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Facebook Group Marketing Ideas with Elizabeth Henson
Are Facebook Groups dead? I was convinced they were, but I was seeing my friend Elizabeth have tremendous success not only in her own business, but for her clients as well. So I set out to discover … are Facebook groups truly dead, and if not – how can we effectively use them as part of our content marketing strategy?
Elizabeth Henson is the owner of Elizabeth Henson INC., founder of The Messy Success Podcast®, and The Community Growth Lab®. Elizabeth has become the go-to expert in community based marketing and leadership. She helps six and seven figure companies become pro’s at building and maintaining large communities that turn into marketing machines. Elizabeth’s signature system for building, nurturing, and monetizing communities has changed the landscape of digital marketing. She gets businesses out of the content generating hamster wheel and into relationships that leverage their authority. Elizabeth is also a BBD Plus Coach and Sales Pro for James Wedmore.
You can find Elizabeth working from home while jamming to 90s music! She loves hot yoga, and her core values are simple: To be creative and operate from her highest good, while inspiring others to do the same. Her Community Based Marketing Agency and online course is built around a unique 5 step framework that masters community building and Email marketing.
And like I said, I was seeing Elizabeth have incredible success with Facebook groups. So I set out to discover … are Facebook groups truly dead, and if not – how can we effectively use them as part of our content marketing strategy?
And boy, did I learn a lot, all of which you’ll hear in this episode. Elizabeth has me convinced that I just may be starting up my own Facebook Group here in the not so far future.
Links and Resources Mentioned in This Episode:
- Really quickly, before we dive into this episode – I just HAVE to share something I’m really excited about with you. My book, Chasing Simple Marketing, is launching this July. I wrote this book for the business owner that stumbled into entrepreneurship because they were following their passion. But without that Masters of Business Administration (MBA) or background in business, they find marketing overwhelming and frustrating. Throughout these pages, I’m going to take you on a simplicity-focused journey to improve your content marketing and you’ll walk away with an actionable plan to simplify your marketing, so that you can fit your marketing into your business, without it taking over your business. To learn more about how to grab your copy, and even potentially get on the launch team head over to amandawarfield.com/book/ See you there!
- This week’s episode is brought to you by the Chasing Simple Content Planner and you can grab your own at amandawarfield.com/planner/
- 25 prompts freebie
- Group Leads
- Elizabeth was a speaker at Chasing Simple: The Summit. Get your free ticket: https://amandawarfield.com/summit/
- This week’s action step: If you have a group – post some thoughtful questions and see what happens. If you don’t – explore what that might look like.
- This week’s book recommendation: Trust and Inspire by Stephen Covey
- Find me on Instagram and tell me you completed this week’s action step: @mrsamandawarfield
Elizabeth Henson is the owner of Elizabeth Henson INC., founder of The Messy Success Podcast®, and The Community Growth Lab®. Elizabeth has become the go-to expert in community based marketing and leadership. She helps six and seven figure companies become pro’s at building and maintaining large communities that turn into marketing machines. Elizabeth’s signature system for building, nurturing, and monetizing communities has changed the landscape of digital marketing. She gets businesses out of the content generating hamster wheel and into relationships that leverage their authority. Elizabeth is also a BBD Plus Coach and Sales Pro for James Wedmore.
You can find Elizabeth working from home while jamming to 90s music! She loves hot yoga, and her core values are simple: To be creative and operate from her highest good, while inspiring others to do the same. Our Community Based Marketing Agency and online course is built around a unique 5 step framework that masters community building and Email marketing.
Website: https://elizabethhenson.co/
FB Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/thecommunitybuilder
Freebie: https://bit.ly/TheCommunityBuilder
IG: https://www.instagram.com/elizabeth.henson/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elizabethhensonco/
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Rather Read? – Here’s the Transcript!
*Just a heads up – the provided transcript is likely to not be 100% accurate
Are Facebook groups dead? I was convinced that they were, but I was seeing my friend Elizabeth have tremendous success not only in her own business, but for her clients as well. So, I set out to discover, are Facebook groups truly dead, and if not, how can we effectively use them as part of our content marketing strategy?
Elizabeth Henson is the owner of Elizabeth Henson Incorporated, founder of the Messy Success Podcast and the Community Growth Lab. Elizabeth has become the go to expert in community based marketing and leadership. She helps six and seven figure companies become pros at building and maintaining large communities that turn into marketing machines.
Elizabeth’s signature system for building, nurturing, and monetizing communities has changed the landscape of digital marketing. She gets businesses out of the content generating hamster wheel and into relationships that leverage their authority. Elizabeth is also a BBD Plus coach and sales pro for James Wedmore.
