Transcript
So specifically about Facebook groups. The name is really important. Like I mentioned before, you want to have something that’s really clear on what you’re going to offer them. If you think you already know, sometimes you might not, but let’s say you do. For example, based on my own experience, like what I could’ve done better if I had deliberately started my group as a business in the first place. So my history is that I started a group for moms just because I needed to find a group of moms for my own personal sanity. And later, years later, I started a community specifically for women entrepreneurs and that is my business. That is where my income comes from. Now it would have been ideal if I had originally started my large thriving Facebook community for moms who are entrepreneurs. Like if I could go back in time and start a giant thriving Facebook group for moms who are entrepreneurs, then that would be a perfect leader group. I call it like a lead generator. A free audience want to like start your community.
The easiest way to start a community is to make it free so you can make it as welcoming and easy for people to jump into as possible. And if my free community right now we’re 30,000 mompreneurs, that would be incredible because my club is the perfect upsell. My club is the higher price version. You’re going from free to paying for a membership. It’s like the VIP version. I would be able to easily go to my community and say, hey you guys, I’ve brought you a community and I’ve brought you together and you’re all able to help each other and do what you can in this free community. But if you really want to up-level your experience and you want me to create events and field trips and parties for you and really connect you more deliberately with prompts and book clubs and tips and entrepreneur coaching and workshops, then join my paid community. Now that would be perfect. That isn’t what happened for me because my business did not happen deliberately. But that would be my recommendation to people is know what your upsell is going to be and make your free community really aligned with that. That way you’re not spending time building community with people that are never going to want your product, which is basically what I just did for nine years and it was fine and I learned a lot leading a group of moms, but it doesn’t necessarily give me a great beta group for selling my current business model to.
Facebook groups just like a technical thing is gather what you can from the people on the front end going in. So a really simple thing that I see a lot of people have now picked up on is you can the Facebook screening questions to get critical data from your people. I would not waste those questions. And something I think is a total waste of a question is, will you be following our rules? Or Facebook just got rid of that actually. And now the rules are an automatic question, but that used to be everybody’s main question. Are you gonna follow our rules? I can tell you that everyone says yes and everyone is lying, 100%. And another wasted question is “do you promise to read a statement in our pinned announcements”. I have found that to be just a waste of a question and everybody lies. I have tested this, a hundred percent say yes and about 1% actually do it. So I would use those questions in as deliberate and strategic way as you can. Like if you want to know something more about your audience, ask them a personal question, get those juicy details, get something out of them that you really want to know. Like for my mom’s group, I do actually really want to know, do they live in the Bay area, where, what’s their zip code? What ages are their kids? This is important to me because I am bringing things to them. And a pregnant mom in Oakland is going to want different news and information, than a mom in Napa with teenagers.
So I’m really interested in the ages of their kids and where they are located. That will differ. But, but think about your audience, and what you’re bringing to them. What would be smart data for you to better bring them what you’re trying to bring them, better target them, better know them and one of your questions should absolutely be a very enticing request for their email address now. People differ in this, you want to be careful that you’re not violating the whole opt in concept and you also want to think about: do you want to demand it or do you want to just politely ask for it? I’ve seen both and I’m kind of curious what it’s like to demand it, but on my group, I asked for it and I say that it’s highly recommended for you to drop your email, but I don’t require it and I’m curious to know what it would be like if I did actually require it. There’s different philosophies there. The reason I don’t require it is that I don’t necessarily want to force somebody onto my mailing list who is going to then just immediately unsubscribe or who might forget they subscribed and report me as spam.
So I’m trying to at least get willing, you know, interested buy in to my mailing list so that I’ve got a good engaged audience there and I don’t want that to be a limiter on my community growth or, or membership value. Like if they’re going to jump in and be a great member and contribute, I don’t want to block them just because I couldn’t get their email. So that’s up to you. But if you are getting it, I use an incredible piece of software called Group Funnels which helps you automatically capture the data that you’re getting out of your Facebook answers. And one of the, the hugest flaws in the Facebook screening questions is that that data is just lost. For years I would read these amazing answers and just get like a clue. Like, Oh, this mom is pregnant and she’s due in April. Oh, well, you know, there goes the data into the garbage can. So I don’t know if there are competitors, but the only one I’ve found is called group funnels and it automatically sucks the answers into a Google spreadsheet. And you can then import the email addresses directly into your email platform. So that has been how I grew my entire mailing list. Just capturing emails from the screening questions and typing them right in.
