Create Your Own Social Network

Why create your own social network?

What better way to spread the word about your products or services, than via a group of enthusiasts? And what better way to intensify this culture, than by inviting them into your own community, introducing them to one another and getting them involved in the brand?

With your own growing network, you can gather members’ feedback, encourage forum posts, allow friend-to-friend messaging, and invite them to write blogs and share photos or videos.

Your social networking solution

It is all possible with the Kentico CMS platform. And what’s more, you don’t have to be Mark Zuckerberg’s apprentice to create it! The easy-to-use and feature-packed Kentico solution means fast deployment and reduced overall costs.

As Dennis van Baalen of Evident, Kentico partner, says:  "Out of the box, it presented a lot of features we could use immediately. We used forums, we used blogs, and we used the social media integrations. It works all very well… You can tweak, design, create anything you like on it. So it's a perfect platform for a quick solution.”



Kentico CMS enables you to build huge communities and to create the perfect place for your users to socialize, vocalize, publicize, criticize and popularize your brand , bringing you closer to your audience and their views, opinions, likes, dislikes and wants closer to you.
Projects based on the Kentico CMS Social networking features are capable of handling over a million users.
“Within Kentico you’ve got everything you need to build a mini social network… all that’s really required is a bit of assembly, a bit of configuration, and you’ve got basically got  a social network; something not far off an early form of  Facebook in the very little time at all.” says Jonathan Healey of NetConstruct.

It’s all is in your hands

There’s no need to be worried about social networking wild fire as you are always in control, from community rule settings and privacy policies to what members are able to do and share.  
And the look, feel and functionality of your community are safe too. Unlike trying to maintain brand awareness and a reputation for quality in a third party social networking site, your layout will remain as you set it, you are not restricted by third party rules and you shan’t awake to find someone has removed your community during the night!

Connection with other social networks

Of course social networks like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and others are really important for your business and you can’t just ignore them in your marketing strategy. But you can find clever ways to connect with them via your site and gain even more traffic and business buzz.
With Kentico CMS you can easily and automatically share content from Facebook or Twitter on your website and you can also authenticate visitors using their Facebook, Live ID and Open ID accounts so that they do not have to create yet another name and password. What’s more, you can also integrate your community with other systems, such as a CRM, and use these contacts as leads in your business.

Successful online communities powered by Kentico CMS

Let’s have a look at some successful implementations of the social networking features of Kentico CMS by Kentico Partners.

	Student Edge Student Edge needed a robust solution for its growing community as the platform in use just wasn’t coping.  Using Kentico CMS, Linc Integrated, a Kentico Gold Partner, was able to create a huge student portal capable of handling over a million visitors, and to customize basic features of the Kentico CMS to the customer’s specific needs. See the Student Edge case study
	Tennis Now Kentico Gold Partner, Anubavam LLC, took advantage of various Kentico CMS features like groups, forums, blogs, events and others when building the TennisNow.com website for their client. The main goal was to create a community portal where tennis fans, coaches and players could meet, share their media files, book local tennis courts and create their own tennis events, tournaments, sub-communities and groups. All requirements were met by Kentico CMS and the client was not only satisfied with solution itself, but also with its price: "We shopped around for the most competitive offer and Anubavam was head-and-shoulders above the competition. I was amazed by the low price that Anubavam asked for, given the scale of the project," says John Harris of Tennis Now. See the Tennis Now case study
	Girl Scouts of Wisconsin Southeast Kentico CMS was also the solution of choice for the Girls Scout of Wisconsin Southeast website. In need of "mini-sites" for each of the 2,000+ troops to provide parental oversight of local activities, they sought the help of Marketing Images, Inc. The new site, built in Kentico CMS allows troop leaders to manage users, blogs, media libraries and pages through the wiki feature, forums, and message boards. Site traffic has increased from 5,700 unique visitors a month to 7,100, and page views have more than doubled, from about 46,000 to about 94,000 per month. See the Girl Scouts of Wisconsin Southeast case study