Ning blog

Starting up a business takes both creativity and patience – Rome wasn’t built in a day, was it? Figuring out what exactly you’re going to do is only the beginning of the journey. What comes next is creating a brand, building its image, and designing a logo that will catch the eye of potential customers.

Building a brand is crucial for every startup and must be taken with utmost care and responsibility as the image you are going to create will accompany your business through the entire cycle of its existence.

Social networking has become so deeply enrooted in our lives, that for many of us it is hard to imagine a day lived without checking out a Facebook or Instagram feed. We use social media to stay connected with the world, keep up with the latest news, communicate with our friends and relatives. For many, online networking is also a way to express themselves, get a message out, and find fellow-thinkers.

How to catch people’s attention and make them stay longer on your website or blog? This is the age when so much information is surrounding us that it is almost impossible to keep focus for a long time, let alone remembering stuff you’ve come across on the Internet. Just enter the web and you will be immediately engulfed by endless flows of data rushing at you from all sides.

Gone are the times when email was the only way to communicate online. Sending electronic letters the good old fashioned way is being gradually replaced by instant personal messaging and posting on social media.

Remember when people were grumbling about the lack of personal touch and intimacy in emails as opposed to traditional hand-written letters? Well, as ironic as it may sound, today emailing seems to be the most personal and intimate way of online correspondence.

With 150 million monthly users, Pinterest is not only an extremely popular image-sharing social network, it is also one of the most powerful online marketing tools. It is widely known that social media help brands build influence and promote their products and services. But Pinterest shows statistics that often surpass those of other social platforms. It was estimated that Pinterest users tend to spend much more money on products they find on the platform than Facebook users. Furthermore, visitors coming to company websites from Pinterest usually stay for much longer than those arriving from other social networks. These two facts alone are enough to ask yourself a question: how to make money on Pinterest? This brief guide is to shed some light on the issue.

From a trendy platform where teenagers used to show off their fancy photos, Instagram has grown into the most popular social network for sharing visual content. With 800 million active users worldwide, no wonder it is now considered as one of the most effective means of public outreach. Brands of all scales don’t spare time and resources to enhance their presence on Instagram and connect with their target audience. However, only 30% of all Instagram posts actually get seen. The rest 70% simply don’t serve their intended purpose.

Although the content is undoubtedly the most valuable asset of your Ning network, the design is something to be taken very seriously as well. No matter how relevant and engaging your content is, no one would be particularly excited to browse an ugly website, right? The truth is, 38% of people give up engaging with a website if they find it unattractive. Obviously, as a network creator, you don’t want to lose this much audience. On the contrary, you want users to be happy about every single aspect of your creation.

Tell us a little about yourself. What do you do? What do you love?

We, my wife and I, decided to create our webpage together. In her case, Daniela is an actress and loves performing arts, literature, Korean culture, music, traveling, reading and many more things. Me, Fabrizio, a financial controller. I love traveling, Korean culture, music, food & wine, photography and many more things.

How many emails do you receive daily? Are there many of them that you actually read? Have you ever thought what exactly makes you open certain messages and ignore all the rest? If you have ever tried to promote anything through the email, you must have noticed that some email messages happen to be effective, while others fail.

In the light of Ning’s e-commerce platform release, we decided to share an inspiring story of success. We hope that it could motivate our network creators to aspire for greater achievements with their community building efforts. If you have been nurturing an idea of monetizing your network but still have doubts whether it is worth a try, then this story is for you!

Social media monetization isn’t just a vague concept only large brands can benefit from. In fact, social media as we know it is steadily turning into a tremendous commercial machine offering business opportunities for all who are ready to put some time and effort into it.

Do you want more people to know about your business? Would you like it to be found easily on the internet? Do you wish to be closer to your customers and have a permanent access to valuable feedback? For most business owners, the answer to all these questions is a decisive YES. After all, why would you mind getting more exposure for your brand?