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): Did you know, 60% of your marketing is not your marketing? Yeah. So where does 60% of your marketing come from? It comes from human driven marketing activities, like reviews, conversations, and recommendations. How do you get your arms around that? 60% majority share plus the remaining 40% that you can control while your competitors are focused on less than half of the pie. I'm going to tell you, but first a story. One of my earliest consulting clients ran an agency in the cyber security arena. His posts performed well on LinkedIn, and he had a massive bit of a following on YouTube. I helped him introduce into his funnel, a community container, a Facebook group, and that's how he started to convert his audience into a community. He did a great job serving his community in the Facebook group. And in turn, his community members became extremely generous supporters of him.
(01:31): Rabid fans, even suddenly leads were pouring into his LinkedIn inbox. All referrals from his community members word on the street was that he was the go-to guy in his industry. All roads lead back to him. When he shared this with me, he said, my community is my army of marketers. This is it. This is how you get your arms around that 60% of your marketing that doesn't come directly from you. You turn your community into your marketing department, community, not just customers. You can build a community among your customers. Many businesses and brands do this like Apple or Nike or Harley Davidson, but why exclude people who haven't bought from you yet? Some people will never buy from you. Some people will buy from you in the future. When they're ready. There are ways to delineate between current and future and never customers. And sure FOMO is a fabulous sales trigger, but why cut yourself off from people who could be your biggest champions?
(02:35): Just because they haven't handed you cash yet, or maybe never will. Cash is not the one and only form of currency. There's something called social capital and most of your competitors don't value it. And definitely don't invest in it. Here's how you build up your bank of social capital. You build a wildly engaged community of not just customers, but potential customers and advocates for your brand and brace them all as partners in your business and empower them to spread the word, to put it in other way, rock your tribe. See what I did there. Do you want to know how to rock your tribe? Cool. Here are three steps to turn your community into your marketing department. Step one, show your members that you care about them. Step to slow down on the process of delivering information. Step three, empower your members with quick shareable wins.
(03:32): There's a concept in marketing. We've heard a billion times know like and trust. And it's usually described as a one-way street. You want your audience to know like, and trust you or your brand, but we're talking about relationship-based marketing and relationships. Aren't one sided they're reciprocal, which means you need to know like, and trust your audience and show it. That's part of how you take them from audience to community. And one way to show it is to make them feel seen and heard, which makes people feel really good. That's all, most people want to feel seen and heard. And a lot of people don't feel seen and heard most of the time, especially by the people closest to them. Isn't that the cruel irony of life. So if you want a special place inside someone's heart, there's a space waiting for you in there. If you show them that you care about them, but the trick is you actually have to care.
(04:28): You can't fake this. If this sounds daunting because, well, how do you build relationships with hundreds or thousands, or maybe even millions of people in your community while there are ways to hack the system without faking. First of all, people don't need a lot. It's not about over-giving or over-delivering or value dumping. It's about small gestures. Think about it. What was the best gift you ever received? Was it something small, maybe inexpensive, but incredibly thoughtful. What made it thoughtful? It was essential. Let's show that someone paid attention to you and remembered that you said you liked something or that you wanted something. They took a moment out of their day to buy it for you. And it will always remind you that someone cares about you. So here's how simple it is to show your members that you care about them by building reciprocal relationships and your digital community.
(05:23): Ask a thoughtful question that demonstrates your connection to your community, like, and comment back on your members' answers. It's really that simple recently in my Facebook group, the container for my community, somebody told me they felt seen when I liked their comment to me, I'm just a person clicking a like button, but I've positioned myself as a community leader. So my stamp of approval in the form of liking a comment in mean something to my community members. It's easy to take this for granted. It's a click. We click a million things a day. You might run through all the comments on a post and click like on all, all of them. And you should, you should react to everyone's comments as best you can. It can be tough to keep up. So here's another workaround you could easily outsource this. If you can't personally dedicate this much time to your communities, split up the tasks between yourself and a community manager in a way that your community manager is only responsible for the tasks that don't reveal who's behind it.
(06:25): No one would ever know the difference. Commenting back is another story. So here's another approach. Build your brand's internal community so that your whole team acts as one voice community. Doesn't have to be external. Only companies work better when they have a strong internal team culture. This way, anyone on your team could sub in for managing your community. And it would be an empowering task for your team members to be ambassadors for your brand. Here's the mistake I've made with this as a service provider in the past, and the mistake that I see lots of business owners making when it comes to outsourcing community management, I've been hired in the past to do community management for a few solo preneurs. When I was still figuring out what exactly I was doing with this business. And you know, that phase, when you get the inbound leads, asking you for things that you could probably do that you haven't done yet, it sounds interesting.
