What makes a social network tool a success?

Some recent posts at the A-List Bloggers Network have prompted me to ask the question, "what makes a social network application a success?" While I believe that answer is highly subjective to the association that launches the program, I do think that having some way of measuring the success is important.

I always have found the challenge to be how to measure success. Is it a number of people who sign up on the social media application or the people who implement it? Or is it a failure because you don't see the success since you can't really know for sure if your members are finding the benefit in the service you create. 

Jeremiah Owyang writes that setting goals should be part of the planning before the launch of a social network. A few examples might be:

• We were able to learn something about customers we’ve never know before


• We were able to tell our story to customers and they shared it with others


• A blogging program where there are more customers talking back in comments than posts


• An online community where customers are self-supporting each other and costs are reduced


• We learn a lot from this experimental program, and pave the way for future projects, that could still be a success metric


• We gain experience with a new way of two-way communication


• We connect with a handful of customers like never before as they talk back and we listen


• We learned something from customers that we didn’t know before

Of course, in associations, our customers are our members. A translation to this might be that:

• We engage members that haven't actively participated in our association before


• We offer an opportunity for members to interact and communicate effectively through their association


• We are able to increase communication to our members


• Our members feel that they are part of something big


• We create something of value to the members

Looking at quantitative data such as the number of people signed up to the social network respond to blogs may not give a true indication of the success of your program. When the Kansas Dental Association set up it's social network, I was surprised who had signed up first. It wasn't the members I expected, rather it was dentists who had not gotten involved directly in the association. To me, just reaching some of these people was a measure of success. The usual suspects later came along as expected.

Putting those goals into writing and conveying them to your target market should be part of the plan as well.  Your members need to know what your expectations are from them from the beginning.