#110: Killin’ It With Facebook Groups

Well, hello there, health coaches! How's everybody doing today? As you know, every single week, including right this very second, I broadcast our weekly show live inside the health coach power community Facebook group. And today we're going to get very meta up in here because we're going to be talking about how to use a Facebook group effectively in your business. Now you might not know this, but before starting our health coach community group, I actually had a different Facebook group that was very popular, very active as part of my health coaching practice, which at the time I was doing more work with moms and their young kids. And there was a Facebook group called one meal mom. And it was fabulous. And I used a lot of the same techniques here that I learned from running that group and helping that group grow to a, you know, large proportions, a lot of new faces, total strangers joining the group.

You know, that's when I feel like you've really made it when the people in your group are not people that you previously knew, right? So I kind of took everything I learned there and have now applied it to the Health Coach Power Community group. But anyway, all together I've had like about four or five years of success, creating Facebook groups from scratch and turning them into useful parts of my business. And that's really the key. The part that I want you to like write down is like, how will this actually be useful to my business? Or am I just starting this for fun? Or am I just starting this? Because like somebody told me that I should start a Facebook group. And so I am, but I really know what I'm doing with it. We always want to be taking actions in our business that are going to feed positively into our business and into our revenue streams.

Yes. Thumbs up for that thing is today. I have a short period of time with you guys, obviously in these episodes, I want to create a whole masterclass around this topic because I feel like I have learned so much over the past five years, like so many weird little details that you never would have even thought about when you're just starting a group from scratch. So I want to teach you guys like soup to nuts, how to start a group, how to keep spammers out, how to position your group, how to build your mailing list from it and ultimately increase your earnings, like how to really use it as an effective marketing tool. And I want to make this a free, completely free masterclass for you. Anybody interested in that? Is this a topic that you think deserves going a little bit deeper on? Right?

Because I feel like, again, there's a lot of details that come up on a day to day basis with myself and with my team. And I'd love to be able to share all of those with you. So I'm thinking that a class like this would probably be like an hour or two long chalk full of useful information. And like, I'll show you exactly how to get your groups set up just based on these years of experience that have had running groups. So if you're interested, here's the thing inside the Health Coach Power Community Facebook group, right now we have about, we're like just over 9,000 members, which is so exciting and as more coaches in our community join, I think it's just better. It's just better now when we have 9,000, versus when we had 5,000 or when we had 2000, because it's like more voices asking the hard questions, raising more concerns, giving their input to everybody.

You know, it's just like a more... It's a richer community because of all you guys being here. So thank you. And it's a place that my team and I, we work really hard to keep it like a safe space. I know you may not notice this. Sometimes you'll notice it. A lot of it happens behind the scenes, but we do a lot of work to keep this a safe space because we kick people out all the time. Like every day, people who are being rude, people who are out of line, you know how people can get like that inside Facebook groups, not in my Facebook group. We kick people out who are here, who are like sneak in the back door and they're trying to market themselves to you left and right. We don't allow any of that. So, we really like having quality members in our group.

So anyway, if you guys can help us get to 10,000 quality members by July 31st, I'm going to create that free Facebook group masterclass for you, for everybody in the group, we are just going to like broadcast it live. It will be for everybody like one big fat. Thank you. Thank you. And it should be pretty easy. Like if all of you invited just one health coach friend to join the group, we will easily go past the 10,000 Mark. So here's what I want you to do. First of all, if you're listening to this via podcast or YouTube, and you're not part of our Facebook community, I mean, come on, join us. It's health coach, power, community.com. You just request to join. And then you have to answer three questions and then we'll let you in. If you are already a member of the group, like those of you that are here with me live right now, here's what I don't want you to do.

Don't just start adding friends. There's like that little thing on the sidebar where you can just start typing in your friend's names and adding them willy-nilly, don't do that. It's spammy. They won't like it. It doesn't make for a quality member anyway, cause they didn't choose to be here. So please do not just add friends, but please do share that same URL with your health coach friends again it's healthcoachpowercommunity.com that will bring them to this group page where they can request to join. Anyway, thank you. I'm so excited about this. Looking forward to putting together that free masterclass for you. We just did a masterclass was that last week. I think it was last week. So those of you who participated in that masterclass know like I'm going to get into all the nitty gritty details and map it out for you.

