So I took the weekend off.

I still checked my email and Facebook a few times a day, but made a point to not aimlessly surf or brainstorm new concepts. I cooked some decent meals, cleaned my house, played with the kids, tackled a few small home projects and hosted two poker tournaments with our friends. Productive, good fun, exhausting.

Sunday nights are usually my pre-game into the work week so that when I get to work on Monday morning to a pile of work, I don’t feel too overwhelmed. But this past week was a mix of loving work and hating work, so I am wondering how to emotionally prepare for the next five days.

It was actually a pretty good week overall. I connected with two Inc. columnists this week. Meg Hirshberg, writes regularly on the juggling act of balancing life and career. As a mother of three, she sympathized with my current “condition” (as I’m calling it these days) and the challenge of maintaining clarity through the nonstop chatter and activity of a two-year-old and a four-year-old at home. It’s always encouraging to connect with someone who has been there, especially someone who’s writing about it. I read another post by a fellow Smith College alum and new mom whose maternity leave has expired. She mentioned her surprise appreciation for having emerged from the “pregnancy fog” at work. I had forgotten all about this and was momentarily excited about when that day will come for me too. After seven months, the fog begins to feel permanent.

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I happen to think there’s about a million good reasons to start a social network, but that naturally is because I live and breathe this industry, and I have an amazing team at my fingertips who happen to be skilled in all levels of social network geekery. Outside of my mania however, there are numerous sound and legitimate reasons to start your own online community. Below I have highlighted a few, and I hope to build onto this list in the future…

Fill an Untapped Niche in the Social Networking World. If you’re anything like me, you have periodic revelations about something that you’re certain hasn’t been done yet. And if you are me, you immediately think about how you can fill the void through a social network of some sort. Like Twitter but only for sports fans! A community for Twilight-obsessed moms! A network to connect tattoo enthusiasts with tattoo artists! While social networks have really become commonplace in our lives the past few years, there is still plenty of opportunity to fill a void. I will say that the chances are low that any run-of-the-mill idea can compete with social networks giants like Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn. These networks target a very general and broad audience. Websites that target specific niche communities, serving the needs of that particular group, I feel have a fighting chance of gaining momentum. If successful, they could have a chance of achieving more broad appeal. Facebook, for example, was originally built for college and university students. MySpace was primarily for musicians. Both evolved from serving a specific niche community to serving literally millions of users from all over the globe, including numerous corporate giants who now use these networks as must-have microsites for their brands.

My advice? Take your idea, identify potential target audiences as specifically as you can, research competing sites and find out how you can best serve that group with the most useful tools. What if there are other tattoo networks, for example? Don’t be discouraged. If there are others competing in this market, it’s typically a good sign. It means that there actually is a market. You just need to find out how to make your concept better: more unique, more useful, more visually-appealing and valuable enough to attract the lion’s share of the market. (more…)