ning 3 - Cultivating Community2024-03-19T06:15:04Zhttps://cultivate.ning.com/ning-blog/feed/tag/ning%2B3Unleash The Power of Groups on Ning 3.0https://cultivate.ning.com/ning-blog/unleash-the-power-of-groups-on-ning-3-02013-09-11T23:20:00.000Z2013-09-11T23:20:00.000ZAllison Leahyhttps://cultivate.ning.com/community/allisonleahy<div><p class="p1">Today, we are excited to announce the release of the all new <a href="http://www.ning.com/groups" target="_blank">Groups feature for Ning 3.0</a>. Groups are an effective way of creating spaces in your community for more targeted conversations. Members can self-organize around shared geography, languages, passions, activities, professions, and more. Groups also offer an ideal solution for private team collaboration, organizing information, and developing stronger member relationships, as well as premium membership, sponsorships, targeted advertising and other creative monetization strategies.</p>
<p class="p1"><strong>The Stuff Supergroups Are Made Of</strong></p>
<p class="p1">Groups are like mini-communities inside your community and may include multiple instances of all the features you are already familiar with like Forums, Blogs, Photos, and Custom Pages. Group admins can be granted limited, advanced, or complete control over the layout, design, description, and privacy settings for each Group and the Pages within. Members can be automatically assigned to a Group based on their responses to Profile Questions during sign-up, they can be manually added via the Members Management page, or they can find and join Groups at will. And, for the first time ever, content can be moved from one Group to another or from a Group Forum to the main network Forum.</p>
<p class="p1"><strong>A look Inside Groups on Ning 3.0</strong></p>
<p class="p1"><iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/rOXCz3AAdhc?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe></p>
<p><strong>Unleashing the Power of Groups on Ning 3.0</strong></p>
<p>Nearly 250 Network Creators participated in our public beta. Over the course of a month these amazing Ning customers reported dozens of bugs, offered many suggestions for improvement, and conceived of a multitude of ways to utilize Groups on their networks. Some of the schemes they devised were beyond my wildest imagination.</p>
<ul class="ul1">
<li class="li2"><span class="font-size-1">Reignite the Local Church</span></li>
<li class="li2"><span class="font-size-1">Publish a Book</span></li>
<li class="li2"><span class="font-size-1">Engage Constituencies</span></li>
<li class="li2"><span class="font-size-1">Display Seasonal Craft Collections</span></li>
<li class="li2"><span class="font-size-1">Provide Tutoring and Mentee Services</span></li>
<li class="li2"><span class="font-size-1">Create a Classifieds System</span></li>
<li class="li2"><span class="font-size-1">Establish a Help Center</span></li>
<li class="li2"><span class="font-size-1">Promote Special Advertisers</span></li>
</ul>
<p class="p1">I had the pleasure of talking through these various implementations with the folks who masterminded them. If you're looking for inspiration for how to use the redesigned Groups feature, look no further. (Thanks, Dustin, Suzie, John, Justino, and Randy!)</p>
<p><a href="http://paradigmshiftministries.com/groups" target="_blank"><img src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1281942?profile=RESIZE_320x320" width="300" class="align-right" style="padding: 5px;"></a></p>
<p class="p1"></p>
<p class="p1"><b>Reignite the Local Church</b></p>
<p class="p1">Dustin Craig's eureka moment came during a High School field trip. "What if there was a way to make that feeling of [church] community extend beyond Sunday," he pondered. Social networking was a natural fit. An online community would not only strengthen bonds between church-goers, it could be used to share organizational knowledge, minimize programmatic work, and foster cross-denominational networking. "Regardless of location or denomination, ministry leaders are facing many of the same struggles," says Dustin.</p>
<p class="p1">Paradigm Shift Ministries (PSM) aims to solve for these problems by bringing church organizations, ministry leaders, adults, and youth together under one virtual roof. Groups are a key component to organizing the network around specific issues to facilitate problem-solving conversations and ignite action. Each membership option is bundled with access to specific Groups, and many will be assigned at sign-up via Profile Questions.</p>
<ul>
<li><span class="font-size-1"><a href="http://paradigmshiftministries.com/groups/clay/">CLAY Groups</a> for coaches, league commissioners, officials and parents who are involved in PSM's sports ministry programs</span></li>
