The Fierce Business Babe Podcast Ep 88: Creating Community In Your Business
In today’s episode we will be discussing creating a community for your business. I will be diving deep into some great ways to create community in your business for free, all the benefits of a community for your business and giving you some great tips for getting started.
Creating Community in Your Business
By: Melissa Lin
I'm so excited! Today we’re talking about community and not just your local community, but creating community in your business, within your own team members, with potential clients and the importance of having that community, especially with everything going on in the world right now. Creating a community is a really great tool for you as a business owner. I have created so much community in my business and it really is one of the things that's made a huge difference in my business scalability, how I've scaled these past few years, and how I'm going to continue to scale by really working on my community and continuing to nurture and grow it.
We spend a lot of time behind a laptop putting things together in our secret business laboratories and it can get kind of lonely. I can say first-hand that my best creative work gets done when I am not feeling so lonely! Right now, most of the world is still going through, and may be for quite some time, COVID-19. This means that connection and community is now more important than ever before. Before COVID, going to live events was non-negotiable for me. You would see me go to at least one live event per quarter, minimum, but it was usually 2 or 3 per quarter. I absolutely love going to meet people and getting to make connections in real life, getting to meet my incredible clients and team members and getting to squeeze them! Of course we can’t do that right now because it is banned, but we can create communities virtually. So creating a community can help you have one place for everybody to come to, for you and your business. It’s a place where you can really nurture your audience and leads.
It takes anywhere from 7 to 10 touch points for somebody to go from a lead to a paying client and it’s very easy to do this in a group setting that you've created for your business. This allows you to touch so many people all at once and, at the end of the day, for you to grow. You touch more people, you serve more people, you add more value. It's a lot easier to do this with a huge Community versus trying to do this by touching one person at a time. It would be very difficult and unfortunately, you just don't have the time to try and touch one person at a time. You can touch several people at one time within your community, so it’s a great place to nurture leads.
It’s a place where others feel like they're going through something together. Nobody wants to go through something alone. If we're going through all of this together it's going to feel so much easier. If someone is starting their online business, there’s a lot of questions, a lot of mindset blocks, and a lot of fears. They’re going to want to be in a space with other people that are going through the same things so they can ask questions and utilize each other as resources and communities are a great place for people to do that. It's a great place for people to network right beside their new business bestie. I have found some of my best friends from communities.
Whether it’s an in-person live event, networking Community, or an online community, many clients that I’ve worked with become best friends. They've even started a podcast together! You know who I'm talking about. They've also started programs together. So there's so much that creating a community can do and can really inspire others to do as well.
Let's dive into ways that you can create a community for free for your business. Yes, It'll take time. However, it’s definitely worth it. One of the easiest ways to create a community is through Facebook groups. If you know me, you know I love Facebook groups. I love creating and hosting my own Facebook groups. I love doing a lot of things like that and Facebook groups are a great way to create a community. I remember when I first started my Facebook group, when it was less than a hundred people, and I was having conversations with every single person. I knew things about their families, friends, and future. I was truly spending time getting to know those people and those people turned into clients down the road. So after that, my Facebook group continued to grow and is still growing. I take time to welcome every single person that comes in.
If you're not in my Facebook group yet, I definitely would recommend hopping in. It’s called the Fierce Business Babes facebook group. You can search for it on Facebook or simply follow the link at the bottom of this post.
Something that we do in my Facebook group to create community is we invite ladies inside to network with each other. We invite ladies to share their Instagram handles and Facebook groups. We invite them onto our livestream trainings and Hot Seat coaching Q&A sessions. I host live coaching threads and so much more. It's really a place for ladies to come and feel safe asking questions, get help moving forward, and connect with other like-minded babes; which is really why I created it in the first place. I highly highly recommend starting your own community.
Here’s a few tips when you're thinking about starting your community. First, definitely use keywords in your title that your ideal clients are going to be searching for. If you're not sure, do some market research or send me a DM and I can give you some feedback, but definitely use some keywords that they are going to be searching for.
For example, my ideal clients are going to be searching for a Facebook group that's got the word business in it. Most likely the word babe as well. A lot of people are looking for other business babes in the industry. You want people on Instagram to find you and join your community so you can nurture them as well, so using keywords to make your community easy to find by people who don’t know you yet is so important.
Another thing, please go and change your facebook group URL to something easy by removing those 20 random numbers at the end of the group URL. To do that, you can go to your Facebook group and click on the three little dots at the top, under your group photo, then go to edit group settings. Then, I believe it’s about halfway down, you will have the option to edit your URL. I believe you can only change this like once a month or once every 28 days. This is going to make it so much easier for people to search for you, easier for you to copy and paste, and it's easier to remember than twenty random numbers that don't look that great. So definitely do that. It takes 30 seconds and will make finding your community so much easier.