You can find Elizabeth working from home while jamming to 90s music. She loves hot yoga and her core values are simple. To be creative and operate from her highest good while inspiring others to do the same. Her community based marketing agency and online course is built around a unique five step framework that masters community building and email marketing.
And like I said, I was seeing Elizabeth have incredible success with Facebook groups. So I set out to discover, are Facebook groups truly dead? And if not, how can we effectively use them as part of our content marketing strategy? And boy, did I learn a lot, all of which you’ll hear in this episode.
Elizabeth has me convinced that I just may be starting up my own Facebook group here in the not so far future. You’re listening to episode 176 of the Chasing Symbol podcast, and I’m your host, Amanda Warfield. This episode was brought to you by the Chasing Simple content Planner, and you can grab your own at amandawarfield. com / planner.
How do I find time to create content without overwhelming myself? Where should I even be showing up in my marketing? How do I come up with fresh content ideas? Where should I be focusing my marketing efforts? What is lead generation anyways and how do I do it? Are launches still a thing? And most importantly, How do I put it all together to market my business strategically?
Can I really grow my business without spending all of my time marketing? These are some of the questions that float around in your head when you think of marketing. Welcome friend. This is Chasing Simple, where practical marketing strategy meets simplicity. I’m your host, Amanda Warfield, simplicity focused content marketing and launch strategist, speaker, educator, and author of Chasing Simple Marketing.
I traded in my classroom lesson plans for helping creative entrepreneurs sustainably fit marketing into their business without it taking over their business. so that they have time to grow their business, take time off, and live the life they dreamed about when they first decided to go out on their own.
When I’m working, you can find me working with one on one clients, such as the Contract Shop and Rebecca Rice Photography on their marketing strategy and copywriting, or helping my students simplify their marketing and launches. And when I’m not, you can find me spending time outside with my husband, Russell.
Reading in our hammock, watching Gamecock Sports, traveling, or forcing our cats to snuggle me. If you feel overwhelmed by marketing, you aren’t alone. Many entrepreneurs find marketing frustrating, overwhelming, and simply an obligation. They know they need it, but they don’t enjoy how easily it can suck up their time when what they really want to be doing is the thing that they started their business to do.
Which is why I’m here, to help make marketing simple and less time consuming, so that you can spend less time on your marketing, and more time growing your business and doing what you love. Each week, I’ll bring you transparent conversations, actionable steps, and judgment free community to encourage and equip you.
So grab yourself a cup of coffee or whatever your drink of choice is, and meet me here each week for love, support, practical tips, and advice on uncomplicating your marketing and business. Let’s do this entrepreneurship thing together, shall we? Really quickly, before we dive into this episode, I just have to share something that I’m really excited about with you.
My book, Chasing Simple Marketing, is launching this July. I wrote this book for the business owner that stumbled into entrepreneurship because they were following their passion, but without that master’s of business administration or that background in business, well, they find marketing… Overwhelming and frustrating throughout these pages.
I’m going to take you on a simplicity focused journey to improve your content marketing. And you’ll walk away with an actionable plan to simplify your marketing so that you can fit your marketing into your business without it taking over your business. To learn more about how to grab your own copy and even potentially get on the launch team, head over to amandawarfield. com / book. I’ll see you there.
Hi, Elizabeth. I’m so excited to have you here for the podcast. It feels like I’ve had you on the podcast already, but I guess you were just one of my summit speakers. So I’m thinking about that, which we will link to in the show notes, everyone. If you have not checked that out, you’re definitely going to want to check out her presentation in the Chase and Simple Summit because it’s absolutely incredible.
But for those that haven’t gone through the summit yet, tell us a little bit about who you are and what
you Yes, I’m so excited to be here. I know we went live on my Instagram once too. I feel like we’ve had enough collaborations that we’re like, this isn’t the first rodeo, but, uh, I’m Elizabeth. I am a professional community builder.
I specialize in community based marketing and helping people build communities. And newsletter marketing to go with those communities so that marketing is light and easy. And I even have a really, really specific system that can keep open rates above 40% for your newsletter and engagement rates above 40% in your community.
So we have the data to back the, uh, we’ll call it my methodologies, but that’s kind of my little, uh, niche, but I am with leadership, and I do a lot of consulting inside teams, uh, as far as leadership and building community, because it really does start from the inside out of your business. You have to have good culture and community, you know, behind the scenes to have that good culture and community externally as well.
I just want to like
put that on a loop and just have that be the whole episode. I, that’s it. That’s, that’s the whole
message. There’s your golden nugget. We’re done. Now we can just talk about like cats and dogs.
So, okay. I love, I love, I love, I love the light and easy marketing. That’s just, it’s what we all want.
It’s what we all need because let’s face it, marketing is a lot because there’s so many different options out there, but in particular. One marketing platform that everyone thinks is dead is Facebook, right? We all think Facebook said, I’m not going to lie myself included. I struggle so much with getting engagement on Facebook.
