What's up? I'm Rachel Spiewak and this is Rock Your Tribe Radio where community, fun, social media and business collide. I firmly believe that parties are the answer to all of life's problems. Seriously. Building a community, bringing people together for a common purpose and serving them, that's your mission as a business owner. Let's make it happen. It's time to rock your tribe.
(00:28): The show let's jump right into it today. Let's talk about one of the biggest mistakes. I see Facebook group owners making it meets to burn out and frustration over a lack of engagement. It leads to heartbreak. It's why so many groups fail. Are you ready for it? Here's the big mistake treating your group. Like it's a classroom now before educators and my audience get mad. I'm going to explain. I'm not saying that you can't and shouldn't teach in your Facebook group. What I am saying is there's a better way to do it than what I typically see. What I see is business owners, creating post after post of instructions and explanations and an attempt to drive engagement and sales. And the result is the complete opposite crickets, no new clients. Why is this happening? Why don't people want to learn from us? Isn't that the point of Facebook groups?
(01:26): No, it's not. The point of Facebook groups is to create a community for business owners. What that looks like is a brand bubble, or like Houseparty, it's recognizable as your space. And you're curating an experience inside that space where your tribe likes to congregate. What makes people congregate during their spare time? What satisfies people, souls, chilling with our friends. At the same time as a business owner, you do need to build your authority and demonstrate your expertise. And you do need to do that in your Facebook group. So how are you supposed to demonstrate your expertise and build your authority, but not write tons of instructional posts? Hmm. It seems counterintuitive. Doesn't it? It's not. If we unpack how people learn and how community plays a crucial role in people's learning, I'm going to expand on three topics here for you. And by the end of this lecture, you're going to stop lecturing in your Facebook group.
(02:30): Isn't it ironic? Don't you think if you're taking notes, the topics today are number one. It's a community, not a classroom. Number two people learn through discovery and number three. Well that one's going to blow your mind and I don't want to ruin the surprise. Do you see what I did there? I'm building in cliffhangers. So you'll stay with me. See already. You're learning that you don't want to give it all away, upfront that you want to leave your audience hungry for more okay. Time for topic. Number one, it's a community, not a classroom. Culturally speaking a classroom is where you sit down and shut up. This is important because if we create a classroom culture in a Facebook group, then you can't expect people to pipe up and engage. And that's what we want. Engagement and sales sales come from engagement and relationships. It comes from people talking.
(03:27): So if you've created a classroom culture by lecturing, through frequent instructional posts about topics that no one asked you to cover the outcome of all your hard work is there's no ROI you're gonna burn out. And you're going to feel like you're working for free for like no reason. It's also heartbreaking when you pour your heart and soul into a post that will change people's lives and no one engages with it. That hurts. There's one thing I think most Facebook group owners, miss, which is that you're responsible for building a culture in your group. People often mistake enforcing the rules for building a culture. Building a culture means exemplifying and promoting certain behaviors. It means creating rituals and routines, but not boring ones like hashtag mindset Monday, which you'll see in multiple groups. For example, one behavior in my group, that's so important for our culture is tagging people into conversations.
(04:28): When they're the expert on the topic, I'm intentionally helping my members to build relationships with each other. I hope they buy from each other, which might sound crazy for someone who runs an entrepreneur group. Shouldn't I try to prevent that. Shouldn't I only encourage them to buy from me. No, not at all. I can't help everybody with everything. I do. One thing I help with Facebook groups. If you need help with your mailing list, I'm tagging Ashley DeLuca. If you need help with video, I'm tagging Shantay Hudson. If you need help with sales, I'm tagging Hannah Walker and Sean and Beckman. If you want a podcast like mine, I'm tagging Rachel and Jonathan Rivera. I can keep going. So if you're looking for help with literally anything in your business, get in my group and ask, and I will tag the right person. See how easy that is.
(05:16): This is one of my favorite ways to keep the conversations going in my group. And I'm demonstrating the power of community. So ultimately by tagging other experts, benefits me and my brand. I'm exemplifying the culture. So now you're probably thinking, Rachel, what am I supposed to do in my group? If I'm not supposed to run it like a classroom, I know people want to learn stuff. How do I teach them without teaching them? Glad you asked. And I just snuck in another pro tip. Do you see how your asking me for information? Now you formulated the question. I created the environment where you felt comfortable asking it, and now I'm going to deliver on what you want. Hold on to that idea because it's time for topic. Number two, two people learn through discovery. Think about it. What are your greatest aha moments? It's when something I think dawned on you, when something clicked, when you wrestled with something for so long and you finally cracked the code, there's a Kanye West song off of graduation called can't.
