Craft social networks for business

Craft social networks for business is a new and promising marketing tool. Its creator Oleksii Mas tells about the functionality of such networks and the tasks they solve.

Almost every company, often even of the format “a shop near the house”, has now its page in Facebook, or group, Instagram account or Telegram channel. However, their functionality does not provide fine-tuning and search algorithms require significant expenses of the business for the targeting.

In other words, these tools sometimes appear to be not feasible for small and micro business. A solution may be a craft social network – micro social network with an individual functionality, its rules and opportunities, for example, gamification. A craft social network is something between Facebook and Telegram.

Such micro social network differs from the standard social networks by:

- the degree of freedom (you can transfer the community to your own domain, integrate into the mobile application, sell, set own rules for members);

- expert rating with internal operation principles (each community will be the source of certain expertise);

- individual functionality (configured by the owner of the community);

- gamification elements (internal currency, rating, incentive system).

In Ukraine we have own developers of such solutions, moreover, a special platform is being developed that will allow users-representatives of different companies to create independently social networks that are best suitable for their business.

Oleksii Mas, a famous IT-entrepreneur who is currently working on such project described prospects and opportunities of micro social networks.

Oleksii claims that it is wrong to think that such social network is available only for big companies. He believes the opposite – it would be more useful for small and medium businesses, since their communication with the customers and the audience will be closer and more essential in comparison with the companies with more than 100 employees. It is “sincerity and not the scale” that matters.

Oleksii says that the most interesting fan communities are created around the companies with approximately five employees that produce certain products. The audience knows the company and its products, supports it and can even participate in the products development, improvement and promotion.

The community of Docker pub may serve an example of such community. These are the people who go to the concerts in this venue, dance on the tables and they are ready to rebuild Docker after the fire. Another example may be the story of the students that gathered signatures in support of the café with two employees, when the local authorities refused to issue a license for them. The community of the sightseeing project “Interesting Kyiv”, for example, develops new routes for the tours. The biggest community among the movie theaters of Kyiv belongs to Zhovten movie theater, its members determine the program of the screening.

There are no examples of fully functioning craft social network of the commercial company either in Ukraine, or in the world. Communities in some industries and communities of the successful brands “live” on the foreign platforms and use external tools. It means that the Ukrainians are developing a groundbreaking innovation. Oleksii Mas notes that a craft social network allows business to solve a number of marketing issues. It provides the tools that allow to encourage customers, notify them, receive feedback and generate content for users. Earlier similar tasks were solved on the forums and in Facebook groups, but forums are now out of date and it is easy to lose a community in the group, since the administration of Facebook may decide that you broke a certain rule. It happens very often that the owner loses a community for a certain reason. If you carry out your business activities on the platform and you are banned on this platform, it brings about security issues. Thus, your own platform with own tools and rules is safer.

Oleksii Mas informed that he is currently developing a community builder which would allow businesses to configure their micro social networks and optionally implement different gamification elements, for example, internal currency for this specific company. Theoretically speaking, it may be measured in the cups of coffee, doughnuts in cafes and nights in hotels. It may be used for the incentive system and other means of audience attraction and motivation.

When entrepreneurs create a community on the platform craftnetworks, they can transfer it to their domain or integrate it into the mobile application. Even now Ukrainian entrepreneurs may test a prototype of such micro social network free of charge. Major testing is currently carried out on the website https://longtexts.com, but separate domains are planned, one of them https://craftnetworks.io. In terms of global prospects, Oleksii is sure that the Internet has no separate future without social networks, whereas social networks may exist alone. “All social networks should be the craft ones: small, customized, independent and not a big system controlled by one big company. Many discoveries are awaiting for the Internet and we provide the Ukrainian business an opportunity to join them”, summarizes Oleksii.