It's going to be great. I just need your help making it happen. So thank you for pitching in. I really appreciate you guys. But for today, what I want to do is talk about like basically what makes a Facebook group useful for you worth your time? What makes it a great marketing tool specifically for a health coach versus like just another shiny object? Just another thing that you can spend like a gabillion hours on and never see a return on your investment. So if you're here live and I know a bunch of you are, please ask your questions in the comments. I know when I announced this topic a couple of days ago, many of you were like, yes, I am starting a Facebook group. I want to start a Facebook group. This is coming at the right time. So, tell me what is coming up for you when you think about starting your Facebook groups so that I can respond to you.

I think that by far the most important aspect of starting a Facebook group for a health coaching business, I remember we were talking about a group that you create to market yourself. I'm not talking about a group that you create for your current clients so much, or for people who have purchased your course or things like that, right? These people have already paid you. Sometimes we have Facebook groups, communities for our that go along with our services, not talking about that. We were talking about marketing ourselves for people who have not yet paid us. Okay. We're trying to build our audience, expand our reach. So I think it's very important when you, when we're talking about that kind of group to create a group that exists for a very clear reason, like what is somebody going to get by joining this group? What is the promise of the group?

What is the premise? Right? Another way to think about it is this group should exist to help a specific type of person solve a specific problem. And that's very different than what I think most of us kind of come up with off the top of our head. Cause you won't necessarily see the strategy behind some of the Facebook groups that you're a part of. You know, you join a Facebook group. You're just like, Oh cool. These are people like me. Maybe, you know, I don't know. I have something in common with them, but if the person running the group has a strategy and they're actually using the group to like feed into their income stream, that's a whole other story. So trust me, it works better when you are the person behind the scenes. And you know, I'm creating this group to help this particular kind of person.

This is who I want to attract into my group. This is my target market. I'm targeting them, get it. And I'm going to help them solve this big problem that they want to solve. Some groups are out there just for fun. It's true. We've got a group like in my town where everybody just kind of pisses moans about politics. We got one for like my kids, each class that they're in has their own Facebook group where everybody like talks about whatever PTA stuff. This is not that kind of group. This is the kind of group that is created to serve a marketing purpose. Okay. So we're not just getting people together to have fun, although that would be nice if they had some fun or get creating the group to actually create income ultimately for you. Right? So that's sort of the difference between running a business and just running a Facebook group.

I want you to start a group with this plan in mind and you will be positioning yourself as an expert from the get go, right? So whatever the problem is that your group aims to solve, you're the expert in solving that problem just because you own the group. Like that's how people are going to view you, which can be really, really helpful. Especially if you are a newer coach and you otherwise kind of feel like, ah, I don't really think I'm an expert in anything suddenly you are right. And new people join your group. And they just assume that you're the go to on this topic. So it's a beautiful way. It's almost like putting yourself on a stage. If you were doing some sort of public speaking, you know, same thing. As soon as somebody is up on a stage, you're like, Oh, they must know what they're talking about.

So, this is a good, good way to position yourself as a leader. Okay. So let me see some questions that we have going on here. Samantha asks, how do you get non-friends to join? You got to make the group awesome. If the group is awesome, the group is helping people reach a desired outcome and it's giving people what they need and what they want. And they're enjoying themselves. They start inviting people. That's what has happened in my groups. If you're giving enough value. And that's tricky when I say give value, sometimes you think, well, I shared all about this and I gave a tip about that.
Yeah. And I talked to them about this topic.

But those all might be things that like you wanted to talk about. Things that you thought were valuable. The key is really to like tune into your members. What do they want? What do they need? And then you can give it to them. It's very likely that they're going to tell their friend, like you got to join. This group happens all the time here in health code power community group. It happened in my other group as well. So I know this works, but it's so beautiful because when you have people inside a Facebook group, you don't actually have to guess, like when you're just, we talked about sending emails in last week's episode, not that you're going to guess at what people want on your email list, you should also be listening to them as a little bit harder to know what they want to hear about because they're on the other side of an email inbox.

