Welcome to episode 356 of Hit the Mic with The Stacey Harris.
All right, 356 and it’s another three things you must know, this time for July 2017. Holy moly. I’m really, really excited because we’re going to talk about some cool stuff today including a massage change to Facebook groups. Actually, two changes to Facebook groups. Facebook groups are two of the things we’re talking about today, but one of them is way more exciting than the other. If you want to be the first to always find this stuff out, listening to the podcast is amazing, but here’s the deal. Hit the Mic Backstage members not only heard about this stuff a month ago, but they got it with tutorials. There’s actually a video walk-through inside of the community pages and now inside of the training area to use the changes we’re talking about today. There’s a definite upside to membership, so be sure to upgrade your life and your marketing knowledge by joining us at hitthemicbackstage.com. Again, that is the best way to find out about this stuff first and really see it in action. See it in practice and ask questions and things like that. All right? All right, let’s jump in.
Facebook Group Units
Thing number one, the thing I’m less excited about with Facebook groups. It’s very cool and for a lot of you it’ll probably be really amazing. I’m not really going to use it so I’m not as excited. Now, with Facebook groups if you have your Facebook group categorized as a class, so if you’re running an online program, or you have an online community component to your coaching or something like that. With a Facebook group, you can set it up as class, and you can set up inside of that something called units. That would actually allow you to give access to specific units to specific groups and attach homework or tips to that specific unit.
You could break down your program for example into six modules and those six modules could be units on the Facebook group, and you could have extra bonus material in your Facebook specific to that unit and questions specific to that unit. Really allowing you to organize for the first time any kind of content in your Facebook group. Again, I’m not super excited about this for my own stuff because for Backstage we use a private forum right on the Backstage membership site, but I could see how a lot of you might really, really like this. In fact, we will be launching a strategy program that used to be called Social Pro. It’s actually changing its name, but we’ll be re-launching that in the fall, and it has a Facebook group. We may use this with that, or the community may just end up on the Backstage forum. I haven’t decided yet. Yeah, it could be really cool for a lot of you who are doing instruction online.
It would allow you to put Facebook lives in certain units. You could organize those Q&A calls we’re doing if you’re doing them from Facebook live. Any additional bonus materials you want to put in the Facebook group, you could do it through there, and really organize it. The thing I’m most excited about with this is it’s sort of the first sighting, the first sort of hint at being able to organize Facebook groups in any way. This was something I always liked about Google Plus groups, Google Plus communities over Facebook groups was the ability to organize. It really has the ability to put things in specific places so people could find others questions or similar questions or find things a little more easily. I’m hoping units is the first look at having that option in Facebook groups. I’m seeing a lot of improvements to Facebook groups. I’m assuming it’s because they want to keep people using them because they want to roll out ads inside of them in the future. Stayed tune for that and be aware of that as you’re putting together your own Facebook groups. That’s number one.
Facebook Pages Can Link to Facebook Groups
Number two, and this is the change to Facebook groups I’m really excited about. You can now link your page to your Facebook group, which will allow your Facebook page to admin and post and connect and all of that good stuff inside your group. This is a game changer. Now, this is still not going to allow you to engage as your page in groups that you are not an admin of, but if you have a free group or even a paid part of your membership group inside of Facebook, you can connect with your page. This is going to allow us to drive traffic from a Facebook group to our page for the first time ever.
I mean, really reliably because we’re actually posting as our page, commenting as our page, so when people click that link instead of going to our profile and having to find our page from that, or just choosing to try and engage with our profile. Which depending on how you run your social, you may not be open to, you’re actually going to be able to engage right with your page and connect right there. I’m amped about this. This is going to be killer, especially for those of you who have a free Facebook group because also your group can be listed on your page because they are linked. It’s going to allow us to really quickly move people from experience to experience right on Facebook. That’s killer.
Again, this is going to let us admin, so approve members, decline members. It’s going to let us post, so your Facebook lives or your content post or your images or whatever it is you’re sharing in your group can come straight from your page. It’s going to allow us to comment, so all the comments you leave on the questions people leave on your page again coming from your page instead of your profile. I’m amped about this. It’s awesome. Again, if you want to see how to do this, there is a tutorial inside of hitthemicbackstage.com so be sure to check that out.
Segmenting Email Lists
Number three, wrapping this episode up. I want to remind you guys to segment your email lists. This is something we’re talking a lot about in the membership community this month because the new training that just rolled out a couple of days ago was actually an email marketing best practices training. I wanted to bring this to you guys and not just the members because I really, really think that if you want to see your email be effective in the next six, 12, 18, 24 months, you need to know why you’re sending each piece to the people it’s going out to. It’s becoming more and more important that we funnel the right opportunities to the right people, especially if your goals are to have a massive, massive email list. That’s fantastic. Email lists being huge are great. Everybody wants one.
Right?
Here’s the deal. It’s only valuable if you’re seeing a return on that. You’re only going to see a return on that if that email list is full and massive and wonderful of people who are actually interested in what you’re selling. We talked about this a little bit in the last episode, about really building your list with a goal.
