With this whole social media thing kicking off thousands of Web Designers and Developers are looking to set up shop by creating their own websites with social features included.

As far as I’m concerned it can only be a good thing that businesses are looking to expand to the newest crazes. The one problem I have with this is the access to data. A lot of Web 2.0 businesses never get the publicity they (may) deserve, and without a viable amount of back-links and information for Google to gobble up why would they ever become popular to the outside user?

Websites like MySpace and Facebook built up a following slowly, and had to climb up a fifty-foot high pile of its own social media relatives to get to where the two are today. Social Media is not easy, and in some ways social media websites are ten-times harder to get off the ground and into Google searches than regular information-based site.

Why is this? I believe it to be restriction of information.

To make money, businesses need to get visitors to return, and what better way of doing that than to get them to register for services. The problem with this and web applications in general, are that information is often not very static. The reason MySpace ranks well under certain terms is because it’s MySpace; it’s a huge website today and is linked to from everywhere around the world. The reason your website isn’t super popular is either because:

• Your product isn’t noteworthy - yet!
• Your product isn’t outputting that much static information for Google to pick up

As I said before when creating a social media website there must be a limit in what you give to visitors for free. From my experience, one out of one-hundred visitors will register for your website, meaning that you need to push visitors to your website, either by word-of-mouth or content. We’ll focus on content for now.

If your website has users already, use what information they have generated through the website to power guest-only services. For example, MyFootballClub.co.uk, the now-popular Ebbsfleet United owning website uses both guest-viewable content and membership-only content. With this mix over two websites users are enticed to join from how exciting the website sounds. All the power goes on behind the scenes, but information is out there, ready to Google to snatch up and serve as results to its users.

This all comes down to the dynamics of free information. Nowadays we all expect our music, videos and information to be absolutely free and available to view, so by not providing a ‘free’ method of giving users the information about your website that they require you’re just throwing away potential business. Today, free is worth a lot to anyone, and if free is good enough, free can sometimes become paid business. Web Advertising is built on the notion of free, and with so many people using adverts on the Web there must be something to gain from it all.

We’re not all going to make the biggest and best websites in the world, but we can get there if we balance things well. Get as much information out of your website as you can, whilst leaving all important functionality for your members and/or buyers. Only a small number of your users will actually buy your product, so give them as much information about your product as possible!