Hey Sis!

In today’s Quick Tip Tuesday episode we are talking FACEBOOK GROUPS. When should you start a Facebook group? What does it mean to have a FB community? What if you don’t want to host your group on FB? Where else can you create community?

I hope this helps you make up your mind about what to do that best suits you and your avatar!

If you want to be featured on a quick tip Tuesday episode, please head over to stefaniegass.com and scroll to the bottom of the home page. Click the ‘ask stef’ button! Looking forward to helping you get unstuck.

FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION:

(00:00):
Good morning, friend! It’s Tuesday, which means we are doing another episode of Quick Tip Tuesday, today. I am answering a question from Katherine Shelton and it’s all related to podcasting and Facebook groups and growing a community. I can’t wait for you to hear her question and be sure that you get a notebook and pen because we go deep.

(00:21):
If you want to have your question featured on Quick Tip Tuesday, it’s super easy, girl. All you’re going to do is go to stefaniegass.com, go to the homepage, scroll all the way to the bottom and click Ask Stef, it’s the little orange button, you just send in your question and I will feature you and your question on the show, girl. Yes, let’s do this. All right. Let’s dig in.

(01:52):
Hi, Stef. My name’s Catherine Shelton. I’m a faith-based health and wellness coach. I’ve just gone through Podcast Pro University, and I’m all set to launch my new podcast on Tuesday on the 28th of September. So I’m really excited about that. The name of the podcast is The Healthier Life Podcast, Nutrition and Lifestyle Tips for Christian Women. Anyway, my question for you today is how important or necessary do you think it is to have a Facebook group set up to go alongside the podcast?

(02:20):
Personally, I’m not a great fan of social media and I have done Facebook groups before and found them at an awful lot of work. I do already have an email list and an email funnel, which I’m trying to grow. But I do see value in having a Facebook group, particularly if I wanted to run challenges or do quick promotions or do live videos. If you think it would be a really good idea, should I wait a little bit longer before I start one so that I’ve got more people in my audience just to kind of get it going? I’d love to hear your thoughts on this. Thank you so much.

(02:50):
Hi, Catherine. Congratulations on launching your new podcast, girl, The Healthier Live Podcast, and hello. Can get an amen for such a clear, specific niched in title? Makes my heart sing, girl. Here for it. Anyways, I wanted to get you this answer ASAP since you just launched that show recently. And what I wanted to start out with is an understanding of why we would use a Facebook group in the first place.

(03:21):
And so I want to begin there, Catherine, and really why we would use the Facebook group is because when we grow a podcast, it is us pushing content, right? We are sitting behind the mic. We are spreading our knowledge, our tactical teachings, our trainings, our heart, whatever it is that we do. And it’s one to many. So you are listening on the other end of this speaker. And you were like, wow, you know, Stef seems like she knows me.

(03:47):
She helps me with this content. She got me to start a show. I took her courses, right, but you don’t have this place to like, hang out with me. You don’t have this place to have a conversation with me or with all the other women who are here just like you that listen to this show. And so it’s kind of, there’s this barrier to engagement. If you will, from the podcast perspective to really like holding hands with your listener.

(04:13):
So that then begs the question of how do we build community? How do I create a safe space for my women to talk to each other, right? For your women who are going to be listening in on The Healthier Life Podcast, these incredible Christian women who are going to be wanting to dig into all of the cool things you’re going to do with your show, you know, health and wellness.

(04:34):
And I’m sure we’re going to have fitness hacks and things of that nature. So where are they going to hang out? And that’s the question. The easiest answer for me is a place where people already are, number one. So a place where people already are, number two, a place where it’s safe, you’re not getting spammed, you’re not constantly being inundated with alerts and notifications. It’s not an addiction for you.

(05:02):
And then number three, a place that’s free. So when we look at number one, it’s like a place where they already are. That’s going to be social media sadly. Right? And the issue with you said, I already have an email list. My issue with that one is, again, it’s one to many. Now you can ask people to reply to you in an email, however, it’s then it’s you. And that poses a new problem because it’s not scalable while it’s okay in the beginning to really correspond with your list, it’s not scalable and you really start to get inundated with people, replying to you.

(05:40):
And so I always ask myself, if I would do this for one person, would I do this for a thousand people? And if that answer is no, don’t start doing it for one person. So when we look at a platform like a Facebook group, something of that nature, a LinkedIn group maybe LinkedIn is your platform, a Facebook group. If maybe Facebook is your platform,that’s they already are there.

(06:05):
Number two, it’s not going to cause mass distraction in their life. This is a gray line, but this is why I personally would not create any type of community thing on Instagram. Cause I know Instagram is a huge issue for people. I’ve heard a lot from my community that Facebook is not that way, but you discerned through that.

(06:23):
Now, if it is, and you have this specific market where you don’t want to have your community built out on Facebook, you could use something like Mighty Networks. That’s great. It’s paid for you, but free for them. My only thing with Mighty Networks is it’s not somewhere I already hang out. So when I’ve joined different groups on Mighty Networks, it was like another step for me to remember, to go over to that app. So it never really worked for me.

