Would you like to create an online community for your customers, discuss industry topics with peers, or facilitate an educational environment for a specific subject?  Then check out Ning, where you can create your own, free social network in matter of minutes.

To begin, sign up for an account with Ning and create your profile.  Next, search existing Ning networks for ideas for setting up your community.    Stop by the Network Creators Network, the Ning blog and Ning Help for additional information to help in setting up your community.

Get your social networking community started by:

♦ Naming your social network

♦ Selecting a web address, which will be yourname.ning.com, or can be upgraded by purchasing a domain name from a registrar such as GoDaddy and then selecting the Ning Domain upgrade option for $4.95 per month.

♦ Customizing your site.   Choose a template and select site features such as events, member profiles, text, widgets, discussion forums, video players, photo albums and slideshows.  Customize the look and feel with Theme Setttings or use the Advanced Tab which allows CSS customization, enabling full control of the appearance of your Ning social network.

Want to see an example? We created and customized the DFW Redsox Fans social networking site in about an hour and with no CSS changes.

Managing your social network

Once your network is launched, Ning provides numerous tools to build your community including:

♦ Communication:  Invite others, broadcast message to all members, control the display of recent activities, and customize badges and widgets for members to promote the community on other sites

♦ Site management: Control features, appearance, tabs (including adding tabs for redirects to related websites), languages, analytics, and Flickr importing

♦ Members:  Create member profile questions, view the member roster, and control privacy and feature settings

Upgrading your social network

♦ Removal of ads:  Ning runs ads on your social network but for $19.95 per month, the ads can be removed (and replaced with your own ads if desired).

♦ Domain name: As stated above, add your own domain name for $4.95 per month

♦ Remove Ning promotion links: $7.95 per month

♦ More bandwidth and storage:  Free networks come with 10GB of storage and 100GB of bandwidth.   If your network becomes large or image intense, additional units of 100GB bandwidth and 10GB storage is available for $9.95 per month per unit.