<li><span class="font-size-1">Regional Church Groups where PSM church partners can interact with their members during the week. A major benefit of these groups is that the community can contribute content and they are objectively easier to use and maintain than most church websites, which tend to be built on dated or clunky CMSs</span></li>
<li><span class="font-size-1">Community Groups where members can work together on service projects of all shape and scale.</span></li>
<li><span class="font-size-1">Ministry Groups where members will be divided into specific areas of ministry (e.g., youth ministry) with the goal of fostering cross-denominational networking across the country.</span></li>
<li><span class="font-size-1">Other Groups which will include a prayer group, PSM staff group, and groups specific to the various ministry programs.</span></li>
</ul>
<p class="p1">The ability to create rich and varied user journeys and fulfill the goals of the community is predicated on Groups, as is the monetization strategy for the network. "I've worked with a number of churches over the years, and I hear the same story everywhere I go. Regardless of location or denomination, ministry leaders are facing many of the same struggles. The overriding goal [of this community] is to remind people that they are not alone." Today, churches that have been involved with PSM programs over the years are invited to join for a one-time, lifetime fee of $99. As Paradigm Shift Ministries is fully developed, pricing tiers and premium content will be added to help drive revenue.</p>
<p class="p1"></p>
<p><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1282009?profile=RESIZE_480x480" target="_self" width="350"><img src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1282009?profile=RESIZE_320x320" width="300" class="align-left" style="padding: 5px;"></a></p>
<p class="p1"><b>Publish a Book</b></p>
<p class="p1">Justino Mora, founder of the technical recruiting Ning 3.0 Network <a href="http://mobile.ning.com" target="_blank">Mobile.ning.com</a>, plays three active roles in his community: recruiter and headhunter, community manager, and career planning consultant. To fulfill his primary role, Justino launched a Job Board and used Groups. He was able to use Groups to efficiently separate job seekers by region and use Group categories to call out these regional groups as well as job functions and industries. "Launching a Job Board in Groups is like peeling of a mandarin. Piece of cake. Takes only seconds. And a couple more minutes to dress them up."</p>
<p class="p1">Since launching a Job Board took less time and creative energy than originally anticipated, Justino delved into <a href="http://mobile.ning.com/communities/jobsearch/home" target="_blank">architecting a book</a> about issues surrounding expatriation, sponsorship and immigration in the regional and international job search. Each chapter of this book is released as a different blog and added to the top navigation bar (e.g., 1. Situational Analysis, 2. Market Tracking, etc.). In addition to the main book chapters, Justino has included a General Forum Q&A where visitors can get their questions answered by the author and/or the community, and the native commenting feature is turned on to encourage conversation around each chapter. Publishing a book with the Groups feature allows Justino to put the content in a format that his members are used to and an area that is already experiencing heavy visitor traffic. To earn additional revenue, targeted ads are included in the lefthand column.</p>
<p class="p1"></p>
<p class="p1"><b><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1282102?profile=original" target="_self"><img src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1282102?profile=RESIZE_320x320" width="300" class="align-right" style="padding: 5px;"></a></b></p>
<p class="p1"><b>Engage Constituencies</b></p>
<p class="p1">Susan Nielsen took over <a href="http://theconstitutionalconservatives.ning.com/groups" target="_blank">The Constitutional Conservatives</a> on a whim after running into the original Network Creator at a local meet-up and hearing his stories of disillusionment with a lack of engagement and activity. Suzie decided right there and then that she had what it takes to lead the community, and would have a great time doing so. Now, three years later, The Constitutional Conservatives enjoys reader and member growth due to its popular conservative editorials, well-received newsletter, wealth of campaign resources, and other patriotic media that inspires political activism across these United States. The next stop on Suzie's agenda? A complete redesign that is centered around a unique implementation of the Groups feature and covers 5 regions, 50 states and 453 congressional districts.</p>
