Building a social network from the ground up is no easy task. We knew we had to excite people, give them a completely unique experience, and create a place where a new community could prosper. We engaged with focus groups across the country to hone what content and interactivity people wanted on a community site dedicated to social action. And then we did user testing on a variety of layouts, interfaces, and designs. In the end, we combined the best attributes from blogs and informative list sites (Digg, Teddit, etc) to give people both a content-rich experience and the ability to quickly scroll and learn more. Since TakePart had no advertising budget, we created a strong search engine optimisation (SEO) strategy, optimised the site for social sharing, and worked diligently to make sure that the content and community would generate positive word of mouth.

TakePart’s sole purpose is to move the needle on social change. After the launch, we achieved that. The SEO strategy started to bring in considerably more traffic to TakePart, and fans and activists alike started to spread the word in the blogosphere. Our combined efforts were able to increase monthly unique visitors to the site by over 400% (Alexa). This resulted in the creation of an active and growing online community dedicated to social action and real change.“Never doubt that a group of committed citizens can change the world. It is the only thing that ever has.” Margaret Mead.