On Building Land Surveyors United Social Network
Building a social network isn't easy- especially for a niche industry comprised mostly of individuals who have limited internet access. Let me tell you a little bit about Land Surveyors United...
Almost a year and a half ago I began building a social network for land surveyors while helping my father bring his company (Palmetto Equipment and Supply-aka ePalmetto) up to date and into the blogosphere. While creating the ebay store and setting up the website, I realized that there are a LOT of different types of equipment out there and each one seemed more technologically advanced than the next. Then i started to notice that most of the more complex instruments were being produced by manufacturers that seemed to, in many regards, forget that surveyors need tech support in a major way- and that the majority might actually buy these products if you just showed them how to work the damn thing. For months I scoured the internet looking for forums and tech support sites that had answers to the questions that I was receiving, but found very little useful information. I soon came to realize that land surveying was an industry comprised of individuals who are in the woods all day and have limited time for searching the internet for answers to their problems. And in that respect, the best person to help a surveyor find a solution to a problem is most often-you guessed it- another surveyor. So I began creating Land Surveyors United. It was to be the first place on the web where professional surveyors from anywhere on the planet could join, post a complete profile with links to their sites and projects, give their Q&A a face to go with a name and most importantly teach an industry how to troubleshoot one another's problems in much the same way as web developers share code. This site needed to be translatable into around 20 languages, have classifieds for selling used equipment, integrate RSS feeds and blogs, host videos and pics from the field and finally, it needed to be search engine friendly. I chose not to spam the industry with emails but rather allow it to grow organically, promote it on my blog and let the surveyors themselves add their surveying buddies and colleagues. The only requirement to join is to be a professional land surveyor somewhere on the planet and this could be validated through the profile questions that I required when signing up. I chose the Ning platform because it offered this functionality and more with a few tweaks and Land Surveyors United was born.
Now, here we are almost 2 years later with almost 300 members (which is like 6000 members in any other niche) from all over the globe, sharing surveying documents, learning to blog, making friends with other like-minded individuals in other countries and best of all, helping one another troubleshoot problems in the field. It wasn't until the group passed the 100 member mark that LSU network finally started to catch on, but now it has become a full-fledged Myspace for professional surveyors. One of the most important decisions that I made up front was to avoid trying to make a quick buck from the site. Building something like LSU (which is needed by the industry) may seem like the perfect exploitation scheme to some individuals, but I am 100% sure that if I had gone that route, I would have potentially created a monumental turn-off. I used free tools, my own time (creating graphics and tweaking code), and patience to manifest a tool that is now being used to find and share job opportunities (for an industry which is-let's face it-hurting), liquidate unwanted equipment, find manuals and work flows for instruments and unite an industry of individuals with real needs across the globe. Land surveyors not only have a voice now, they have a translatable voice attached to a face and years of experience.
My advice to anyone out there with a brilliant idea looking to make a quick buck from building a social network is this: Don't waste your time. Its basically like marrying someone only for money...everyone involved eventually gets hurt. If you have discovered something that you are sure is desperately needed by a group of people-especially for the sake of their livelihood- do yourself and the people you're working towards helping a favor and build slowly and carefully. In the end, you may have actually done something useful for a change.
Related Stories: | Topics:Innovation, Technology, Leadership, Management, Careers, Design, Ethonomics, Work/Life, epalmetto, land surveying, online, Palmetto Equipment, social networking, industry, ePalmetto, Ning Inc., MySpace Inc. |