<p class="p1">During our conversation, Suzie explained how breaking a state down into its regional and district levels would encourage members to communicate in more meaningful ways. Come election time, these districts will be discussing very different issues and propositions, so it makes sense to create very specific spaces for them to hash out their opinions. Growing a community like The Constitutional Conservatives is a competitive business, she continued, but the ability to drill down into district-level conversations "puts me in a completely different category, having the ability to communicate at that level puts me well beyond a classic forum." Suzie went on to note that the only other sites with features like this boast hundreds of thousands of people, which can really water down the discussion. Next steps will be to populate the State Groups with at least one ambassador each, then prepare for the grand re-opening, facilitate a membership drive, and continue to create great content in advance of the next election season.</p>
<p class="p1">In a truly collaborative effort, Suzie brought respected Ning Network Creators John Bizley, Kos, George Compton, and Bernard Lama on board to help with the organization, custom buttons, re-sizing, centering, and custom page template and fulfill a vision that goes far beyond the 5 regional and interest-based Groups on her Ning 2.0 Network.</p>
<p class="p1">So, how were these complex 5 region, 50 state, 453 congressional district Groups assembled? Each state was added as its own Group, then each region was added as a category within the Group Hub, finally each state added to its proper region. To create the 453 districts, they thought outside of Groups and expanded into the Forum feature. A Forum instance was created for each state, and forum categories were used to house the districts (e.g., Nevada has three districts so they were added as District 1, District 2, District 3 within the Nevada forum). These districts now show up in the nav bar for that forum and the member can choose which district to visit or post to. The district forums were added to the Unlinked Pages section of Sites & Pages so that they did not show up on the main navigation.</p>
<p class="p1">Next step was to link the states to their districts. To accomplish this, each district forum URL was copied along with the URL for each state Group. In each state, an HTML button was added in a sidebar pointing to the district forum or forums for that state. A few lines of custom code were added to remove the categories from the Group navigation bars and a drop-down selection box was inserted to the top of the Groups list to filter states by region. A second drop-down was placed right next to this with a list of all 50 states, so a member could easily choose which State Group to join. Future plans include adding a third filter that will display any non-state Groups added to the network.</p>
<p class="p1"><b><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1282113?profile=original" target="_self"><img src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1282113?profile=RESIZE_320x320" width="230" class="align-right" style="padding: 5px;"></a>Present Seasonal Craft Collections</b></p>
<p class="p1"><a href="http://buildingnewworlds.net/" target="_blank">Building New Worlds</a> is home to miniature village enthusiasts around the world and Randy Vollet has decided to leverage the updated Groups feature to showcase holiday collections. He anticipates no longer having to change the main page to reflect a current holiday season while keeping seasonal collections organized and being respectful to those who don't celebrate every holiday. Randy also sees the ability to move content from Group to Group, which will allow him to re-categorize duplicate content and archive outdated material, as "another awesome [feature] that allows us to be in full control of our groups."</p>
<p class="p1">Now that you're familiar with some of the unique use cases, how do you think your community will use the new supercharged Groups feature? </p>
<p class="p1"></p>
<p class="p1"><em>To learn more about Groups for Ning 3.0, check out our new <a href="http://www.ning.com/groups" target="_blank">Groups feature page</a> and <a href="http://www.ning.com/ning3help/introduction-to-groups/" target="_blank">help articles</a>. To experience the new, supercharged Groups feature, <a href="http://www.ning.com/pricing" target="_blank">start a Ning 3.0 trial</a>!</em></p></div>Professional Community Course by FeverBee Now Availablehttps://cultivate.ning.com/ning-blog/professional-community-course-by-feverbee-now-available2013-08-13T23:45:17.000Z2013-08-13T23:45:17.000ZAaronhttps://cultivate.ning.com/community/Aaron<div><p><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1281897?profile=original" target="_self"><img src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1281897?profile=RESIZE_320x320" width="250" class="align-right"></a><br> <span class="font-size-3">We're excited to announce a free course for Ning Network Creators developed in collaboration with FeverBee, a top community management consultancy. In the course, you'll learn the skills, knowledge, and resources to build a thriving community.</span></p>
