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I recently watched a video of a talk called “Taking Your Site From One To One Million” by Kevin Rose (founder of digg) who was featured as a speaker at the FOWA conference in London.

It was one of the best talks on the topic of growing your social service that I’ve heard and really contained lots of actionable points.

Kevin is a well of knowledge when it comes to social media and growing websites. His passion really shows through when you see him talking about the different projects he’s been involved with.

Taking your Site from One to One Million Users by Kevin Rose from Carsonified on Vimeo.

Here are my notes from the talk:

Bolster your customer’s Ego

Ask yourself, does this feature add to the user’s self worth?
What emotional rewards do they gain by interacting with your site. Do they get badges, or extra features? Do you have a leaderboard? Is there an element of competition?
Giving them visibility to other users is extremely motivating – it gives the impression to them that they have audience & influence.

Strive for simplicity

Don’t over-build your features by making them unnecessarily complicated.
Focus on 2-3 core features.
Always ask yourself if you can take anything out without harming the core features.

Stop thinking you understand what your users want

Analyse your statistics – don’t assume you already know what is best for your users. Ask them questions.
Once you know – just build it, don’t overanalyse.
Your release cycle should be fast. Build & release – then refine.

Hack the media and get free press time

When you begin your service – limit it to invitations only. It works.
Invite only core players, bloggers, and important people.
Allow these initial invitees to invite a limited number of people as well – helps promote exclusivity and lets the word of your service spread virally.
Talk to junior bloggers – don’t always go for the top editor. Get your foot in the door with junior people about your service and let them take it to the top.
Attend parties – but make sure you have something to demo. Take an iphone or netbook along to show it on the spot.

Connect with your community

Start a podcast, or blog or whatever! Make sure people can connect with you directly.
When you’re ready to launch, hold a party. Don’t bother booking a bar or anything, just invite key players that can help get the word out about your service. The bar won’t mind a bit about the crowd as long as you’re bringing customers for them to sell to.

Collect advisors that are smarter than you

Talk to people that have specific technical knowledge.
Ask people that might be able to help you out in areas where they are smarter than you.
Offer stock compensation as a reward – if it doesn’t work out in the end you can just walk away.

Leverage your userbase to spread the word

Give bonuses in your site to people that refer others.
Make people proud to notify people they’re using your site. Make them proud to shout it out loud.

Add value for 3rd party sites if possible

Make other site owners feel like promoting your service would add value to their site.

Study your analytics

Keep an eye on your analytics, but don’t just look at generic visits and page views. Study the paths that your user takes through your site.

Have a look at your top exit pages and optimise them to get more interaction.

Take a step back and look at the your ecosystem

Ensure you have a circle of life.
Make sure that each cycle leads on to the next and has a positive flow on effect.

Conclusion

This would have to be one of the best talks I’ve seen on this topic and it comes from an extremely credible source. Kevin really knows how to grow social sites and he’s shown it again and again with the projects he’s involved with.

Subscribe to Kevin’s personal blog, or get in touch with him on twitter.