Many marketers are facing a similar dilemma: Low engagement in their Facebook groups.
In this episode we are discussing why trying to create an active and lively group might be a waste of your time.
Often, the simple reason why you’re not getting much engagement in your group is that you are forcing your members into a habit or into a deliverable that they actually didn’t come for in the first place.
We are also talking about warning signs to look out for and possible alternative community elements that are on a less frequent basis and might fit your audience better than a regular group.
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3 Big Take Aways
- Why you might not need a Facebook group for your Membership
- Why looking at the natural feedback and habits of your members is important
- Alternative community elements for your members
- Paul & Melissa’s Inner Circle – The Inner Circle with Paul & Melissa Pruitt is an epic 12-month experience for online business owners, coaches, course creators, and membership site owners who aspire to create financial freedom and a lifestyle they want for themselves and their family and also create a positive impact in their community and the world.
- Adaptive Membership – Adaptive Membership is an exclusive opportunity for online business owners, coaches, course creators, and membership site owners to play bigger and bolder in their business and explode their bank account with more clients!
- Social Prompts (formerly “Instaposts”) : Create Engaging Social Media Content…In An Instant! Caption Prompts That Reflect YOUR Business & Brand Delivered Monthly. For Business Owners who are ready to create REAL relationships with their followers on social media through posts with substance.
- Kajabi – Content marketing platform designed to help digital entrepreneurs and small businesses utilize customizable templates to create and sell engaging content in the form of online courses or coaching programs
- Circle – a community platform designed for creators who want to gather their community members around their content, engage them in discussions and turn them into paying members.
- Mighty Networks – a platform for building an online membership and allows members to connect, without distraction. It offers the ability to publish articles, share content, and create an online course platform for your audience.
- vBulletin– a software that allows you to create and manage online forums or discussion boards.
- IP board – platform for building vibrant communities with forums, eCommerce, content management, image galleries and more.
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Melissa: So next question we're going to move to Rani. she is.
Rani: Hey, hello. Lovely to be here. Let's see. Well, my question is about Facebook engagement, but not all the members are on Facebook. So we have Kajabi and we have got about 24 founding members.
So not everyone has accepted. I invite to get on Facebook. And what I'm seeing is that there's not engaged much engagement going on in the Kajabi where, the whole course is, the membership, all the cool stuff are at the forum. And, no one has been posting on Facebook other than myself or my husband and we had a full-time job.
And I know that how important it is to do it and schedule it and so on. But I was just looking for any tips , you know, is a Facebook live once a week enough? And I know you talked about batch already when you batch content and, you know, having all those ready. I, I guess I'm just looking for inspiration because I'm feeling like, oh God, you know, I can't be bothered to do all this, but I also know how important the membership is for me. So any tips from you guys will be great for me. Thank you.
Melissa: You're welcome. Good question.
Paul: So, does anybody have any tips as far as when it comes to community slash Facebook group when it comes to memberships?
All right, so I'll jump in first and then anybody can jump in after that. So right out the gate. What I want to mention though, is like, for all of us, as a, as an influencer in bringing in people into our memberships, we want to do all the things right. And we see other people do all the things. And sometimes you need to look at the natural feedback and the natural habits of the people that you attract, because maybe the community element is not actually what they wanted from you in this transaction. And mainly bringing that up because we, we had a program, when we originally launched "Instaposts", which is now called "Social Prompts", one of the deliverables we put in there was a Facebook group and it was probably almost a year into it that we realized 99% of the people that bought in the Insta posts could care less about the Facebook group.
Melissa did anything and everything. They came for, something else you know, to be on Facebook and the community, they were going to other places to get other things. So for the couple of people that were actually posting at ever on Facebook, she was just beating herself up, trying to change people's habits because they weren't coming to us for the community.
So I just want to put that out there because we all belong to a lot. Like, I don't know if Netflix has a community or not like, you know, I still watch it. there's a lot of things, you know, the yoga place that she was a member of, like they didn't have a Facebook group.
