I believe that you have registered an account on at least 1 or 2 social websites such as the popular Facebook or Twitter. When you sign up, it’s obvious that you should have your own reasons and one of them got to be because you like it. Actually, “You like it” means the website attracts you, you may interested because of friends’ recommendations, advertisements, reviews or search engine results, and sign up is the final result after you first visit the target website.
Of course, most of the social platforms and users are in a “Win-Win-Situation”, as we can get wonderful Internet experience from these websites. On the other hand, social websites can get revenues from users. Therefore users should try to know more good social websites and social websites should let more target users to know.
Do you know how social websites attract users? Let me introduce them from a journalist’s perspective. (Who, What, Where, When, Why, How.)
WHAT It Is
That’s a simple way to let you sign up. The websites will show a short description to allow users to get an idea of what it is. Probably you may be easily attracted because of the mind-blobbing description. For example, in FeedBurner‘s Homepage, there are two sentences: “Hello, our name is FeedBurner. Put your content in front of more eyeballs.” Were you attracted by it? Everyone wants to put content in front of more eyeballs. That’s what FeedBurner doing, and this focus can let you sign up at once.
HOW It Works
If you noticed the homepage of TripIt, you can see the tips, “How TripIt Works” makes visitors understand much more easier, and it shows the usability for every visitors. If you are interested in this type of website already, you must sign it up after knowing it, right?
WHY You Use
There is a special page, The Top 10 Reasons to Use Wufoo, that’s a typical mode of this type of introduction. To know the reasons, and to compare with your needs, you may realize that you must first register.
WHO Is Using It
The best example is on Twitter’s Homepage. You can find 3 famous people’s views about the micro-blogging platform and when you will get to know that these famous people are using it, so you what to try it too. Another example is that Barack Obama, United States first Black President also uses Twitter to convey his messages regarding the election to his fans. As more people knows that even the President is on Twitter, they will follow “crowd” and sign up too. Not only that, based on your knowledge about Twitter, this type of content can be really attractive.
WHERE Can You Use It
This type of attraction often comes with Mobile Services and they will let you know that you can use it anywhere. Some extension functions can also implement this idea to attract you to use it. For example, Twitter’s SMS service.
WHEN Can You Use It
That’s a strange question because the answer should always be “Now!”. That is also why the webmaster still want to ask you, you can do all the things described at once! This is the last way for them to attract you to sign up. After lots of impressions, they let you know you can finish these things well, you may sign up without hesitation.
If you’re simply just a user, probably you wouldn’t realize all these methods most web entrepreneurs used to get the attention of people. However, if you’re a developer who wants to create a social website, I suggest you trying out these useful ways to help your platform attract more users and visitors.