<p><span class="font-size-3">This self-paced course, which contains 10 lessons, covers the objectives of a community, understanding your audience, recruiting your first members, creating thriving discussions, developing content and facilitating exciting events. At the end of each lesson, you'll find a list of specific action points. These are elements that you can directly apply to your community efforts.</span></p>
<p><span class="font-size-3">We're really excited about the addition of this resource for Ning Network Creators. Ning prides itself on being the home for social innovators who want to create online communities of people with similar interests or passions. We make it easy to get your community up and running quickly. The FeverBee Community Management Course for Ning will help you along the next steps: finding people who will love your community, building a welcome plan designed to turn new members into regulars, finding and creating content that will engage your community, and nurturing the relationships that make things happen in your community. </span></p>
<p><span class="font-size-3">With lessons, templates, actionable elements, and other resources, the amount of information and guidance you'll receive from this course is invaluable - and it's all free to Ning customers. We're rolling out access slowly and Ning 3.0 customers will get the first crack at it to help build their newly created communities. If you're a Ning 3.0 customer, check your email for a message from us with your enrollment key and follow the access instructions below:</span></p>
<table cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td valign="middle" class="td1"> <p class="p2"></p>
<ol class="ol1">
<li class="li3"><span class="font-size-3">Go to <a href="http://students.feverbee.com/login/signup.php" target="_self">this page</a>.</span></li>
<li class="li3"><span class="font-size-3">Complete the required fields, then click <i>Create my new account</i>.</span></li>
<li class="li3"><span class="font-size-3">Once you have received the confirmation email, click on the link to confirm your new account.</span></li>
<li class="li3"><span class="font-size-3">This will take you back to the Student site. Once here, select the module FeverBee training for Ning Customers.</span></li>
</ol> </td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table></div>Ning 3.0: Own and Take Control of Your Social Channels. Reach, Cultivate and Empower Your Fans When You Want, How You Wanthttps://cultivate.ning.com/ning-blog/announcing-ning-32013-03-11T14:00:00.000Z2013-03-11T14:00:00.000ZJohn McDonaldhttps://cultivate.ning.com/community/JohnMcDonald<div><p>When we first began offering full-featured Ning Networks in 2007, MySpace was the clear leader in social networking, Facebook was 1/10th the size it is today and Twitter was celebrating its first birthday. Ning was the place for early social innovators to create online communities of people with similar interests or passions.</p>
<p>Today, social media has become an essential part of the world. A Facebook Page is required for anyone with anything to say or sell. Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest and Instagram have exploded in growth, and people and organizations have accessed the broad reach of these social channels to quickly attract fans and followers in ways never imagined.</p>
<p><a target="_self" href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1281640?profile=original"><img class="align-right" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1281640?profile=RESIZE_480x480" height="115" width="400"></a>And yet, the proliferation and adoption of these social channels has fragmented instead of fostering the best parts of online communities. The bands, authors, artists, experts, advocates, non-profits, brands and others who’ve built strong and active social presences on Facebook, Twitter and other channels—people we call “social leaders”—now increasingly find those same platforms limiting how they can cultivate, contact and empower their online communities.</p>
<p>We’ve learned from the more than 2 million communities that have launched on Ning in the last 6 years, listened deeply to our customers and today we’re thrilled to unveil a top-to-bottom redesign of Ning to specifically address the needs of social leaders: Ning 3.0.</p>