(07:22): And you could use the money. So why not? But because I was not the person I was working for and I was not a subject matter expert on their topic. I found myself trying and failing at impersonating both instead of letting them take the lead on being themselves and being the subject matter expert and just backing them up on the tasks inside their community, that didn't really need their thumb print, running a community means your a leader, which means the health of the community depends on your leadership. If you're going to have a stand in, even if that stand in as a community expert, like myself, that stand in can only be responsible for the tasks that don't require your fingerprint or that stand-in has to completely competently represent you and your brand, which brings us back to showing that you care, if you want a community, because you, I only care about the ways it will benefit you and you can't be bothered to personally interact, at least in the areas where it matters.
(08:25): And you can't be bothered to build an internal community that can effectively represent you. Your community will fail because it will be obvious that you don't care about your community. And that's what this all hinges showing that you care when you're community members feel cared about. They're going to write posts and comments in your community container or your group or your Slack channel, your discord server about you. They're going to name, drop you in other communities. They're going to leave reviews on your page and just like that. You've assembled your army of marketers. Now that your community knows that you care. The next step in turning them into your marketing department is to slow down the process of delivering information. If you information dump, you'll miss the opportunity to carry on a conversation over a longer timeline, which will allow you to serve your community better.
(09:19): It's a win-win because there's less content for you to generate. And because you'll find out exactly what your community needs from you. Here's an example. I'm working with a fabulous nonprofit leadership and fundraising coach Amy Fazio to build her community. And in this very moment, there's an incredible amount of COVID relief funding being made available for local initiatives across America. Like after school enrichment programs, I took a look at some of the documents being shared that outlined the different opportunities. And although it's theoretically written for the ordinary consumer, you have to know what you're looking at for it to make sense I've run and worked in afterschool enrichment Richmond programs throughout my twenties. Thinking back on that time in my life, if this opportunity presented itself, then would I have had the capacity to figure this stuff out. The mistake I see digital community leaders making is sharing documents with our communities. We read a document or an article that is full of gems that our community needs. And we hit the share button and pop it into our Facebook group, for example. And then what happens? No one
(10:26): Cares. You've heard the 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,
(10:54): Slow down and stop information dumping. Instead, we should start a conversation and get our community members talking, listen to their needs and just liver, the particular information and support they need in a client session with Amy, I told her to take one highly desirable outcome, like there's money for afterschool programs and spark a conversation in her community to start bread, crumbing her community towards the information they need. She can ask things like, does your nonprofit run an afterschool program? Does your foundation contribute funding to afterschool programs? What's an afterschool program you wish existed in your community. When that conversation is happening, she'll find out who can directly benefit from the relief bill funding. And she'll probably find out that some of her members have connections who could directly benefit too. As this conversation is happening, she can probe for what kind of information her community needs.
(11:53): Do they need a walk through of how to apply? Would that look like a group zoom session with a screen share, or maybe they need a better explanation of what qualifies an applicant. This could look like a checklist which could be turned into a lead magnet, or maybe someone's got an incredible program, but they don't have their five Oh one C3 yet, but maybe someone else in the group has an organization that would be willing to put them under their umbrella. This will look like helping her members to network and connect with each other. So let's back up for a second. As the leader of your community, you may feel the impulse to share information. The second it hits your desk, but your members need you to start the conversation first, which means prompting them to share information with you and each other, based on what you learn, it's your job to give them only the information they're prime to receive and give it to them in digestible bits.
(12:45): When you slow down and start the conversation. First, the people who will directly benefit will hear you. And also people who know someone who will directly benefit will become empowered to share the information. Okay? So here we are at the point where you can turn your members into your army of marketers in two ways, number one, your members who will directly benefit. You can give them a quick win. And we're going to talk about that in our final section. And number two, your members who know somebody they're going to help spread the word about you. So now you've empowered your members to do your outreach. You've assembled an empowered your army of marketers. By the way, if you work in the nonprofit sector or know someone who does, and you want to learn more about accessing COVID relief funding connect with Amy fazio@amyfazio.com. That's a M Y F a Z I o.com or join her awesome Facebook group, big hearted bad-ass nonprofit executive society, or reach out to me and I'll connect you.
(13:52): And now this brings us to step three and turning your community into your marketing department. Deliver quick shareable wins. You know, it doesn't take much to rock someone's world. Remember the app for square. I used to love it. Here's how it worked. You go somewhere, you check in on the app, you get a cute badge. You share it on social media. If you checked in at like five pizza restaurants, you got a special pizza restaurant badge. If you checked in at a large event, like a music festival, you got to swarm badge. You got to show off that you were somewhere cool with other cool people and people who are not there would suffer the FOMO consequences. That's it. That's the whole thing. Collecting cute virtual badges. They gamified going places and they leveraged the community aspect because four square was more fun with more of your friends participating, which meant that users would share the app with their network.