And obviously you don’t believe that because that’s a large part of what you do is building community within Facebook groups. So can you tell us a little bit more about why Facebook groups are still really beneficial for businesses?
Yeah. So Facebook groups are not trendy, right? They’re not what’s trending.
They worked 10 years ago and they still work today. And I think there’s something to be said for the marketing strategies that really last the test of time or whatever that saying is. And I wish that I had kept going on some of the Facebook groups that I started five years ago, 10 years ago. But. I really struggled with consistency back then, like who doesn’t, but they definitely are not dead.
I think the biggest, um, thing that I see people struggle with when it comes to platforms like Instagram is yes, they work, but they’re also trendy. They also take a lot of time and effort and, you know, and if time and effort is not your thing, then I definitely recommend Facebook groups focusing on searchability, like SEO, things that are going to continue to last.
And even the Instagram experts will tell you that like. 2% of your followers are seeing your content like 2% you and I both have like between three and thousand three thousand and four thousand followers on Instagram. Like only a few people are seeing that mouth. It’s horrible. Like only, and that is the Instagram experts are putting that statistic out there.
60
people for 3000, 3000 followers, 60
people. Yeah. And if I look at my stories, I would say consistently it’s between 60 and 200 people. And I have to work hard to get that number to 200 on a daily basis. It’s closer to that 60 to 100 mark that are watching my stories. And then seeing the feed is even lower, but my reels.
It averages between one and 400 people, but that’s out of 3500 people that said, raise their hand. Like I I’m following you. I want to see your stuff. And they’re just not. And Facebook groups are not dead because 40%. Of people are going to see your stuff. So you’re already ahead of the curve. If you can keep that engagement rate up and even Facebook groups that are dead and they haven’t touched them.
I’m still seeing that number closer to 20%. So right there. Wow, it’s already working in your favor. Not to mention, you don’t have to work hard branding your stuff in Canva. Facebook groups do not care about pretty branded curated. They don’t. You’re just getting conversations started. And a realization that I had recently that I love.
is Facebook groups are like second base. So think of Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, wherever you are, that’s first base, that’s where people find you. But then if you invite them into your Facebook group, and you followed some of my optimization processes, so you’re you’re attracting and repelling the right people.
That’s second base. So not only are more of those people seeing your stuff, but they’re also warmer leads, because they’ve gone that next step of finding you on one of these. Diamond or what a needle in a haystack platforms, but now they’re like, no, I want more. And I want to be part of your community. So it’s, it’s, it’s a better place for lead generation because it’s second base.
I have so
many questions. I don’t know what direction to take this
next. Well, I got time,
baby. Okay. So first question going directly off of that. Well, essentially what you’re doing is you’re putting Facebook groups on the same level that I put email lists, email marketing. How do, how do those work together?
Because I’m like in my mind and what I tell my clients is all of your social media, you’re just send people to your email list. That’s the whole purpose of social media is to send people to your email list. Selling through social media is a bonus. What you want to do is get people on the email list. And so if you’re focusing on that with Instagram and tick tock, and then you’re also trying to push people to Facebook, how do those work together?
Oh, my gosh, I love this question. And this is what really makes this marketing plan so unique. Your Facebook group, your online community, I never like to make people think it has to be Facebook group, any online platform, circle, discord, whatever, doesn’t matter. But your online community, your Facebook group, and your newsletter are the same.
Same, okay, you’re going to populate that group with the same people that on your newsletter, you know, you can segment your newsletter. I have a segment of mine that’s called the community builders that matches my Facebook group, but now that leverages the amount of things that you have to talk about in your newsletter.
And you can say like, man, Amanda had this great question inside the community today, go, you know, give her some advice or check out the answers, or I’m going live on Friday. And I actually use the newsletter strategy To help that engagement on the Facebook group and vice versa. And I see it week after week.
As soon as that weekly newsletter goes out, engagement gets bumped up. People are interacting with the posts because we all know in marketing, it’s like repetition, getting things in front of people multiple times. So if your newsletter efforts are not being backed by an online community and vice versa, you’re kind of leaving engagement on the table.
Oh, man, this is a where you think my entire strategy,
I know, and you’re probably asking, like, well, how do you set that up? Because I think a lot of people have a hard time wrapping their brain around. What do you mean by pairing it? So in the questions to enter the group, you have an opportunity to promote your freebie.
And if you set up the group, Properly, you can maximize SEO on Facebook. So say you create a group on how to tie your shoe. So for someone to get into that group, they answer these membership questions, which are awesome. Cause you get to know your customer. Um, you can ask for their email address and you can put them on your list directly there.