(06:54):
Some people have mentioned to me, Stef can’t we build our community on Voxer? Again for a minute, it’s fine. You know like, oh, I can talk to 10 people at a time or I can hang out and listen to these conversations, but it’s not scalable. So we really have that barrier when it comes to scalability, when we look at all these other places that we could build a community.

(07:15):
So the number three is, is it free for them? If we start charging people to be part of a community, we’ve really created a barrier to entry because we want a place where people already are, it’s free for them. It’s fun for them. It’s not a huge, awful point of contention for them to get into that app and they’re not having to pay for it. So they’re going to come freely, come willingly and they’re going to talk to each other.

(07:38):
Here’s why I also love Facebook groups. I’ll tell you what my bottom line answer is to you. And then you asked about timing as well, is that it is totally scalable, right? If I show up in that Facebook group and do a live and let people ask questions, I can do that for one person, I could do that for 2000 people. I can hire people to manage the group.

(08:02):
What really happens, it’s beautiful is your community starts stepping up as moderators naturally. So you just have all-stars that start answering questions. They start monitoring the group and you can say, Hey, do you want to be a legit moderator? And you know, you can start with free and they love that, people love recognition. They love to be featured.

(08:20):
So you can start with free. And then over time, Catherine, you can actually start to pay people, right? You can outsource that group. Cause you said you didn’t love Facebook and social media. Okay. So there’s all that. So what is my bottom line answer? My bottom line answer is that if you have boundaries and Facebook is not a life suck for you, you’re not massively addicted to it, you know, like how I’ve talked a lot about how I have to lay Instagram down. I don’t feel that way at all about Facebook. And it’s because it’s not on my phone. I keep it on my computer.

(08:49):
So, I never really go in there, which is great. It’s amazing. You can build this Facebook group and show up for five minutes, three times a week and start to build it. It’s super low maintenance. And so I’ll talk about that as well, cause you said yours was a lot of time. I’ll talk about that in a second.

(09:04):
So yes, I think that you need one. If you have boundaries in your own personal usage of Facebook and you’ve prayed over that, and God’s given you that piece about building your platform there, if not ask God where to build your community, God, where is my community? Show me what that answer is.

(09:22):
And there are lots of options. There’s LinkedIn communities now, there are Mighty Networks, like I mentioned, there are lots of different, there’s even more, there’s lots of options. Just really think about your person, yourself, and what God wants for you. The second thing was timing. When should I build this? I think you should build it immediately with the launch of your podcast.

(09:39):
I hope you join us in Podcast or Profit, Catherine, because what we learn in there is how to optimize our groups so that we’re only spending 30 minutes a week in a Facebook group, even less potentially, definitely in the beginning, how to use the Facebook group to drive leads, how to use the Facebook group to capture new leads and new emails. And then finally how to scale your Facebook group organically. So all of that is covered inside of Podcast to Profit, but why not start all of that right away, right off the bat.

(10:11):
So I would definitely recommend doing that earlier rather than later. Now, there was something else I was going to say to you. Oh, you were saying that you were spending a lot of time in your Facebook group and I think it’s because you guys start these groups with all of these big expectations. Like I have to be in there 24/7, I have to answer every single comment, I have to show up, I have to drive engagement, just build it and let the people come, Catherine.

(10:35):
So like create it, set it up. When you go through P2P with us, we’ll optimize it. It’s going to be amazing. It’s going to be driving some traffic to the group organically. You’re going to be collecting leads. Then we’re going to create some really simple structure within the group. We’re going to use scheduling tools and we’re going to use boundaries and we’re going to use all this stuff that I’ve learned about driving engagement, marketing, and conversion in the group. And we’re going to set everything up and then we’re just going to forget it.

(11:00):
We’re going to let it build, that it’s freeing, it’s amazing. And we let the community start to become a self-managed empowered community that can grow and scale. It’s amazing. There’s my answer. I hope this bless you today. I hope this helped you.

(11:14):
Guys, if you want a Quick Tip Tuesday to be featured on the show, head to stefaniegass.com, scroll all the way down, click the, Ask Stef button, leave me a question, anything specific to clarity, online marketing, building a business, where you’re stuck, what’s not working for you, what you’re frustrated with, what you need help on. Ask away, I’m an open book and last but not least, if you guys have not left a review for this podcast, it is the number one way for us to grow, for us to get featured on different outlets and different shows.

(11:48):
It’s the number one way that I feel uplifted and blessed by you. I don’t know if you, guys, like this show until you tell me that you liked the show. And so every time I head over there and I see that there’s a new review from one of you. It just brings me so much joy in my heart and it blesses me big. So if you’ll do that for me, I would be forever grateful. Just go to Apple Podcasts, click on my show, scroll all the way down and click, write a review. Love you, guys. I’ll see you back on Thursday.