(06:17): Tell me nothing. That could have been my theme song for most of my life. Do I remember lectures? So I remember explanations, which teachers do I remember and still keep in touch with. I remember the lessons that prompted me to discover something. I still talk to the teachers who gave me the tools to build something like Tracy Handel, my environmental policy professor at Emory about 17, 10 years ago, who showed me how much power I have to change things. If I know who the ultimate decision maker is, and I go straight to the source, nonprofit director of a scrappy DIY bicycle repair shop back in the day through this inspiration from this professor who gave me the tools I joined my local business association. So my organization could have a voice in our community. And through that, we locked down funding for our nonprofit that we would not have gotten otherwise.
(07:15): So how do you as a Facebook group owner create aha moments in your group. You're going to love it this, because this is your new content plan and it's going to make your life so much easier in your Facebook group. Teach through prompts. You've probably heard me say this about a thousand times. Now, if you do one thing every day in your Facebook group, create a relevant one line engagement posts that gets people talking, and please make sure it's stuff you care about. Don't go for the low hanging fruit type questions that are boring to read the answers to, and don't have anything to do with your topic whatsoever and really read the answers. Look for ways to encourage your members to take it one step further. I'll give you a few examples. I wrote a one online engagement posts a while ago, asking for people sales pitches drop me your sales pitch here, sell me your thing.
(08:08): One member wrote something that was so good that I had to check out her personal profile, her personal profile. Didn't say anything about her business, this at all, what a missed opportunity commented back on her sales pitch and asked her if she's ever posted a sales post publicly, I was 99% sure she was going to say no judging by the complete lack of mention of her business on her public profile. So my question was more setting her up to date take action. So she said no. And I said, copy and paste this as a post. So she did and she books a client from it and she came back and told me that she stepped outside her comfort zone, but she did it anyway. Instead, what if I had written a lecture post about the importance of sales posts or what if I wrote an explanation of how to write sales posts would a person who never talks about their business on their profile, get inspired by that what's someone step outside their comfort zone based on instructions.
(09:11): I doubt it because they're not consciously seeking information about writing public posts. See it's all about the prompt and the nudge. When this happens, you can follow up later with a case study type post one that offers some explanation and celebrates your members win. That's the progression. Find an opening to write an instructional post based on what your members want to talk about and what your members see themselves reflected. In, in other words, I could save my instructional post for later and make it interesting by telling a story about one of my members. Here's another way you can prompt your members to take action through a one-line engagement post. I do this all the time. Just the other day, I wrote a post a one-line engagement post. What warning labels should working with you come with and everybody's answers were so awesome. Then I commented later, letting people know you can use this as inspiration for your social media content today.
(10:09): And some people did. It was really cute. And here's another way to prompt your members to take action. I've hosted a live video challenge in my group. A couple of times it's called live video Palooza. What happens is everyone's invited to go live over a designated weekend for five minutes to introduce themselves and their business. It's lots of fun. I provide a script and it tends to get newbies comfortable with going live. Live video is so powerful for social media marketing and for rocking your Facebook group. The last time I hosted live video Palooza, and one of my group members was on the edge of giving up on her business, but she went live anyway and found her footing with it. She got inspired and off. She went going live on her main profile, using the script that I provided and guess what happened? She signed up clients.
(10:57): Her business was saved. What if I had written an instructional post about going live? Instead? What if I gave a lecture? I doubt anyone would have cared. Let alone take an action. Zero businesses saved if you're nodding along with this, like yes, Rachel, this makes so much sense, but how do I apply it to my group? How do I put my spin on it? If that's you, I want to invite you to book a one hour strategy session with me. We'll spend an hour getting crystal clear on who your group is for why they should join, how to make the group irresistible to them and how to create these one line engagement questions that double as teaching prompts. And then I'll show you how to write your instructional posts on top of that foundation and how to organize them in a way that prevents you from working yourself into the ground in your group. So book your one hour Facebook group strategy session with me and go to rock your tribe.com forward slash strategy session. You've heard the
(11:54): Same advice about Facebook groups everywhere. Ask questions, add value. But what does that mean? Let me show you what a profitable engaged at a fun Facebook group looks like, and I'll pop the hood for you so you can see exactly how I do it. Join my Facebook group. Rock your tribe, community. Building for entrepreneurs at rock, your tribe.com forward slash Facebook. And now
(12:20): The moment you've been waiting for the secret topic. Number three, the cliffhanger. Remember how I said, it's a community, not a classroom. While here comes the plot twist, the community is the classroom. Oh, snap bet. You didn't see that coming. Here's a question. Do people join groups because they want information. Information can be Googled the information we're writing about and our groups. Can it not be Googled? Let's be honest. People join groups because they want to belong to a community. And they seek information in that community because they feel comfortable asking it there. The information they're looking for is mostly contained in the conversations they have with each other. And you, so it's not that people won't learn in your community. It's inevitable that they'll learn if you're doing it right, but what gets them through the door is the promise of belonging. When I was pregnant with my son, Benjamin, who's about to turn four.