Here’s the deal. You don’t have to have just one goal. You can have lots of goals, and that’s where segmenting comes in, so that you can still be talking to those people who want your one-on-one offering. You can still be talking to those people want your masterminds or who want your membership community or what your entry level program, or who just want your content. You can speak to them with exactly what they need. One of the things we’ve gone through and done, and this is absolutely something that I wish I would have started doing earlier because figuring it out now is increasingly difficult.
We are really segmenting email lists based on how people are engaging with the emails they’re receiving. Yeah, we have tags and things for how people got on the list, but guess what guys? There’s a huge section of my list that doesn’t have a tag for how they got on my list because they’ve moved with me from list to list to list provider, and somewhere along the way it got dropped off. There is a section of my email list that is like, I don’t know how you got here, but thanks for playing. We are tagging everyone based on how they’re engaging. If you’re on my email list and you click something about Facebook, or you click something about Instagram, or you click something about email marketing, or you click something about one-on-one coaching, you’re going to get the special tag so that I know in the future this is the kind of stuff they want to see.
This not only helps me built future content, because I know, okay, so a lot of my list is clicking on this email marketing stuff. Maybe I need to put together some content for them on that. Also, I can make sure that when I roll out a free email marketing training, I let you guys know about it because that’s what you’re looking for. That’s what you need. It’s not to say that you’re only ever going to get or ever going to send Type A content to Type A segment of your list. There’s a lot of stuff that still goes out to everybody. In fact, the weekly email on Tuesday still goes out to everybody. As I improve the segmentation and as we look at who these different segments are, I can send out two or three different versions of my Tuesday newsletter to people based on their interests, based on where they are in their business.
Maybe one of those includes a promo for one-on-one time, because I have some July spots open on my calendar. Maybe one of them is for BAM, when we reopen that, or maybe something for Backstage depending on where they’re falling in the segments and what kind of stuff they’re clicking on. This segmentation can come in handy everywhere. On the flip of that, this segmentation can come in handy in growing your email list too, because I can download a segment of my audience based on a certain tag. Let’s say a Facebook ads tag, upload that to Facebook as a custom audience, build a look-a-like audience based on that custom audience, and now run ads for my Facebook ad training that we’ve got, the four-day training. I can run ads to a look-a-like audience of people who are already opting in for that Facebook ads training. Now, I’m finding literally more people just like these people.
Even better if you want to get even more specific with it, I can go and download the list of members who have the Facebook ads tag. Build a custom audience, build a look-a-like audience based on that custom audience and drive traffic to there. Now, I’m looking up people who not only opted in but who bought something. I’m getting really, really specific with I want people who look like people who are buying, who are buying because they’re interested in this. Great. Now, I’m funneling that content to that cold audience based on people who I know have made the purchase decision that I would like them to make. All right? This is where segmentation comes in helpful. Not just in targeting the right message to your current audience, but using that information to grow your audience, to grow that segment of your list.
One of the things I really challenge you to do in this next quarter is look at how your list is being segmented. This doesn’t mean you have to spend a lot of time scrolling through your list trying to figure it out. It just means building some tags or whatever or groups or whatever they’re called in your email service provider, and making sure again that based on how they’re engaging with your content they get a certain tag. This is really easy to do in Active Campaign, which is what I use. If you have questions about active campaign, we have an Active Campaign 101 training at Hit the Mic Backstage, or you can ask me questions there. I can actually set up an action so when I highlight a piece of copy and embed the link, I can actually set up what’s called an action so anyone who clinks on that link get a specific tag.
Now, I can use that to follow up. Maybe a set up an action that anyone who hits, who clicks this link to Backstage gets a tag that says Backstage interest, and then I can follow up with those people once a month. Send an email saying, “Hey, I know you checked out Hit the Mic Backstage. I’d love to give you this special offer,” or whatever that thing may be. Maybe it’s a preview training. Maybe it’s a trial membership. Whatever again that thing is, I’m able to do that because I have that segment established. That’s something I didn’t necessarily have to do before they joined a list. I’m doing it based on what they’re engaging with in the content now. All right? I know I threw a ton at you in that third one, but I really challenge you to spend some time paying attention to who’s on your list and what they’re doing, and building segments. It’s where email marketing is not just going but is now. If you really want to see massive amounts of success with your email list, it comes down to segmentation. All right? Okay.
Again, I covered a lot here. If you have questions about any of this stuff, the best place to ask those is Hit the Mic Backstage. We have the email marketing training that just came out just a couple of days ago. We’ve got the Facebook group stuff that got added last month, so be sure to check that out. We’ve got another Facebook training happening with our live training this month. We’re actually going to be talking a little bit about running Facebook ads to messenger to engage people in a whole new way. Building a whole new list that can sit alongside your email list to really engage with people where they are in a way that’s not sleazy and gross. Cool? All right. I will see you very, very soon inside of Hit the Mic Backstage. Until then, have a great day.