So I might say, join this group to learn five ways to teach your kid to tie their shoe. And as they enter, grab my free guide on how to teach your kid how to tie her shoe in one hour. Right. It’s the same problem we’re solving. And so they’re going to get that freebie as they enter the group. Now, if you already have the freebie, you’re just going to add to that welcome email.
Oh, by the way, we also have a community if you haven’t joined yet. So now the freebie and the Facebook group are two gateways to the same destination. So you can talk about your Facebook group on your other platforms, which gets people on your list, or you can talk about that freebie on your platforms, which gets people to your Facebook group.
And you use both of them simultaneously, week after week after week.
Okay. So how do you fit in podcasts, blog posts, YouTube videos into that strategy, because what I’ve been doing and what I tend to have my clients do is your weekly or biweekly or monthly newsletter is sending people to those. Long form content pieces so that people can get to know you.
How do you fit that into the strategy? Yeah,
that’s such a good question. So I do feel like my, my podcast is almost like third base, right? So when people find my, and some people do find my podcast and that’s like, that gets them to first, second, third base. But most of the time people in my community will say, Oh my God, I didn’t know you had a podcast.
Like I’m running to listen because I didn’t know this. So I use the podcast in all the different ways, but my content has more variety on the podcast where my Facebook group is very, very specific. My Facebook group is where I really want the people that I’m selling to because they’ve kind of raised their hands saying, like, I want you to solve my problem or my podcast is like where people can get to know, like, and trust me.
So my strategy might be a little bit. different there where some people are selling straight from their podcasts, so they might want to use the group to drive traffic to the podcast. But I will say I’ve had a lot of people come to me and say, I created a community for my podcast and like it’s not working.
And it’s just because you got to think about. human behavior. People are not going to a Facebook group to then leave the Facebook group and go listen to a podcast. So when people create a community and they’re like, here’s episode 102, here’s episode 103. That’s not why they’re there. Like people are in Facebook groups to be seen and heard.
So there’s an opportunity for you to get to know your listeners, to ask them questions like, Hey, how would you teach your kid how to tie their shoe? And that’s what Facebook groups are really about. So it’s thinking about your content in a way that this is the place where I get to start conversations, but my audience is going to really take the lead and continuing the conversations.
And you have.
a freebie that will help with that, right? Tell us a little
bit about that. Yeah. So I have a freebie that helps you double your engagement in two weeks. It absolutely works if you do it. And it’s simply just adjusting the way of thinking to asking questions. So if I were to go to your Instagram, I could come up with like 10 conversation starters in just a few minutes because Facebook groups love One line questions.
So 80% of your content can be one line or less, and it doesn’t even need to be branded. That’s why this is a five minute a day strategy. And that guide helps you think about questions that are easy to answer. that help you get to know your your members and get them talking about a pain point. So it might be what’s one thing that you start but never seem to be able to finish.
Some people might say working out some people might say cooking dinner, but you might get that person that’s like Ah, I can never finish teaching my kid to tie their shoe. Boom, you get to like be the person that rescues them. Oh my god, did you know I have all this content on how to do this? Or, you know, here’s my offer and you can just sell straight to them or whatever that looks like.
But that’s sort of what that that 80% of content being one line or less. That’s like, it’s just gold. It’s so easy. So
do you, is the majority of what you’re posting Facebook groups that, I mean, I guess you just said 80% one line or less, the majority is that, but do you also, do you ever send people to your podcast?
What does that look
like? Yeah. So recently I did, cause I kind of, I guess when I started this strategy, like. I kind of forgot that they would even be interested in my podcast because I just wasn’t focused on that. So just recently I started incorporating in my weekly newsletter what’s on the podcast if it’s relevant.
But here’s where I really get kind of flip flip over the way you’re thinking about it. I go live in my group two to four times a month and I go live to talk directly about the pain points that they have in those questions that they answer to enter the group. Those Facebook lives. Are my first content creation and those are getting repurposed.
on YouTube and for my podcast. So not every single Facebook live gets put on the podcast, but a lot do. Um, so I can remind people, but I just send them back to the Facebook group to go watch that live stream. But if I have an episode on the podcast, that’s slightly different than I’ll remind them about it.
So I don’t use the podcast quite as much as I use. Uh, the features that Facebook groups already offer, like going live. But one of my favorite tips that like blows people’s minds is you can actually change the thumbnails of your Facebook lives. and create your own little YouTube channel. So inside my group, you can click on media and videos and you can choose all these different videos that are on the topic of like why the people are there.
So I’m almost creating my own little experience. You know, and the podcast is just like icing on the cake. The podcast is like, you know, where I really share the behind the scenes and the nitty gritty of my business, more so that I’m not really selling for my podcast. We all are in a way, but I’m using the podcast to drive more traffic to the Facebook group.