(14:46): The quick shareable, when it doesn't have to be anything, earth shattering really quick wins, motivate your members to spread the word about your community, but it might be hard to see what quick wins you can provide. That's because from your vantage point as a subject matter expert, or as the visionary pushing your business forward, you might lose sight of what felt like a win when you are in your community members shoes. So I'll give you an example in my community. I helped my members with their digital communities on social media is universally accepted. That live video gets the best organic reach and builds bonds between you and your audience, which helps convert them from audience to community. So if you want to rock social media and you want to rock your digital community, do live video. And that's why I host the live video festival live video Palooza, where everyone is invited to go live in my group for five minutes.
(15:44): According to the guidelines that I provide, which makes it very easy. Plus everyone cheers, everyone on there's plenty of positive peer pressure, or in other words, it's a safe space to possibly fail more about that later, if you go live, you catch a win because you went live. You win simply by participating. The last time I hosted this event, 95 members of my Facebook group went live that's 95 community members empowered to spread the word about me 95. And they did. I lost count of how many posts I was tagged in from members who share their experience on their profile and in their digital communities. I also created an Instagram post with thumbnail images of all 95 participants and shared that with my community, encouraging them to post it on their Instagram accounts and tag me, which they did. My friend, Julian Johnston, the pig and Viking celebrate of Scotland who participated in live video.
(16:42): Palooza has gone from camera shy to live video fiend since the festival and frequently mentioned that I am one of her live video muses. I also launched an offer during the festival with a 26% conversion rate. And to be honest with you, I did it all because I felt like it. This is what I can pull off on a whim because I've already put in the work to cultivate my community. So even though the big outcome I promise and sell is digital communities for businesses or in this specific case, engaged in profitable Facebook groups. I created a quick win for 95 of my members in the form of simply going live for five minutes. Simply according to me profoundly, according to everyone who went live for their first time, this brings me back to when I directed my nonprofit bicycle repair shop, our teaching philosophy was put the tools in the learner's hands on a bike.
(17:36): You can demonstrate a repair on one side and then let the person you're helping try it themselves on the other side and whatever you do, don't take the tools out of their hands. If they fumble a bit, it's okay, what's going to happen. The repair takes longer. They have to start over again. You'll learn how to ride a bike by riding a bike, which means possibly falling off the bike. And then getting back on again, even though falling off your bike is basically inevitable. We all want the same outcome to learn how to ride a bike. So he risk failure. So the flip side it's delivering quick wins and your community is creating a place where it's okay to fail. And that brings us back to step number one, show your community members that you care when people feel cared about, take the risk, reap the rewards and name drop you everywhere they go.
(18:30): And that's how you assemble, mobilize and inspire your army. Oh, marketers got all of that. I think it's exciting that 60% of your marketing is out of your hands. Why? Because it levels the playing field. It's no longer who has the most marketing dollars or access to the best marketing services that wins the business with the best community wins. Communities are built on social capital. Everyone has access to social capital. Everyone has the capacity to care, to bring people together, to listen, to start a conversation. It costs $0 to do this. And you can do this. You can turn your community into your army of marketers in three weeks steps. Step one, show your members that you care about them, which is so easy to do via social media and elements can be outsourced to your team. Especially if you build an internal community. In addition to your external community, step to slow down the process of delivering information, stop information, dumping, and spark a conversation.
(19:37): Instead, this will boost engagement and cut down on the amount of fresh content you need to create. You'll find out what bits of information and support your community needs so they can, when which brings us to impact, how are your members with quick shareable wins? You might not see it anymore from your vantage point as the expert or visionary, but there's so much power in learning the ropes and part of helping your community members achieve this is by creating an environment where it's okay to fail every step of the way you're assembling, empowering and inspiring your members to spread the word about you. And that's how you rock your tribe. Next up on the show, I'm bringing on my first guest ever tomorrow. I'm on Louis of Monaghan digital. We're talking about my transformation. Since I started doing this podcast just three months ago, I've gone from helping coaches and consultants with their Facebook groups to providing digital community building consulting to businesses. And this evolution happened because of partnerships. I've built through my community, like my partnership with Tamara. And that's also happened because of your support of this podcast. I want to take you on this ride with me. So this is going to be an interesting tell all kind of episode. Thank you so much for being here until then as always you, right?
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