Best Practices- Part 1 of 3: Modules and Blocks

“The Internet has lowered the barrier to entry for most services to “non existent”. Even with a tiny initial budget, you can have your dream idea up and running in no time.”

Volkan Özçelik, co-VP of Technology at GROU.PS

GROU.PS provides services to hundreds of sites and millions of users from all over the world. It is a platform that people from all walks of life can use to create their own interactive communities without any of the barriers that larger social networks tend to create. Users with various cultural, economic, national and social backgrounds create social networks and Internet sites used for amazingly varied and inventive purposes using the GROU.PS platform.

We’ve analyzed over 50 groups from our network and compiled a list of tips to kick-start our Best Practices blog series. Over the next three weeks, we’ll share some “tried and true” advice and recommendations that we believe will prove useful. These blogs are aimed for those of you just getting started with the GROU.PS platform, but we hope that some experienced users will also find them helpful.

Modules and Blocks

· Welcome New Members

It makes a great difference when people are “greeted and welcomed” as they login to a website. Here are some ideas for welcoming newcomers and encouraging them to become active:

Leave a comment on the wall of new users to welcome them, or send them a private message.

Adjust your network’s newsfeed settings so that an entry is published when a new member joins.

Create a block on your group’s home page to publish a welcome message and direct users to information on the group’s administrators, FAQs, etiquette, etc.

You may also include a welcome video for those users who may not want to read a lengthy welcome/introduction message.

· Top Contributors

If you are using the site for an NGO, a business or for educational purposes, adding the Top Contributors block can encourage and boost participation in your network, and it’s always great to showcase the level of activity for your ongoing project or site.

· Calendar: What’s up these days?

Users expect to see upcoming events on top of the page. Almost all of the successful groups we analyzed have the calendar block placed on the upper right or center of their homepage. Posting events (whether live or online) shows that a community is active and productive – and, of course, helps your members keep up to date on what’s new!

· Forum: Discuss, share and comment!

Especially when users are just checking in on your community to see if anything’s new, the Forum block can make it easier for them to get involved and stay involved by reminding users of ongoing conversations and discussions in your site’s forums.

· Newsfeed

If you are using the site for social networking, like LAGbook.com, where over 60,000 Africans socialize, then you should consider activating the newsfeed as the main focus for members to catch up with each other, comment on recent actions, update their status, and more.

Even if you’re using your GROU.PS network primarily for business purposes, it is still important for your members to keep updated on what’s going on. If you’re using GROU.PS for a small working group or project, the newsfeed can be particularly useful as an activity log and for keeping abreast of who’s doing what throughout the course of a day or week. The newsfeeds in our business-themed GROU.PS are usually located on the bottom or right-hand corner of the homepage.

· Check-in with mobile apps

There are more reasons than we can count why you should make the best use of the mobile applications offered by GROU.PS! Only one of these reasons is as follows: According to a recent study by Flurry, consumers spend 81 minutes per day using mobile apps, compared to 74 minutes of web surfing.

Through GROU.PS mobile app check-in, your members can now use mobile devices to interact with each other, stay connected and share information.

· Subgroups

This is one of the most widely used features GROU.PS offers to its users. You can create many subgroups within your network.  For example; Ozyegin University, located in Istanbul, Turkey, uses each subgroup as a different student club. A financial company in California, USA, uses subgroups for each of its departments. The possibilities are endless – you can make subgroups work for you and your unique project.

Don’t miss out on next week’s blog on Best Practices: Part 2 of 3 "Page Layout and Design"