So I guess you could say it’s like one of my first bases. Yeah, I
know. That’s, that’s interesting. I wasn’t thinking about it in that way because in my mind, the, the long form content was the end all be all, but what you’re doing is you’re repurposing what you’re doing in the Facebook group to the podcast and to your
YouTube channel to the more long form stuff.
Yeah, because the way I see it, anybody that finds me out of the blue. On the podcast, on YouTube, on Instagram, on TikTok, I want them to make their way, like you said, to my email list and to my Facebook group. So, and those are, those are so much more friendly, like people are still finding a YouTube video I did five months ago and getting on my newsletter email that way.
Like that doesn’t happen on Instagram. Like a post from five months ago is gone. It is long gone. Two days ago was gone. Exactly. Exactly. So that long form SEO is definitely where, you know, our efforts are, which is why I’m like, I’m not on Instagram as much as I used to be, but it’s just not the best use of my time.
No.
And that is such an important point because you can’t be on every marketing platform unless you have a massive team. And even then, is it worth the time that you’re paying someone on your team to do for you is another great question. Okay. So. We’re in our Facebook groups. We are 80% of the time using one liners to encourage conversation.
And if we don’t know where to start, we’re going to go to the show notes and grab Elizabeth’s freebie where she has 25 conversation starter prompts for us. Yes. How do we get people into our group? You mentioned earlier, really focusing on SEO and obviously using all of our other content platforms to drive people into the Facebook group.
Is there anything else you do to really encourage that join this group kind of thing, especially when people are thinking about it all. Not as excited about using
Facebook anymore. Yeah. Oh my gosh. I love this question and you’re going to love the answer because my, my favorite way to get people in the group is speaking opportunities and summits.
And I see time after time again, we try to do a summit every month because summits will dump. Anywhere from 30 to 60 new members in my group because they’re getting to know me directly right through that summit presentation that talks usually about community building or Facebook group in some way, and they’re just like so ready for more that they jump right over to the group.
So that’s my favorite way. That’s not the easiest. way. Not everybody is already on stages, but um, I use Instagram to talk about it. So like this Friday, we have a Pinterest expert speaking in the group. So I’m sharing that on all my other platforms to drive traffic to the group. She’ll tell her audience about it, which will drive traffic to the group.
So guest experts is kind of like in between, I
would say I share about it on Instagram. My freebie drives traffic there. My freebie is. You know, gosh, going on two years old now, it’s a great freebie. It has. an incredible open rate and click rate and all those things. So I’m like, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. So people find my freebie on Pinterest.
They find it on being on podcasts like this, all of these different evergreen strategies. And anytime someone downloads that freebie, they usually end up in the group as well. So it’s really just creating a group and remembering to have it top of mind as a next step for people, not just like, Hey, come hang out in my group because it’s fun.
But come hang out in my group because we’re talking about this because I’m offering this because I’m going live, like giving people a reason to join is so important. Those are
all such good strategies. And I’m, I’m excited to start potentially played around with this. I’ve got one specific client in mind that I know this would probably be really great for, but I’m wondering, so you’ve mentioned.
The idea of, okay, this is kind of a long term strategy, almost like Pinterest in my mind is what I’m thinking. You’ve mentioned that that’s a big issue people have where they don’t give themselves long enough to see results with it. You’ve mentioned that people don’t, they don’t market it enough using all of these different ways.
And you’ve mentioned that people aren’t using SEO to their advantage. Are there any other common mistakes? that you see people make with their Facebook groups where they’re not seeing results.
Yeah. I mean, one of the easiest ones is just to optimize the group either from the beginning, or if you’re refreshing the group and really thinking about the name also is an opportunity for SEO.
People tend to like be like Elizabeth. community, right? But like, nobody’s searching for me because of me, right? People are going to search for the problem they want solved. So naming your group, again, using those SEO strategies of what someone might actually type, because people do go to Facebook, they go to that little search bar, they type in their problem, and they hit groups, right?
And you want your group to pop up based on the problem that people would want to find like minded people with and this works. And if you can play Facebook’s game a little bit, like not putting a ton of links in your group, then you never know, you might be one of the groups that shows up on people’s, you know, sidebar and you’ll get tons of new members overnight.
So I’ve seen it happen with my clients. Um, it has not happened with me yet, but, uh, you know, my problem is probably not specific enough and I need to continue playing with that. You can change the name of your group, like once a month, but you want to use. The name of the group in the description is an opportunity to attract and repel those, um, problem aware audience members.
So people forget that like Facebook groups alone, even if you set it and forget it, and you forget to even post in the group, if you optimize it, you could still get people on your list. Just on evergreen because you’ve figured that little strategy out and what they’re typing in.
That’s so great. So, okay, you mentioned we need to optimize it and you mentioned you had some some techniques for that.