Right. But in a Facebook group, Oh my gosh. Every darn day, all I got to do is glance through the list. If a questions and comments that have come in and I'm like, well, this is what everybody wants to talk about. I mean, every week I do this show based on the questions that you guys ask. So I never have to guess, or like dream things up for you guys. You tell me, and then my job is to deliver. So anyway, if you can do that for your group, if you can really listen to what they're saying, listen to what they complain about and then help them with that. That's going to be the value that they need to start sharing your group with others. And I think that's like the number one way of getting new members in there. Certainly, there are other ways to do it.

You can be running, you know, all sorts of like a five day challenge or you could be doing freebies. And when somebody downloads it, you can invite them into your Facebook group. Yes, absolutely. There's lots of ways to get people into a Facebook group. But I think fundamentally if people aren't inviting friends, inviting people that they know, sharing your group, like with a support group that they're part of that kind of thing. Then maybe it's not as useful as you think it is. Right? So that's, that's the work, that's the work to make it an insanely useful place for the people who have decided to join. Rochelle says that is scary to be fully seen. Oh, like up on a stage. Yeah. As the leader of a group, you know how many times I've done one of these and then I like turn off the camera go upstairs.

And I'm like, Oh cool. I have like a chia seed stuck in my tooth. Cool. Awesome. Glad that happened. It is scary, you know, but ultimately you set the, the, the tone of the group. So if you're like very stiff and formal about it, you know, sometimes that's more scary. And if you can be a little more relaxed and casual and yourself, I feel like that takes some of the scariness away from it where like, yeah, I could have, I very well right now could have salad in my teeth. And you guys would understand because you probably have kale in your teeth too. And that's why we're friends. Okay, what else is going on here? First of all, it looks like my Facebook live just crapped out on me. So let me check on that. No, we're here. Okay. Good.

Facebook. I swear. I'm going to give you one of these is my live video working. I don't know. Let me, let me continue answering questions and we'll just assume it's working for now. Ooh, let's see. RK says I have 109 in my page and only 40 in my group. How do I get more? My group is private, how I first made it and I can't change it. So you definitely want a group set in a way that people can find it and request to join. If they can't find it, they can't request to join. And then you're dead in the water. Right. So I think you should be able to change back and forth. I'm not positive because Facebook is always changing. Things like that. And I still don't know if my live video is working. So just give me a second while I double check to make sure we are still broadcasting. This happens all the time. Okay. No, it looks like, are we you guys? Am I here? Can you still see me?

What, a pain in the neck, Facebook. Alright, I'm going to answer another question here. Mark says I have about 500 people in my group, but probably only a few dozen or so engaged members. I'm looking to increase engagement for more members and, or attract more members who will be more active, great, where you're going to hit that right away. So let's, let's talk about it. First and foremost, you want to make sure that you create a group that perfectly positions members to want to hire you. This also goes back to your target market. And we want to position them to also engaged. We want to give them something to engage around. So here is an example. No, I wish I could tell if I am broadcasting right now. I think it said that I got interrupted. Ah, you guys, sorry. Here's an example of a Facebook group that would probably fall flat.

Nobody's going to engage Mark. I'm not saying this is what's going on with you. I'm just saying this would be an example of something. That's not going to get new members joining, not going to have engagement. If I started a group and I called it like healthy living, happy life, something like that. It's kind of like, what's that? Who's that for? Why would I join it? It's way too vague. And there are probably a million Facebook groups like that already, but let's say I started a group called solving stubborn Hashimoto's weight. That's a whole different story. Now that is a group that's aimed only at people and probably women who have Hashimoto's disease. They have a diagnosis and they're having trouble with stubborn weight. So the goal of the group would be help the type of woman lose weight. And if you are really talking about that pain point that she has, it's likely that she's going to ask questions.

She's going to engage with you. You're going to post a recipe. She's going to try it. You know, you're going to get that interaction versus if the group is kind of more vague and she's not really sure why she's there, honestly, that is the problem that I see. Most often people might be part of your group, but they kind of don't know why they don't really know what, what they would be posting about or why they should share anything. So it really comes back to this positioning. So you, when you are super targeted, like say you do the solving stubborn Hashimoto's weight. I know who's going to join. I know what their problem is. And every day that I run this group, I'm going to get an amazing amount. Like we talked about of market research to better understand my perspective client's needs, and I'm going to learn exactly how to serve them.

