- We're gonna give you tips to build
your online community here on The Journey.
Hi, I'm Emma, and this is my co-host Nealey,
and I wanna start off with why?
Why should I build an online community?
- Why? Right? An online community is, in my opinion,
the only way that you are going to elevate
your brand to that next level.
It's really going to help differentiate you
from everyone else.
'Cause at the end of the day,
literally everything's a commodity,
but a community is something that makes you stand out.
- All right, so I know it's really important
to not always be focused on selling.
Rather, take the time to position yourself as an expert.
This will be a great way to give back to your community,
your fans, your customers, so think about that
when it comes to what you're focused on.
- Right and like you say in previous episodes,
if you've been following along, you don't want to
sell, sell, sell, you want to...
- Tell, tell, tell.
- Super corny as it is, it is the truth,
and while you're doing that and you're telling
and you're positioning yourself as the expert,
it also gives the opportunity of really learning
about your audience 'cause you're engaging with them,
you're talking with them, you're learning about
really what they're doing,
and because of that you're figuring out:
cool, what are their actual problems?
What are they wanting? What are they needing?
Then with that, that's free market research
from your community that you can really dig into
and figure out: cool what's next for your brand?
What other services can you offer
to really elevate that?
- Yeah, I mean your customers can show you a lot
and enlighten you on a lot of things
to help actually benefit your business in the long run.
- That is a great point, which leads me
into the first tip and that's really
to make it all about the people because--
- I love that.
- Without people, you have no business,
without business, you have no money
and then you're broke
and then you can't eat pizza all day.
It's a tragedy.
- Tragedy.
- But you really need to make it about them
and figuring out what they need.
- Going into that, I strongly encourage
your group to share.
I often speak to this one, talking about social media
like, "Hey, social media's rad
"'cause it's not all one-way street."
It's not a walking billboard, it's a two-way street.
So, encourage, comments, feedback,
just like we do here on The Journey.
- Asking to comment below, right?
And you can do the same thing.
Have polls, especially with Instagram
and how engaging stories are.
Can throw up a quick poll or a question
or a quiz now, too, and just ask your audience
a random question that relates to your business,
gets them involved, gets them engaged,
and now, it's not just a one-way street
we're just yelling at a person and they're like,
"Stop yelling at me!"
- Exactly.
- We're actually talking.
All right, now another way we can can really encourage
our community and build it and boost it is
to recognize our group members, right?
- Good tip.
- They're putting in the work,
especially if like, you're a coach,
if you're teaching something online,
you have people learning how
to do whatever you're doing, right?
Show their progress.
I know there's a person by the name of Louis Howes
and he has a Facebook community group
and he has masterminds and inner circles and all that stuff
and I'll talk about it in a little bit,
but one thing he does really really well is
when one of his clients or his followers
are doing something like just super great,
he'll give them a shout-out like,
"Hey, Margaret just launched her new book.
"Everyone, give her a shout-out."
- Way to go Margaret!
- And everyone's like, "Yeah, that's awesome."
- Love your new book!
- And that's not something you have to pay for.
You're literally just giving a shout-out
saying, "Hey, I see you. I wanna recognize you
"and I want everyone else to know how awesome you are."
So, that's super impactful and powerful.
Just give them a little kudos.
- All right, so this is the perfect time
to bring up the importance of setting the tone
for the culture.
Lead by example. So, don't go
and ghost people on your social media
just 'cause, I get it, you're busy
'cause then you'll lose the engagement
of your fans and followers.
So, set the tone, be sure to be engaging,
be present, dish out some quality content.
Think about it even in your social life.
Ya know, you stop inviting your friends
to go do things and you stop reaching out,
they start to think, "Ugh, this friendship..."
- It's just done.
- It's done.
- So, perfect segue, right?
So, leaning into my next tip is
to really be consistent with your audience,
and what that consistency is
is really up to you.
You don't have to post every single day,
but you do want to be consistent.
So, if you wanna make something where every
Thursday, I'm gonna do a Facebook Live
or every Friday, I'm gonna do an Instagram post.
- Oo, or every Tuesday, - Make it...
- Tip Tuesday.
- I thought you were gonna go with Taco Tuesday.
- Or Motivational Monday.
- I'm still about Taco Tuesday,
but anyways, make it consistent.
Make sure that they can expect it.
Now, back to Louis Howes, he has,
what he calls an inner circle,
which a lot of people call it, rather,
and that's basically a little mastermind group
of his community and once a month,
he goes on with his community on a video hangout, right?
So, he goes and talks--
- What do they do?
- They talk to each other.
They say, "Hi, how we doing?"
Do like, a little icebreakers.