Kind of run us through what those are. Yeah, so that’s considering the name, the description, I’m using the description to say things like this group is for you. If bullet point bullet point, this group is not for you. If and then attaching the freebie. The next 1 is those membership questions to enter, which you have 3 opportunities to.
Um, get to know their problems. I’ve seen people use dropdown menus that are really streamlined and the answers that they want to see. Um, I leave mine open because I love hearing and their words, what they’re struggling with. Um, and you can ask it really specific. Like what’s one thing you’d like to get from this group versus like, what are you struggling with right now?
Right. Like that’s takes a little more thinking power to answer that second one. Um, and then of course, have you downloaded my freebie? Here’s how you can go. Download that to solve X problem and then I see so many people that do these questions and they do nothing with them. I’m like you spent all this time getting people to answer these questions and you’re just letting them in the group and then poof, you’re never looking at those answers again.
And I like to tell people there’s an opportunity here for law of attraction. And if somebody is excited to be in your group, and they have spent time answering those questions, even if it’s just a minute or two, we need to spend time taking care of those answers so that we can serve them. And you can put all those answers into a spreadsheet.
There’s, um, a couple programs that will automate it for you. I use group leads and I have this. Beautiful spreadsheet with every single answer. So I know who’s joining, what they do, what their problem is, and if they downloaded my freebie or not. And I go back to that spreadsheet when I’m like, I need an idea for the podcast.
What am I going to talk about live? You know, and we see common themes, like how to get more engagement in your group, how to revive your group. Should I have two groups? Are Facebook dead? You know, Facebook groups dead. So we see these recurring themes, but it’s still is always a breath of fresh air that I don’t have blank canvas syndrome where I can’t think about what to talk about in the group.
Incredible. I just am just blown away. I literally did an interview yesterday, all about how to, how important it is to do that market research and different ways to automate it into your business. And there you go, right? There is another way to do
it right there. That’s free. Like Facebook groups are free, right?
Like, how much can we complain when 40% of our members are seeing our stuff and it’s free?
To clarify, when people answer those questions, when you accept, there’s no, like, after you’ve accepted someone, there’s no way to go back and see those again, right? So you have to copy paste, do whatever before you accept someone in your
group.
Is that right? So they did make an update about a year ago where you can go back and get those answers, but you, you have, I know, right. And I, that’s my most popular YouTube to recover member answer. So you can, but you have to click on people one by one to do it. So it’s not effective. If you have like 300 people that joined your group in the last month and you want to get all those answers, like, Holy moly, I’m not even sure I would pay a VA to do it.
Although if their email addresses, I absolutely would. But, um, With group leads, it just automatically dumps it into a spreadsheet. So you can kind of set it and forget it and just accept in that those, those get documented automatically. But I will say like, I harp on my clients all the time, like they are giving you their email address and the market research, like.
Take care of these answers, like check your spreadsheet every day to make sure that it’s working properly and take care of those answers because those answers are gold. Like email addresses are worth dollars. Like we, you know, if you really know the numbers in your business and you know, a dollar amount that each email address is worth.
Yeah,
that it’s so important. And it is one of those that if you don’t have something doing it. on an automated system for you. It can seem just too tedious to be worth it, but that is a really big deal. Anytime someone’s willing to give you their email address, it’s a really big deal.
Yeah, exactly. And you can’t have a VA do it.
Uh, absolutely. It’s not a hard thing to outsource or delegate, but group leads is 29 a month. You’d end up paying a human being more than that. But you can have someone else on your team manage it and make sure that it’s working properly every day so that you don’t have to be the one letting people in.
You know, there’s a lot of different ways to kind of streamline that, but it’s an important piece.
Do you have thoughts on using Facebook groups for free communities versus paid? And by paid, I mean someone’s purchased a course or a membership and there’s a Facebook group component to it. What’s the difference there?
Is there one that’s better or worse?
What are your thoughts on that? I know that’s such a good question, and I haven’t formulated a strong opinion because I think that it really depends on you as a business owner and how you want to serve and what kind of experience you want to provide. I use it for both, but I am very curious and moving one of my paid communities onto like Slack or Heartbeat or something, um, you know, a little less distracting.
But we’re already there. They haven’t seemed to feel strongly about moving it. Um, my paid communities tend to really just value whether it’s zoom time or that extra layer. So, you know, for me, I use it for both. I don’t think there’s a right or wrong. I think a lot of people, you know, have the mentality of what if I’m giving all this energy into my free group?
Like, I feel bad if I’m not giving the same energy to my paid group, you know, and I’m like, but, but we should be. Giving a ton of energy to try to get people to know like and trust us and pay us right well and
you’re that’s probably not the biggest it’s a bonus in a paid group most likely versus the
exactly exactly exactly and if it is the paid thing and you’re doing a membership and you’re really fostering community and there’s no course or whatever to go along with it then yeah you probably need to spend a little bit more effort there but if you’re just creating a container like I love to think of These these communities as containers, then as long as they have access to you or your team or whatever that looks like.
