facebook (5)

“Why should I invest in a custom community on Ning – why not just focus on my Facebook Page?” It’s a question I’ve heard frequently since I joined the Ning team in 2009. While there isn’t just one answer, custom communities do offer several unique benefits including complete ownership of the relationships and membership data, the ability to communicate with fans when and how you want, the chance to create a branded destination, and the freedom to monetize fan activity. However, the most important reason for investing in a custom community is the outcome – higher quality engagement with fans, peers, or customers.
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A breakdown of Ted Rheingold's ForumCon 2013 presentation "How to Make Social Work For Your Forums" including a definition of sociality, a look at the three levels of sharing, how to avoid platform fatigue, and engagement hacks for optimizing your community's presence across popular social platforms.
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Your community platform is your home. It’s the destination you want your target audience to reach so you can cultivate a community. Social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn are not good platforms for building community, because they don't offer you the control you need and you can only reach a tiny percentage of your audience.
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Moving beyond Facebook. What's next? Many of us following Facebook’s ongoing updates to News Feeds are convinced that the new rules, filters and algorithms are making it harder for businesses to reach their audience without spending big money on sponsored posts. Given the rising costs and unpredictability of reaching their fan base with organic content, brands and business owners are considering to limit their reliance on Facebook as their core social media platform, and are more likely to continue using Facebook for it’s 1 billion+ users, primarily as one of their many distribution channels.
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Every few weeks, Ning invites a leading expert to discuss trending topics and best practices for community management. Watch the recordings here.

More than two million people have built a branded social network on Ning. Many of these customers now enjoy thriving online communities. You can find a few of those success stories here.

Learn what it takes to thrive and see what it is possible to achieve with Ning.


Growing a thriving online community is one of the most rewarding things you can do.

Our goal at Ning is to make building a community dead simple. We provide an incredibly reliable, popular, and easy-to-use platform so you can focus on cultivating your community.

Learn how to start your community in minutes.

Have you considered monetizing your community? Download your free copy of Monetizing Online Forums by Patrick O'Keefe to learn what methods are available, how to implement them, and how you can benefit today.