It's amazing. Even if you're brand new coach. So what you do not want to do again, Mark, I'm not saying this is you, but you do not want to create a group. That is kind of pointless, right? And you also don't want to be in there every day. You want to be careful about what you're posting. Cause you're posting things that are obviously promotional time and time again. Hey, sign up to become a client. Click here, to learn about my coaching programs. You know, click here, go to the sales page, go to that sales page. I'm selling this, I'm selling it. That if that's the only thing you're ever posting about, they're also not going to engage. You have to think about the types of posts and like conversation starters that will really get them going. Otherwise they kind of get annoyed and they leave. There are smarter ways to extend your services. Once your members get to know you and I will definitely get into all of that during our master class. Okay. It does look like my live stream has stopped. So we're going to try again, sorry, podcast listeners. You're getting it all today. Here's what I'm doing. I'm going to start the live stream all over again

And see if it works. Cause we had a whole bunch of people here live, and that is a damn shame. I should tell you guys about doing these live streams because this is something I started doing in this Facebook group ages ago now. And it has been one of the things that really creates a lot of engagement. Of course it helps when Facebook's working. Let's try this again. Take two. Alright. I'm going to hit go live again over on Facebook, but yes, go I'm doing lives inside. Your Facebook group is one piece, one method of creating more engagement of course. Cause like you showing up and being here live in real time, there's something very engaging about that versus a prerecording, a video and uploading it. Less engagement is going to happen around this. Okay. So sorry for any of you who are on the other livestream that got broken for some reason.

So we are back over here and I was just talking about how we have to create a very specific type of group that is attracting a certain type of person. And my example was a group called something like healthy living, happy life is going to do nothing for you. No, one's going to engage with that. Very few people will join. They will have nothing to say. It's too vague. But if you start a group called solving stubborn Hashimoto's weight, that's a group that you're more likely to get engagement with just to catch y'all up. So if you missed that part, I'm not sure exactly where the live stream cut out. Okay. Next, the success of your group is a lot like the success of a party that you're hosting. Like you need to be a great host. That's really what it boils down to.

So put on your sassy pants and get out there because if you're boring, if you're not creating conversation in the beginning, if you're not making people feel welcome and feel like they can be themselves, then yeah. Conversation's going to be a little bit stilted. Like, you know, when somebody comes in to your house, you're having a party. And like, especially if they're one of the first ones there, you're like, Oh my gosh, how are you? Like let me show, Oh, I think you'd really be interested in this. And you'd probably like to meet this person. And you know, your host is going to get you a drink and I get, you know, take your coat, whatever we need to do that for our group members. If we want to host successful party inside of our Facebook group, like that's how I think of it. People should feel welcome.

They should feel seen. They feel heard. And you want to show them something interesting, right? Just like you would in your house. Oh, I got, I have a book. I think you'd like it, you know, I've saved it for you or, you know, Hey, we just got this, whatever painting, if I thought you meant like it, whatever you would do at a party, or you kind of want to do that inside your group too. Except instead of showing someone around our house, this is where we might share a piece of content. Something that you yourself have created like your own blog posts or your podcast episodes or something like that. But you can also share something that was in the New York times or you know, resources from elsewhere, but show people something interesting that is related to the purpose of the group. Like to create a conversation around that is very powerful.

You get them interested, then you get them talking. If they're not talking, they're not interested. That's really what it boils down to. It reminds me... Was this last week? Somebody asked every time I ask on my email list, when I email my list and I ask a question, nobody responds. And I said, well, you have to ask a more interesting question. You know, like if you're just like, how many flavors of kale chips do you like? You know, like, that's like, nobody cares. It's not going to answer that question. But if you asked them something that's like a little bit naughty or something that's funny. Or, you know, one time I asked my mailing list, if they could remember the name of this very specific ice cream pop that I used to get from the ice cream man, I had like a bubble gum ball for what's that called a bubble.