You know, it’s on them to do the work and ask the questions like we don’t, it’s not always on us to pull that out of people. You know, there’s a little bit of accountability and responsibility that needs to happen when people make an investment. So good.
So just another
loop right here. Even though we want it, we want to be the superhero.
But, you know, realistically, we have to release ourselves from that, that pressure.
So you’ve mentioned Circle and Slack and Discord and Heartbeat and all these other different places that we could build communities. What are your thoughts on those versus Facebook groups, particularly in keeping in mind with a
free group? Yeah. You know, I have not found one. That can compare or compete, I guess I should say in the areas that I’ve worked.
And I’ve helped a couple of clients with Mighty Networks and it’s great. From the user perspective, you know, there’s like ones I didn’t love. I love Slack for teams and I love Slack for like masterminds. I’m not sure that I would want to use Slack for a free community. Uh, I have my eyes on heartbeat because I feel like it kind of mimics Slack and the way that you can build the different channels and the different experiences.
And I think the best. Non Facebook group that I’ve seen is Jasmine stars, social curator. They just recently moved. Um, I think they’re on circle like a custom version of circle and they do a really good job. But if you look at their numbers. Like, it’s 10 people answering a question where it used to be like 500, you know, but I think in their situation, they may be seeing it as a good thing for that reason that we just talked about that, like the quality of people engaging as way more intentional because they’re not being reactive to a notification.
They’re visiting the group on purpose, you know? So sometimes we have to be willing to let go, like sexy engagement numbers. and understand that we’re actually leveling up because now we’re talking to people that are more serious. You know, there’s a, there’s a balance there. So speaking
along those lines, Facebook now has the at everyone function, which for some reason I don’t have, and I don’t really understand why I don’t have it, but I see people use it all the time.
Yeah. What are your thoughts on that and how best to use it without being annoying?
Yeah, well, Facebook only lets you use it once a day. So I personally only use it if it’s something really important where I’m like, Hey, I’m actually doing people a disservice if I don’t help them see this. I think it’s a little bit the people that get super annoyed by it, or when people are super apologetic, like, Hey, I’m not going to abuse this everyone tag, just stand in your power and be like, I have frickin value to give you and if you don’t like it, then don’t be here.
You know, like you can only use it once a day. And again, I don’t use it a ton because I think it’s not effective anymore. I feel like it was effective the first week, but now people are seeing that they can, in your notifications, it’ll say like Amanda has tagged you and others. So it’s become just as easy to skip over as any other notification.
So that’s why I don’t use it. I use it in my accountability group because they They are paying for that group to be held accountable. So I will use it in there, but that that’s really it. I don’t have like, I don’t, I don’t waste my energy being like, this is annoying or I’m annoying people. It’s like, no, I’m here.
I’m here to help. And it’s my job to get my content in front of you because you raised your hand to be here. That’s a good mindset shift. I
like that. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So this is all incredible. But what we don’t want to do is we don’t want everyone to hear about a new marketing strategy or tactic, even though Facebook is not new, but hear in a new way and get really excited about it and jump in and not give it the energy it deserves because not every marketing strategy is right for everyone at a specific time.
So what would you say people should think about as far as whether or not A free Facebook group for building community is right for them. And at what place in business is it right to start implementing that?
Yeah, that’s, that’s a really good question. I feel like it would take a little digging into like what someone wants and what they want out of their community.
And I have always known that. I am good at community. I love community. I love bringing people together, being able to tag people and introduce them. I spend so much of my time just connecting people to other people that I know, and I’m passionate about it. There are some people that are not right that they are like, I don’t want people asking me questions.
I don’t want people tagging me. I don’t want to be available 24 hours a day. Like that makes some people just so uncomfortable. So that’s probably not the best solution for them. If you’re, if you’re one of those people that like, you want to sell a course and just be done with that transaction, then a Facebook community might not be for you.
You know, I, time is definitely not a thing. And I, I hear people say all the time, I don’t have time for a Facebook group, but I’m telling you, like, all you have to do is post three to five times a week. Remembering that that content is one line or less. And one email newsletter a week to kind of go along with the experience you’re providing.
And just one really good piece of value a week is enough. Like people have even said, I love, you know, your groups because I can come and get caught up and I’m not scrolling forever trying to figure out what’s new in the group. I can keep up. With the pace of the value that’s being given. So just one little value nugget a week.
And other than that, you can ask questions. You can share funny gifts. I mean, it’s minutes. It’s minutes a day. So I don’t like time to be the thing that stops people. Cause I’m like, how much time are you spending on those beautiful Instagram graphics and reels?
