessly into the site architecture.

Benefit 2: Full Access and Use of Constituent Records
While Facebook prefers that you keep your constituent data on their platform, social networking software and single sign-on (SSO) technology combine to provide complete access to your constituent information on your house
social networks. Total access to constituent information translates to better reporting, simpler data management, and improved outreach, for example via email marketing.

Benefit 3: Better Community Management Tools
Tools for bad word filters on comments, user flagging of inappropriate content, policing member behavior, moderating discussion group dialogue, and technical support are often more robust on social networking software used to build and manage house social networks. Facebook, on the other hand, has only minimal tools for managing your fans, which are often inadequate for effective community management.

Benefit 4: Streamlined Design and Development
User interface design is challenging on Facebook, MySpace and other commercial social networks. While these sites offer a development platform, it is proprietary and requires highly specialized programmers. House social networking tools rely on simple web page design and development, with minor accommodations for specialized hooks for the social networking features.

Benefit 5: Integrate Content, Service and Social Networking
Very few nonprofit online communities are solely social, as the term social networking might imply. In fact, most community sites deliver content and services intrinsic to the host organization’s mission and programs. The social networking features enhance the effectiveness of this mission-based work. On house social networking communities, there is complete flexibility in crafting the right mix of content, service and social networking features.

Benefit 6: Integrate Fundraising
Facebook (primarily via Facebook Causes) currently offers only basic fundraising technology. House social networking sites integrate handily with CRM software resulting in a seamless, branded, targeted, and integrated fundraising member experience.