Welcome to episode 321 of Hit the Mic with The Stacey Harris.
It’s real talk time, guys. We’re going to talk about the three things you must know about not having a Facebook group, because there seems to be this myth that the only way to get seen on Facebook is to have a group, and/or the only way to build your funnel or find success on Facebook or make more sales or grow your program or support your community is to have a Facebook group. It’s not true. Even kind of true.
Now in many cases, Facebook groups can be incredibly powerful. I’ve talked about them immensely on this show. We’ve got trainings about them inside Hit the Mic Backstage. I am a big fan of Facebook groups. I use them a lot; however, like literally everything else, there’s not one right way and one wrong way to use these tools in your business. There’s not a “You have to do this” and “You have to do that.” No. It’s just not true, guys. The first things you have to know is that you don’t have to just because somebody else is. Maybe it’s because someone you look up to has had a lot of success with Facebook groups. Maybe it’s your coach or something is saying, “This is the only way to do it.” It’s just not all true. Let this obligation to having a Facebook group go.
As of right now, right this very minute, I do not have a free Facebook group. I don’t have a Facebook group that people can join free-of-charge. I do have a Facebook group for the Rock Star Guides and there’s a Facebook group that goes along with Social Pro. There’s no longer a Hit the Mic Backstage Facebook group. It’s officially closed. We closed it yesterday, actually, and so everybody’s over in the community now that lives right on the membership site, and guess what guys? The world has not come to an end. I haven’t had a free Facebook group for probably about a year. I closed it down not long after we launched Hit the Mic Backstage, because quite frankly there was a lot of confusion over where to be and what group to join and the reality was if you want to engage with me in that way, if you want to have access to picking my brain and getting feedback and things like that, that’s what the membership site’s for. Offering that for free just didn’t make sense for me.
Especially when you talk about the epic sea of social media focused Facebook groups. There’s a ton of them and some of them are super valuable, but I don’t have to do that to be successful in my space. I’ve clearly proven that. Yeah, guys. You don’t have to do it just because somebody else is doing it. The second thing I want to talk about, the second thing I want you to really think about is sometimes not having a Facebook group can actually help your Facebook page. I know a lot of people are moving to Facebook groups because their Facebook page just doesn’t have the same reach or isn’t performing on the same level as it has in the past, but a funny thing happened when I got rid of my free Facebook group. The reach and engagement on my Facebook page and really on my Twitter accounts and all of those, it actually increased, because if you want to engage with me, you have to use the page. You have to use my Twitter profile. You can’t just go into our free group and hang out with me there. Here’s the deal. Focusing, going all-in on providing really stellar content in one place, focusing on building a community and building a reason for people to be there on your page … Day after day, week after week, month after month, there’s something to be said for that. There’s value there.
In all reality, having a group didn’t serve that goal. I know for a lot of people it does. I know some of you have had a ton of success with this, but again, if you’re somebody who is feeling like you’re already trying to do too much, if you’re already feeling overwhelmed by the amount of time you have to spend on social or the amount of groups you’re in or any of those things … starting one, growing one, it’s going to be a lot of time. It’s going to take your attention, and so if you really want to be focused on something, focus on your page. That’s the thing you can run ads with. You can’t run ads with groups. Again, it’s not necessarily for everyone and it may not be for you if you’re just really feeling overwhelmed by trying to be all the things in all the places already, okay?
The third thing I want to wrap it up with is pay attention to who your ideal clients are. I’ve had this discussion with you guys and with a lot of clients around going where your people are, because here is the deal. If you’re B2B and your whole job is to connect with people in HR departments and people who run corporate wellness programs, a Facebook group is not going to be particularly helpful for your marketing. A Linkedin group might be, but even then it’s a big might. Pay attention to who that ideal client is. For me, I was finding a lot of the feedback I was getting from a lot of you who listen to this show and a lot of the people who I talk to one-on-one … They were feeling really overwhelmed by Facebook groups. There were so many, they were already a member of so many, and the idea of joining one more Facebook group was about as appealing as the idea of joining one more email list.
Your ideal clients may eat up Facebook groups. They may just think they’re the best thing since sliced bread and they totally get it and they totally want to engage in it and hat is what they want. Fantastic, but on the flip side of that, your ideal clients might rather poke their eyes out with dull pencils than get in another Facebook group. That’s actually an analogy that I had a client use with me, so pay attention to who your ideal clients are. Pay attention to their needs and their wants and how they feel about it. I know for a lot of our ideal clients, the idea of joining a really big, crazy Facebook group is incredibly overwhelming. Jumping in in the middle of a conversation or engaging in that way, it just feels noisy and overwhelming, so pay attention to who your ideal clients are. That may dictate the size of the group. That may dictate how you market the group. That may dictate whether you have one or not. All right?
All right, so this is a quick and dirty three things episode. I’m actually going to try to shorten up these Friday three things episodes, so they’re really quick and actionable. We’ll see how that goes. Feel free to tweet me or stop by the Facebook page and let me know what you think. If you have more questions about having a Facebook group versus not having a Facebook group, come on over to Hit the Mic Backstage and let’s talk about it in the community, because this is a great discussion to have because again, I really want your takeaway to be that there’s not one right way. Again, this is not me bashing Facebook groups, this is me saying what’s right for you.
If you’re curious what you think, you want some feedback or you’re just not sure, you want to talk through it, best way to do that is come on over to the community, hitthemicbackstage.com. That’s where we have conversations like this. In fact, we had a conversation going on a couple weeks ago, about a month ago now, all around Facebook groups versus private forums, because we had some questions after I made the move from my Facebook group to a private forum. That’s really the place to get these questions answered and these conversations to happen. Check it out. Again
I will see you on Tuesday.
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