You know, I get seen by 60 people.
Yes, exactly.
Um, and I even had one of my best friends, Angie, you know, she didn’t start her group forever. And I was like, you know what? You’re so good at Instagram. Like, it’s just not for you and that’s okay. But she started a group and she’s like, I wish I would have started this soon. Right. And, you know, I think with certain niches like photography, the group will, uh, kind of have an ecosystem of its own and the members post way more often than I see in other niches.
So some niches naturally just take off. Whereas I find like coaching and consulting to be a little bit harder for it to just take off on its own. But, you know, occasionally, like you don’t even really have to do the heavy lifting, your members do it for you. But it’s not for everyone. So I really appreciate you asking that question because it truly isn’t.
And they’re like, if you’re in the influencer and you love being on stage, you know, stay on stage. But a Facebook community is like sitting at a lunch table.
So there’s, there are so many nuggets in this episode. If you could give everyone just one action step to take today or take this week, what would it be?
If you have a group, just post some thoughtful questions in there and see what happens. And when I say thoughtful, I mean Easy to answer, but also give people an opportunity to talk about themselves because that’s why they’re really there, but you don’t want them to think too hard. Right. But you want them to be able to showcase what they’re good at.
Not just like share your website, but, you know, one of the, one of the questions that was doing really good for a while was, you know, if you were to land on stage right now and give a presentation, like, what would it be on? You know, I think some of those questions have kind of lost their excitement because so many people have used them, but those are the type of questions you want to ask.
Like, what’s one thing you’re going to let go of in the next six weeks? Like be specific, but also something that people already have at the top of their mind and they can answer. So that would probably be my first thing is if you have a group, just try posting questions and stop posting like bullet points and content like it is not Instagram, it’s so different.
And then if you don’t have a group, I would just encourage you to explore what that might look like or what might become possible for you. If you know, 40% of people are actually seeing the hard work you’re doing. Was that specific enough? Yes, that was,
yes. Specific and simple enough. Sometimes I have people answer with like five steps and I’m like, that’s
not actionable.
But I do want, you know, if people have taken the time to hear this, I do want them to walk away and say like, I know what to do next. And if you don’t, if you’re not in one of those two scenarios that I mentioned, then just reach out and we’ll help you brainstorm.
And probably listen to this again, because truly Elizabeth has given us so many different nuggets and things that I’m going to go back and listen to this one
again.
I already know. Yeah. The only, the only part of my system that we didn’t touch on and we won’t go deep, but Facebook groups allow you to create an onboarding experience. And again, you can’t do that on Instagram. Like you can tag them in a welcome post that tells them how to get the most out of the group.
You know, you can send them a message. There’s so many different ways that you can. Automate again, that experience. And when you guys join my group, you’ll kind of see it in action where you get tagged in a welcome post. And then you get a little DM from me, and it’s not selling. It’s like, literally, I’m glad you’re here.
And I know you have value to bring. So making them feel, you know, seen, heard and important, but a lot of platforms, you can’t do that. You can’t give people an entire onboarding experience the same way you can and teachable or Kajabi you can do right in a Facebook group. That’s so true. That’s such
a good point.
Yeah. If you could give everyone one book recommendation, what would it be? What’s a must read or a must listen
to? Oh, this is such a good one because I feel like I have a couple. Um, my most recent, I would say trust and inspire. Um, I’ve been doing a lot of like team building, consulting and There’s trust and inspire leaders and there’s command and control leaders.
And this comes in handy and parenting. It comes in handy and relationships and it comes in handy and business. And if you’re going to grow a community, that means you’re a leader. So you want to have the best leadership skills possible.
Perfect, and we will link to that in the show notes, friends. As always, we will also, of course, link to Elizabeth’s Facebook community, so you guys can go check it out and start learning from her.
Where else can they find you so they can start learning from you?
Yeah, so I’m on Instagram at Elizabeth. Henson, the Facebook group. You can just go to Facebook and search the Community Builder, and it’ll pop up, and, um, we’re on Pinterest and YouTube, but you can either search Elizabeth Henson or the Community Builder, and you can usually, Uh, find me pretty easily.
Perfect. Thank you so much for being here today, Elizabeth. And just for sharing so much actionable, practical tips. I really appreciate that.
Oh, well, it was easy. You’re, you’re so organized and fun to work with.
Thank
you so much for joining me here today, friend. You can find this episode show notes as well as all the resources you need to simplify your marketing over at amandawarfield. com. If you liked what you heard here today, be sure to subscribe to the podcast so that you never miss an episode. And if you could take a moment to leave a rating and review, it would truly mean the world to me.
Ratings and reviews are the number one way that you can support a podcast and ensure that it sticks around for many more episodes to come. I’ll see you next time, now go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business.
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