(13:22): I needed information. A lot of information. There are so many things, no one tells you about being pregnant. And that needs to change. Amy Schumer talks about this in her documentary expecting Amy, and you should totally watch it. So I had questions, questions on questions, mostly about gross things and anxiety, inducing things. There's so much that can go wrong in a pregnancy. And there are so many things that are gross and it gets lonely. So I Googled everything. I watched all the what to expect videos with Heidi Murkoff, which were sweet and informative, but it didn't make me feel like I belonged or like I found my tribe. I felt like I was using the bump app out of obligation. Not because it resonated with me. I had to keep digging, which brought me to message boards. The best information about pregnancy was on message boards because that's where expecting mommies felt comfortable.
(14:20): Having vulnerable conversations about accidentally peeing when they sneezed the best, most useful information is buried in the conversations taking place where a tribe gathers like in a Facebook group. But if you want to make that information useful and use it as collateral to help build your group, you need a system to organize it. If you need proof that the purpose of Facebook groups isn't to be a repository for information, just look at how it's structured. Unless you use the guide sections. It's tough to find things unless you know what keywords to specifically search for groups. Aren't intuitively searchable. They're not set up for you to discover information, compare that to YouTube. It's the second largest search engine behind Google and Google owns YouTube. YouTube is where your ideal clients are specifically looking for information. If you want to center your content strategy on creating instructional, how to type 10, that's the smart place to put it.
(15:20): But you do want to have something informational instructional content in your group, right? You've got to show off that, you know your stuff, right? People do want to know things. So here's how you're going to do it. You're going to do it. Draw from the conversations happening in your group. You're going to draw from your members, experiences and achievements that occurred because of your group. And you're going to draw from the questions your group members are asking. You, take all of that and write about what your members care about. And it doesn't have to be free day. Here's my system. I haven't asked me anything post. It says, ask me anything about Facebook groups. I'm using that to write an FAQ frequently asked questions. So I draw from that. Plus my experience serving clients and all the conversations I have about Facebook groups. And I know what the frequently asked questions are.
(16:13): And so my FAQ lives inside guide one in the guide section of my group used to be called units. Now it's called guides. So as neat and tidy and organized information based on what people actually want to know, I can refer people there by tagging them on the appropriate post. If they ask about any of those topics elsewhere in the group, or if they DM me about it, I can also use my FAQ as collateral to get new members into my group. And I can repurpose those posts into other kinds of things like podcast episodes. This is perfect for building my authority while actually helping people, because the information resonates with them. It's information they're seeking presented in a way that they want to consume it, but that would not be possible without cultivating our community and culture. First, the FAQ does not exist without my tribe asking me these questions and they're asking would not exist if I hadn't created a place for friends to chill with each other.
(17:14): I am not a teacher without my students, their students, because of the community, the community is the classroom. This is getting way existential. There's a lot more ask me anything to FAQ flows. So if you want the blueprint and you want it tailored to your group, gravel one hour strategy session with me, go book yourself a time slot at Brock, your tribe.com forward slash strategy session. There's so much more I could say to keep on packing. My main point that Facebook groups are a community, not a classroom, but I'm going to wrap it up here because I know my audience. I know you. I care about your feedback. And I use it to continuously improve this podcast because I want you to come back again. And again, I care about how you learn and I tailor how I deliver information to you and everybody wins.
(18:05): One thing you're telling me is that you like how these episodes are short, about 15 minutes long, give or take. It makes them easy to digest the information and you wind up bingeing the episodes because they're like snacks for your brain. If you want to keep the conversation going head over to my Facebook group, rock your tribe, community, building for entrepreneurs. I would love for you to post about this podcast in there. And so, so wrap up today, we learned that successful Facebook groups focus on building a community and a culture. We don't want a typical classroom culture in our groups because classrooms are where you sit down and shut up. We want people jumping on their desks and having lively conversations with each other. We also talked about how people learn through discovery, not through lectures. So prompt them to take action, encourage them to take things a step further and then celebrate their results with a bit of explanation after the fact.
(18:59): And then we had a plot twist. I originally told you that your Facebook group is a community, not a classroom. Well, it turns out the community is the classroom. When people belong and feel comfortable talking with each other, that's where the real learning happens. You can Google anything, but the juicy life-changing information, that's going to resonate with your tribe and stick in their brains that comes out of conversations. I've got a super simple time-saving method for mining your group for information your members actually want, which you can organize in a way that keeps traffic flowing to those posts while they help you grow your group. If you want to learn more about that gravel one hour Facebook group strategy session at rock, your tribe.com/strategy session. Have you noticed how I have no shame or fear around telling you about my paid offers? Like my one hour Facebook group strategy session, I'm running a business and you are too. We need to get comfortable talking about our offers everywhere. And especially in our Facebook groups, let's do that together. Coming up on the next episode of rock your tribe radio. I'm going to tell you to quit, lying to yourself. Your Facebook group is about the money until then. Thanks as always for being here. And remember you rock.
(20:14): This is ThePodcastFactory.com.