Then, he usually has like a special guest
that goes on and like, teaches his audience
something super cool.
They'll usually have like, a Q & A session
with some randomly selected audience members.
They can really have that engagement.
Super cool, right?
But he does that-- - Need to check that out.
- Every single month and his followers
expect that so that they know that this is happening
which also, you keep doing it, continue to do it
so you get more and more people really bought into you
'cause man, this person's sticking around.
They're about it and I want to be about it, too.
- And it's like, what I was talking about earlier,
setting the tone for that culture.
- Yeah.
- Another cool thing to do,
challenge your community.
There's this artist illustrator
that I follow on Twitch
and she does a WAC, which is a Weekly Artist Challenge,
and it's super fun because you get to see
these challenges live and it could be
something as simple like, draw a tree
or try oil paints or screen printing
and then, you get to check it out
on a live footage and feed.
- Now, with all this fun and game, right,
with it comes with building your community,
all these challenges, all this engagement.
There is the not-so-fun part and that is
to set some ground rules and policies
because at the end of the day,
we want this community to be really
a safe place for everyone.
So, those rules, they don't have to be super strict,
but they should be more common sense, right?
- Yeah, so like, if you have a chatroom,
you wanna make sure you're mediating that,
making sure that there aren't any trolls out there.
- Block the trolls. - Play nice!
Block the trolls,
but play nice. - Don't pay the troll toll.
- (laughs) The troll toll.
- It's been awhile since you heard that, right?
- I've never heard that.
- Totally derailed you, but yeah keep all
the negativity out there.
You want your community to be inspiring
and you really want, the power of the community is like--
- Positivity.
- Bringing people together with like-mindedness, right?
We're all here to help each other
and that's what that community should be about.
So, those rules and policies are there
to make sure everyone plays fair.
- But, and don't call me a delusional optimist,
but what if I become too successful
and I can't handle it all?
- Well, other than partying on your yacht,
eating all the pizza from all that success, right?
You're gonna need to get some help,
and that help is going to come from your community.
You likely already have people in your community
answering questions, helping you out already.
It's time to go back to what we talked about earlier
and recognizing them, recognizing all the help
they've been giving and give them more
of an admin type role in your community saying,
"Hey, you been doing an awesome job.
"I want you to keep doing it.
"Let's go ahead and make this official.
"I wanna make you my admin."
So, now they're helping you with your community,
answering those questions, talking to the people,
while you're partying on your yacht
or growing your business even more
and growing your community
and just having fun with it.
- Yeah, and then they can all join me on my yacht.
- Absolutely.
- Pizza for everyone.
- Or there's also ways you can outsource this.
So, if you don't have anyone really active
in your community that wants to step up,
you can hire admins to go in and manage that for you.
- All right, cool, Nealey.
So, now I know how to do it,
but where do I do this?
- Wherever you want,
but no, there are a ton of options
that you can use to really build your community
and it's really gonna come down
to what your community likes, right,
'cause not every community is the same.
Your community might like being on Instagram or Twitter,
but others may just want to email,
but one of the first places you can really build
that community is just with an email newsletter.
It's one of the earliest forms of community
and simple as just sending a weekly email
with all the updates and then they'll
maybe reply back to your email
and you really start that relationship there,
but what I would recommend for this,
is try to make that email newsletter,
especially in today's world, almost exclusive, right,
like that email newsletter is for this specific person
trying to achieve this specific thing,
'cause if it's just an email for anyone,
they don't really feel a part of that community, ya know?
- Definitely hear ya on the email.
I'm definitely a huge fan of it
with businesses that I follow and engage with,
but also, let's not forget blogs.
Blogs are a great way to also get--
- They're tried and true.
- The tried and true.
Get the information out and also,
make it really easy for your customers to share.
So, one thing I love about GoDaddy is we have a great blog
that we share a ton of topics.
Everything ranging from how to finance your business
to how to start a business to--
- Or how to build a community in the links--
- How to build a community.
- In the links, description below.
- Exactly.
Or how to be a master on Twitter.
Point is, we put this information out there
for the community and then we make it easy
to then share across social channels.
- Yeah, and another way we can really build
that community is through a membership on your website.
Now, if you're using WordPress
or other popular applications,
there are usually plugins that
will help you accomplish this,
but Louis Howes has that inner circle
and that's a membership on a site
that people go to that are
just apart of his community
where he can share that content directly with them.
So, it's something that you can potentially do
to truly build that community with them.
- And another way to build your online community,
forums, a great place to provide feedback,
ask questions and...
- Talk amongst themselves.
- Exactly, bond with the community.
- Now, probably my favorite way to build community,
I'm a part of, I lost count, is through Facebook,
and using Facebook groups.