Your next spot to create community is inside of your email list. If you're listening to me and thinking to yourself “Melissa, I don’t have an email list and I don’t want to spend time focusing on this.” You get the focus in your email list and get to add to it. Here’s why. Your email list is the one thing that you actually have control over. Ff Instagram disappeared, if Facebook disappeared, if they went into a black hole tomorrow, (I believe it was last year where Instagram was down for an entire day or two and people were freaking out) you still have your email list. Your email list is the one thing that you have fully, this is yours for you. You can sell and reach out and nurture your email list. I actually have quite a few different podcast episodes. I think at least two full podcast episodes about email lists and how to really get them to grow and different ways to grow your email list. So definitely scroll through my podcast episodes and go and listen to those as well, there's tons of great information there. Our emails are actually one of the things that we always have open on our laptops, right? If your ideal client is someone who is in their 9-5 job, their email is usually always open. Their job’s web servers usually have Instagram and Facebook blocked. However, they have their emails open, so these are the things to be thinking about. It’s a great place to nurture.
We send weekly newsletters out all of the time so that people feel that they are part of the community, keeping them updated on what's going on behind the scenes at Team Melissa Lin, what pearl is up to at the Melissa Lin headquarters and things like that. It really helps people feel like they're part of the community and keeps them engaged and it's important to give them that community feeling. Even just hosting like free live trainings, whether it's in a Facebook group or just on your Instagram, gives people that invitation to come and be part of that conversation, be part of your community and gives you the ability to really thank people for being part of your community too.
When people come into my community, I do outreach to them and let them know like “Hey, thank you so much for being part of my community. I appreciate it so much. How can I support you today?” I love to support my community. I love to support my girls, my babes, who are in my community with me. So hosting even just a live training on your Instagram, posting, workshops, free workshops and even paid workshops, create a space for people to come to. A space where people can link up and really connect with you and connect with other people. It is so necessary right now, and it’s really going to help you grow, going to help your business move to the next level of growth and connect all of it together. So those are some ways that you can start to create more of a community for your audience, for your potential clients, for your leads and things like that.
Let's now talk about how you can actually create more of a community within your business. So inside of your business, such as your employees or team members, your clients themselves. What does that look like? Because you do want that to feel like family and a community as well unless you are only working one-on-one with people you don't have any kind of group coaching programs or group courses or anything like that. That's okay. But if you want to create a community within your business, you can start to do so with these ideas I’m going to share with you.
The first is weekly team meetings. If you have people on your team, it’s going to be great to start to have team meetings. It doesn't have to be every week, could be even just once a month, just so people know who else is on the team, what they're up to, even learning fun facts about each other, like where they’re at, what they're going through and things like that. Hosting these meetings and just creating that space for your team members is very important. Even having coffee dates with your team, maybe you're getting your team together, but you're not talking business. You're just connecting and getting to know each other over a virtual coffee date.
Another thing you can do is create some co-working sessions with your clients. We're going to be doing this with a few of our group coaching programs, where we just create a safe space for people to come online and we virtually work together and we can be there if they need support or things like that. It's almost like a virtual study hour co-working session, kind of like the study hour we had in high school. Even some type of wine night with your clients, I actually did this with my mentor and some other girls where we had a wine night and just connected and had fun. We all felt like we were part of the community. So having a wine night, Lacroix night, maybe bring some photos, whatever it is you want to do to bring everyone together can create that community feeling. My boyfriend and his company did a virtual happy hour and they all brought travel photos from their favorite memories when they are traveling and they all shared experiences they did together and it really helped create that Community feel within their company.
There are some ways for you to start to create Community within your business. I highly recommend creating a community outside of your business, you know, with your audience or on social media with a Facebook group, your email list, going, live hosting workshops and free training and really be there as a support system because people will be reaching out to you asking for help. So be there, be that source for them. Also for your business, for your team members, for your clients you get to do that as well. That is exactly what you as a leader, as a business owner gets to do. I can't wait to hear how you are starting to create community outside of your business and inside of your business. Please let me know. I would love to hear about it. I love hearing all these fun ideas, and I can't wait to hear your biggest takeaways.
Topics we cover include:
The benefits of communities
Free ways to create community in your business
How to create community with Facebook groups
How to create community with your email list
How to create community within your business
And so much more!
Times to check out:
(5:42) The Benefits of community in your business
(9:38) Free ways to create a community for your business
(12:23) Creating community with Facebook Groups
(14:45) Creating community with your email list
(17:53) Creating community within your business
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