I kind of know what's called, you know, the ball of bubble gum. Why is that escaping my brain right now anyway, for a nose, he had one of those and said, can you guys remember what this guy was called? It had nothing to do with health. Obviously it's an ice cream, probably the worst ice cream, but it really gets people engaged. So if you can't engage them on like serious stuff, health stuff, nutrition stuff, don't be surprised. Cause it's kind of boring. You guys. It's only interesting to us try to get them to a gauge talking about like chocolate or talking about their favorite wine or talking about whatever it is. That's going to really resonate with your audience. Start there to really get them interested and talking. So anyway, when you're a great party hostess, your audience is getting to know you. You also want to help them get to know each other.

So you can introduce members to each other, tag somebody. If you think they would have a good answer to somebody else's question. And this involves like you really have to know your members. So we create this inviting atmosphere. And then we are constantly engaging with our people these days inside the health coach power community, because we have so many members, you see me in the group, but if you were a member like five years ago, you would have seen me even more. I was answering every question I was in there all the time. I had a new post every day at a certain point, the group grows and takes on a life of its own. So it kind of goes in phases, but it doesn't start that way. It starts with a lot of work on your end to like be a party dancer and get everybody going.

So here's some other ways that you can do this. And Mark, I think this is going to help answer your question as well about increasing engagement. So we talked about sharing relevant or interesting information. Key is interesting. Seriously. The key is interesting. Don't share, even if it's used, even if you think like you think it's make sure that your audience thinks it's interesting before you post an article. And even if you have a blog post, I wouldn't just post your blog post that comes across as so self serving. But what I would do is wait for somebody to ask a question and then if you have a blog post, that's like a perfect answer to that question. You could say, Oh, I wrote all about it here. And then they're going to be like, wow, Mark, aren't you the most useful party host of all time.

Right? So actually that's how I come up with a lot of content, like, you know, for this podcast and from other podcasts and for blog posts is I just listen to my audience. The questions that you guys are answering, I then create content around that question is going to come up again. And the next time it comes up, boom, I'm going to have a whole episode to refer you to. So, you got to think of it as like the symbiotic relationship between the content that you're creating and the questions that your audience is asking about. The other thing that you can do is start conversations around these topics that matter the most to your members. And you can do this in a very methodical way, especially in the beginning. I recommend that you actually like map this out for yourself. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, like a Monday, I'm going to post a recipe and then maybe Tuesday, I'm going to ask a question and then Wednesday, I'm going to do a poll.

You could do it like that. Or you could just ask a question every day, but they're going to be in different topics. Like Monday's going to be around. You know, it depends on your group. Obviously a Monday is going to be around weight loss and Tuesday's going to be around fashion and you know, whatever the topics are that your audience is interested in and it's relevant to the group. Right? So we used to do that here in this group. In fact, if you go way, way back in the photo archive, you'll still see them the Monday through Wednesday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday posts. And most of all, we got to keep it fun, right? So, like, if you can make jokes when you're answering people's questions or when you're engaging with people inside your group, they're going to have so much more fun and you're going to have so much more fun.

So try not, like I said, to make it really stiff try to use your personality, you know, joke around with your members, put something up. That's kind of vulnerable. I remember earlier this year I posted like a video of me dancing on new year's Eve. And I was like, I don't really know how professional that is, but it was really fun. And you know, that got a lot of engagement. Cause I think you guys could see like we're here to have some fun. Hopefully, hopefully that's what you're thinking. RK says, I'm not sure if my question was answered or not because the video cut out. I know the video cut out. You got to ask your question again. So finally, one last part that I definitely want to get to today because it is often overlooked. I don't want you to start a Facebook group, unless you think about, and have a plan in place for how you going to move people from your Facebook group onto your mailing list.

Because having a Facebook group itself is only going to get you so far where it really starts to move the needle in your business is when you then convert those people into like your most loyal fans and followers, right? So now they're on your mailing list and that's where most of your sales are going to be happening and coming from. So if you want to think about God, but mean really like how can I have this, these new faces? How can I get them onto my list? I could say hi, would you like to join my mailing list? And they're probably going to say, no thank you because nobody wants to join a mailing list. So we offer things. We have to offer things. We have to put out a free event or a free resource or something. That's going to get them onto our list.

