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What to do when Ning ends free networks

Many marketers are very familiar with popular white label social networking provider Ning, and rightfully so.  Ning has made it incredibly easy to build your own fully functioning social network in minutes for free.  Since its inception Ning has been a popular recommendation to clients as a free & easy way to build a private community.  However, this week Ning made the controversial announcement that it will soon be turning off their free offering.  Existing accounts will eventually be required to transition to a paid offering.  In preparation for this, we wanted to help lay out some options for brands.

To begin with, if you are happy with your Ning community (your audience is engaged and you are seeing the ROI you are looking for) we strongly recommend you consider spending the money to upgrade to one of the paid options.  For a relatively minimal cost you will have added features, custom domains, and the ability to remove ads- all things that will be nice for your budding community.

However, if anyone needs a community presence at no cost, or is simply looking for another option, there are a variety of alternatives.  Many social platforms are quickly announcing that they are building migration tools for brands to shift their community over.  Popular blog service Posterous is opening a migration to a private community contribution blog.  Grou.ps , another (less well known) white-label social networking tool has set up a forum to help people port over their communities as well.

The most important thing to do right now however is to really think about what your needs are, and which social platform is right for your brand.  Certainly there are differences between a blogging-centric community on Posterous versus a private social network on grou.ps, and identifying your objectives & laying out your strategy are the only clear way to start identifying which next step will have the best chance of success.

[For examples of strategic blogging, read our previous post Chris Brogan Teaches Strategic Blogging]