<p><strong>On Ning 3.0, today’s social leader can create a place where they own and control everything, a place to communicate and engage with their most loyal fans or customers when they want and how they want—on the largest, most scalable, and most integrated social platform of its kind.</strong></p>
<p>This is Ning reimagined. Reflecting our heritage, this redesign combines publishing & community in a way never before seen, featuring design customization and tools that are a step-change in site flexibility and functionality.</p>
<p><strong>Publishing + Community</strong></p>
<p>With Ning 3.0, you can create multiple instances of social features such as blogs and forums, each with a distinct audience, contributors, commenting system and privacy. This flexibility and control gives social leaders the ability to clearly distinguish their “official” content from user-generated content, and to integrate both in unique ways. For example, a band might create an official blog and photos page where non-members can comment using Disqus and only band members can contribute. Their fans could join the community to upload their own photos and post discussions on a public fan photos page and forum. And the band could invite their superfans to join their street team and gain access to a private forum to interact directly with band members. All of these social features would be integrated into one Ning Network.</p>
<p><a target="_blank" href="http://divaliciousblog.com/"><img class="align-center" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1281661?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024" width="750"></a>We’ve also completely rewritten and redesigned our publishing tools in Ning 3.0 to meet the expectations of social leaders today. Blogs are elegantly presented, with lead photos, excerpts, categorization and custom URL. Photos look sharp, clean and professionally arranged. We’ve added a new Social Channel feature to integrate videos from YouTube or Vimeo channel. And if you want to give non-members the ability to interact with your published content, you can choose Disqus or Facebook for commenting on that feature.</p>
<p>Want to see what we mean? Check out these two new communities launched today on Ning 3.0 by actress <a href="http://elizapatriciadushku.com" target="_blank">Eliza Dushku</a> and <a href="http://divaliciousblog.com/" target="_blank">Divalicious</a>, the community of beauty/fashion expert Lauren Cosenza.</p>
<p><strong>Beautiful design made easy</strong></p>
<p>It’s always been easy for a non-technical person to set up a Ning Network with a simple design. But to create a stand-out, stunning design, you’ve needed extensive CSS skills. With Ning 3.0, truly anyone will be able to create a unique, beautifully designed home for his or her online community. Our Design Studio now includes new themes, more than 1,400 background images, balanced color palettes and cool translucent options. Header customization can now be done by simply dragging and dropping navigation, logo and other images.</p>
<p><a target="_self" href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1281672?profile=original"><img class="align-right" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1281672?profile=RESIZE_480x480" width="409"></a>We made a more fundamental change with Ning 3.0 to make the platform much friendlier for expert designers as well. We completely redesigned the HTML of all user-facing pages using an updated, responsive 960 pixel 16 column grid that is familiar for any designer who has spent time working with Bootstrap. Designers will find it easy to design 1, 2, 3, 4 or even 6 column designs. Column padding and other detailed customization is now straightforward and flexible.</p>
<p><strong>Responsive design: mobile app not required</strong></p>
<p>Tablets and mobile phones are rapidly overtaking and sprinting past the desktop browser in terms of usage. Ning 3.0 was built using responsive design and HTML5, resulting in beautiful design and fan experiences on any device – smartphone, tablet or laptop.</p>
<p><strong>Get started today for free</strong></p>
<p>We invite you to experience the new Ning by going to <a href="http://www.ning.com/" target="_blank">www.Ning.com</a> and starting a free trial right away to experience the increased flexibility, beautiful design and improved publishing capabilities. Current Ning customers should also visit our <a href="http://creators.ning.com/page/ning-3-0-the-re-imagining-of-our-product" target="_blank">Ning 3.0 FAQs</a> to learn when and how they can upgrade to Ning 3.0.</p>
<p>We’re incredibly excited about what it means for social leaders looking to take the next step in cultivating their online communities. We hope you are just as excited about the possibilities Ning 3.0 holds for your community of fans, members, customers, followers, supporters or readers.</p></div>