You can also make use of that like sweet spot when somebody first joins your group, when somebody first joins, they get, I think I mentioned this earlier, they're asked up to three questions and you can set with these questions are, and one of them can be, would you like to receive my free blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, whatever it is, something that you've created for this audience, if it's valuable enough, people are going to say yes, and you're going to be able to collect their email address. We do this all the time and we're always adding new names to our list. Like as soon as somebody joins the group, as soon as someone joins your group, you can invite them onto your mailing list. So you can make use of those three questions. Other ways that you can start to convert people from your Facebook group to your mailing list, like Mark saying a five-day challenge.

Yes, that's perfect. But another way is to share client stories and anecdotes again, not in like a cheesy way, not like in a Hey guys today. I want to tell you about this wonderful success that my client who's 46 years old and lives in Iowa. Like no, nobody cares. But if someone's like asking a question about something you can say, Oh yeah, my client really found success when she did XYZ. You know, you can just kind of drop it into the conversations as it makes sense. It's super useful for people to hear about others' success stories, but not if they're cheesy and feel like you're just doing it to be self-serving so pay attention to the conversations and drop in successes, drop in little anecdotes where they make sense. And you'll be surprised. You may very well have group members coming to you saying, how can I become a client without you having to do a fit?

Let's see RK, his question was grow. So growth is from friends sharing. Is there another way my group is? Yes. So growth is often from friends sharing. There are lots of other ways. So like I mentioned earlier, you can be running some sort of event that you are promoting elsewhere and you invite everybody who signs up to join your Facebook group. Right. It's often on my thank you page. Thanks for signing up for thanks for downloading my thing. I joined my Facebook group. It's just like the obvious next step somebody might want to take with you. Another thing that I do, Oh, there's so many ways so easy to because to say join my Facebook group is like a no brainer. You're not asking for an email address. Like if you just meet someone, even people will just email all the time and they'll be asking questions about like, Hey, I'm a health coach, Michelle, can you help me?

No, I can't. There's only 24 hours in the day and I'm very, very busy, but you can join my Facebook group. It's like an auto response that we put out. That's a great question for our Facebook group. Here's where you can request to join boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. People get onto the list. That way. If I am a guest on a podcast, like I was, you know, I don't know a bunch of Wellpreneur like of the different podcasts I'm on talking about health coaching and the business of health coaching is a lot easier to say, Oh, and for everybody listening, you can join my free Facebook group at healthcoachpowercommunity.com than it is to say like, and you can join my mailing list. Right? I mean, you can do either of those, but I find it's like an easy yes. For people to join a Facebook group because they don't even have to like give an email address.

They're just saying, yeah, sure. I'll join a group. No big deal. So there's so many ways to do that. And again, if we can get to 10,000 members in this group, I will formally write up all the different ways that we promote this community so that you can see all the different ways that you can add to yours without even spending a dime on Facebook ads. I mean, that's another way to do it, but never my recommended nor my go-to method of adding new members to our Facebook group. So let's recap all of that. The key is really threefold. And I apologize again, you guys about the tech problems in the middle of this episode, that's life, right? The first thing is to build a group meant to serve a specific purpose for a specific type of person. The second is to engage, make it useful and make it fun because otherwise nobody's going to want to be there.

And then finally have a plan to move your group members onto your mailing list. And for some of them, hopefully many of them towards becoming a paying client where you can really serve them best. You can serve people and find a Facebook group, of course, but we all know you can only do so much. You can really serve the people who need you. You want to give them the way to reach you and reach that next level with you and become a client. So that, I mean, that's where lives get changed. Good stuff. Like I said, you're going to know when your group successful and people start inviting their friends. And I have to say, you guys have been doing that for years inside of our group. You're always inviting friends. Sometimes I can see it. So and so invited. So, and so, you know, often, or people will say I was referred by and they tell me who referred them.

So this happens like every day. And if you can continue doing that, help us reach 10,000 quality members. By the end of July, we will celebrate. We'll have that big, old free masterclass available to every single one of you. I will teach you step by step from setting up the Facebook groups. You have all the settings exactly right. To making it grow and how to make it serve your business. Can we do it? I think we can do it already. You guys thank you so much. I'll be back next week, answering your questions and hopefully no tech difficulties. Next time. Take care everybody.