It's probably one of the easiest ways to connect all
of your community members together
because let's face it, everyone's
already on Facebook already.
So, it's one quick share, one quick add,
and they're in and now, you can add your posts,
your videos, your images, and just anything
you wanna share with your community, you can,
and a good thing, kinda like forums,
is your community can actually talk amongst themselves,
they can start their own conversations,
and I've seen lots of relationships build
within the community because
they're all like-minded people.
Some people end up becoming best friends
through this community, which is awesome.
Are you part of any Facebook groups?
- Actually, just part of one.
It's like vegans in Southern California,
which is very common,
but I get to meet a lot of like-minded people.
It's also a great way for me to learn
of different restaurants to try,
'cause I recently moved from L.A. to San Diego
and it's a three hour difference.
A lot of people go, "That's not that far."
No, it's a completely different community
and so, it was a great way for me
to learn about where to eat,
which Farmers Markets to hit.
It's super rad.
- And that's awesome,
and that community is pretty specific to what you like
and your business has a specific interest group, right,
and that community wants to know more
about what you do, what service you offer,
and there's the rest of the people that are
like-minded, which is super awesome.
- All right, so I've heard a lot about Slack.
I, personally, don't use it to build my online community.
Maybe you could convince me otherwise,
but what's all about Slack?
What's Slack attack?
- What's Slack attack?
Always throwing random things to throw me off
and my train of thought but--
- (laughs) It never works.
- Sometimes, you should see how many bloopers we have,
but so, Slack is typically a messaging app,
but I actually am a part
of a pretty big Slack community out in Phoenix.
So, as you know, I love WordPress, I'm all about it
and there's a lot of little WordPress meetups
and community inside of Phoenix.
Now, instead of us having a Facebook group
or all these different things,
we just actually have a Slack group.
So, the entire community in Arizona
is apart of that Slack group.
So, we talked about upcoming Word camps,
upcoming meetups, just talking about new leads and work
and everyone's--
- How hot it is there.
- Ugh, we try not to talk about that
'cause it's always gross, right,
but we're always talking amongst each other
and building that community there
and that's just a more unique way to do that,
and it's a different customer base or client base
or whatever you call your customers.
So, if Slack works for you,
if your audience is already on Slack,
they're familiar with it, it's a good way
and a good idea to really build
that community in a unique way.
- So, I get Slack.
I can see where that super beneficial--
- Slack attack.
- I'm stealing that now.
- I can see where that'd be beneficial
to get together some like-minded people,
build the online community.
I'm a little bit more about the IRL.
- What's IRL?
- In Real Life.
- Okay.
- So, there's Meetups.
I know that's been super helpful
for some of my friends who've moved
to new cities as a way to like,
ya know, meet new people
and get to know their area.
I know my good friend Ri,
joined a Meetup where it was like a paint and sip,
so like, you get to like have a little booze,
paint a little picture and then,
get to meet people, unless they're like,
really into their artwork and introvert,
then you don't need to know them at all,
but it's a chance where you can,
I know when I first moved to L.A.,
L.A.'s huge, right?
So, I also joined a Meetup
and a bunch of Chambers of Commerce.
Went and did some cool events,
went to like arcades.
One of the coolest Meetups I went
to was just straight up hiking
and that was awesome 'cause I not only felt
cool, I was out there getting active,
but I met some people who enjoy hiking.
- That's awesome and sometimes having
those meetups or those events are hard to plan.
What I've seen a lot of really successful people do is
they'll piggyback on already big events.
So like, big events like Word Camp is one of them.
It's a WordPress conference.
People will have little meetups--
- Good point.
- The day after or the day before,
that way, people are already coming
to that conference.
They're gonna basically gonna piggyback
on all that travel already, bring that community in
and have their own little meetup, if you will,
or little conference, or little get-together
where they can really bring that community together,
have that face to face time
and really just bond and connect.
- Yeah.
- Now, my last point with really
building your online community is maybe think about
some barriers to actually join the community
because you may not want to have everybody come in.
Limiting people from joining might actually be a good thing
and there's a couple ways that you can really
determine how best to do that.
The first way is just have an open-ended question, right,
or a couple of questions.
I know that's super common with Facebook groups.
They usually ask, "Why do you wanna join this group?
"What are you gonna bring to the group?"
Things like that, that way, they know
that you're not gonna come in and just troll the group,
and then, maybe have a price point
to actually join the group.
That way, you know the people that are joining--
- They're committed.
- They're committed, they're serious
about being a part of your community
and you know that they're gonna put in the work.
- Totally.
All right, I hope this video inspired you
to go out there and build your online community today.
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