1. Sign-Up

It’s simple, choose a username, password, community name and provide us with your contact information.

2. Customize It

Customize your colors, logos, and create your groups and forums.

3. Register Your Domain (optional)

Either register your own domain for your social network and point it to our servers or you can just use our domain with your own specific name: YOURNAME.socialsamssl.com and link to it as a page from your existing website.

4. Activate Your Account

Log into your account and activate your site.  If you need help with launching your network we can guide you through every step of the process through our consulting service, SocialSAMconsulting.  You will be assigned a project manager to coordinate the roll-out of your social network.

5. Create Your Business Model

How will you make money?  What price will you charge for your membership packages?  How many packages are there?  What benefits and privileges are given to each package?  To make things easy in the beginning, we recommend you only have a free membership level and one paid premium membership package.

6. Populate Content

Populate the site with your content and invite some users to join in a pre-launch event.  Ask them to create profiles and participate in discussions. Since this is the pre-launch phase, the purpose is to create content - including member profiles, forum and group discussions.  This way, when you officially launch, your site will look well populated and active - thus encouraging further discussions. You may also want to create introduction videos to answer some vital questions such as:

• “Why am I here?  What’s in it for me?”
  
• “Why should I invite my friends?”
  
• “Why should I upgrade and become a paying member?”
  

If you are an information marketer, you should also create some sort of free gift: an ebook, a free report, a checklist, an industry contacts list, t-shirt, etc.  Essentially, this is a “bribe” to get people to join your network. 

7. Announce Your New Private Social Network

If you have a mailing list or database, send out an announcement about your new network and invite members to come participate.

8. Promote it

Get the word out that the network is up and running. There a bunch of great ways to do this, like: 

		Start a blog and use your social network as the basis for your expertise.
		Google Adwords
		If you operate a seminar business, sell the benefits of the membership to your attendees.
		If you go on a media appearance, be sure to offer a free gift to invite people to come to your social network.
		If you are an author, be sure to embed gifts in your book such that in order for your readers to receive the gifts, they have to register into your social network (for free).
		If you are a school or non-profit, issue a Press Release so you get the word out to your community.  Talk about it.  Create an event to launch this portal.