Like there's a lot of things that we belong to that there's not a community element. That's. So sometimes we try to force people into a habit or into a deliverable that they actually didn't come for. So just always just be aware. I just said, at least one of the caveat and put that first, because a lot of us are gonna work really hard at how you frame the question.
Like how can we get people to engage in something that they're not already engaging in? And you have a good part of your members that are like, not even on Facebook, it sounds like as well. So like even within "Memberships Mastermind", we're going through a process right now behind the scenes for all access members to, you know, we, we put everything on "Circle" to see if we can create a community off of Facebook.
And while we invited everybody that was in the program into it, what happened is like, there's almost zero engagement over there. So we've been going through the conversation behind the scenes of like, you know, maybe we need to bring this one on to Facebook. You know, cause obviously we all have questions about our membership sites and marketing and things like that.
And we can talk about them in between these calls. So that's been an active conversation behind the scenes. It's like, okay, when do we keep trying to do one thing? And then realize like our community doesn't necessarily even, even if they want community, they probably didn't want it over here.
Where in reverse on your end, if a lot of you, people are not naturally on Facebook, would they be willing to be part of a community that is off of Facebook because you do have services like "Circle", like "Mighty Networks", "vBulletin, "IP board" .
There's a lot of message board style pieces of software systems out there that'll tie into memberships or can function as a membership site that would allow you to have that sense of community and dialogue back and forth.
But I'm seeing that you're having this problem on both sides. So you have Kajabi, which you've apparently opened up the comments section or the community element that they do serve, and they're not posting over there. And also the people that are in Facebook group are not posting over there. So other than that, we have to give them a reason to communicate.
But for each of us, you also just want to take a step back. And just remember also that the thing that we're doing for a living like we had the time and energy and space where we want to be there five days a week, seven days a week, three days a week, whatever you're committing to that business. And it's our main thing.
So we're hyper aware of it. But for the member, even though they're paying you to be part of this membership, it might be less than 1% of their life, that your topic is relevant to them. And they may not be waking up every day the week thinking like I got to go in and post in this Facebook group, you know,
Because even though it might be a problem you're solving, it might not be an active problem in their day to day life that they need to be on top of the Facebook. Cause I think some of us may go through this pain thinking we have to keep this hyperactive community.
And also the last part I'm going to let you know, is that with 24 people, it's hard. I'm just letting you know, like it just there's, there's something to be said when it comes to community that when you go on these Facebook groups that have a lot of action, you're going to notice they have a lot of people.
And what you're going to find is it's only like 3%, 1% of that population that are the active posters, the hyper people that it's like Zuckerberg is paying them per hour to post on Facebook because that's all they do all day long. You know, it's like, you're going to see the same names over and over and over again. But you need scale in order to find that that bucket of people. And when you have 24, you might have one or two of them is going to be your active.
If that, like you might not even have an active user in that group. So that's just a few thoughts that we have a lot of tricks and how to create engagement, but I think you have a different dilemma than that. So I just wouldn't speak into that.
Melissa: And I would say it might be one of those things where you can evaluate and you still can have elements of a community without maybe necessarily having a group, cause I know your population, they're busy professionals. So they probably, that's not top of mind for them, but maybe if you had like meet ups, a virtual meet ups, like every quarter where you did have almost like we're going to have our quarterly virtual meetup too, and have that community element, but it's not like an everyday thing.
They could come to that almost like this, like a zoom they could come to that they could ask questions, community, do some networking and do that on a less regular basis of giving them something to look forward to. And as you grow, , you might want to reevaluate if a Facebook group community makes sense too. So it is really looking at your audience and their habits and what they're doing on a regular basis because that community element is great and having that camaraderie but it might not just be for them because they are busy professionals that daily Facebook might not be what they need right now, but you still could provide some sort of community element that's on a less frequent basis. And it still would be super powerful too.
Paul: Kind of like these calls.
Melissa: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Like these calls. Exactly. Yeah. And lisa had a good comment too, as well about telegram telegram too, which is really good as well. So yeah. Different types of apps. Cool. All right.
Rani: Thank you.
Melissa: You're welcome. You're welcome. We'll keep us posted.
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