So let's start having a look at some of these communities.
Now, what I'm going to show you here isn't an exhaustive list.
There are others, but in my opinion, these are the main ones.
These are the ones that you probably want to focus on.
And what I'm going to do is move through each one fairly quickly, giving you a high level overview
of what's required and then leaving you, of course, to actually make it happen.
And then just to say what I'm not going to do is show you how to sign up for each one of these.
I think that part is probably fairly intuitive.
And if you were to watch me doing that for all of them, that wouldn't be a particularly brilliant use
of your time.
Okay, so let's kick things off with the first community, which is Facebook groups.
So you can see here that you're actually looking at my profile on Facebook.
And the reason why I'm showing you this is because this is where you could add your website.
And having done that, then what I want to do is come up here and start searching on groups.
So you can see here that I've already done a search for dog groups, which of course is my niche and
it brings up absolutely loads of them.
Now, of course, we're not going to join all of them.
That would both be impossible and insane, but we do want to join a few, perhaps 2 or 3.
And the groups you want to join are those with plenty of members and crucially, plenty of engagement.
We want groups that are alive and Facebook makes this pretty easy for us because it always states the
number of members and then the number of posts per day.
And while there's no hard and fast rule about how many members there should be or how many posts, and
it's going to vary massively depending on which niche you're in, you can certainly use these numbers
to get a good feel.
And so with that in mind, let's just say that I'm interested in this one here Dog Lovers, and they
want to join this group.
Now, of course, some groups are private and some are public.
The private ones, you'll need to request permission to enter.
This one you can see is public.
So I can simply just click on this link and then I want to start scrolling down to see if I want to
actually get involved with this group, which is exactly the sort of thing that you'll want to do.
So as I scroll down, I can see straight away that there's an awful lot of feel good content, let's
call it people posting nice, cute pictures of their dogs.
So I could probably find some posts here to reply to with valuable content.
But certainly it's a great opportunity to post my own content with a subject such as the three Best
Ways to Care for Your Dog and then followed by had you written it a link to your blog post.
And then just to be clear, it's not like you have to make a blog post every time you post within a
community.
It's just that that combination of making a post followed by a link to a blog is incredibly powerful.
And it's for that reason that I'm gently pushing you that way.
And then for the nature of the post itself, you just want to be friendly and open.
If you're in any doubt, just imagine that you're talking to some friends.
So I could write something like, Hey everybody, thank you so much for welcoming to the group.
I am also a dog lover and I really hope you enjoy my first post about caring for your dog.
And then of course, your three bullet points short to the point valuable, not spamming and an incredible
way to get in front of in this case, close to 300,000 people.
And so now let's head to the second community, which is Instagram.
And as you can see, I'm straight away on my profile here because I want to show you that this is where
you could add your website.
And then while this is, of course, a completely different platform, the principle is exactly the
same.
You're looking to either create your own value post or respond to existing posts with valuable information.
Now, when it comes to creating your own posts, don't just simply post images of products on your website.
That is not going to work.
That is not valuable information.
So how should you do it?
Well, if I continue on with the example that I was using in the Facebook groups, which is a post that
was about three ways to care for your dog here on Instagram, what I would want to do is to find a great
image of a dog, perhaps a cutesy type of image, right?
And then overlay that image with the text.
Three ways to care for your dog and then further expand on that within the image caption itself.
And while I appreciate that, that's a very simple example, I hope it does illustrate the difference
between simply reposting images that are already on your store.
Now, of course, there are other ways you could start posting videos or stories, but what you absolutely
need to keep an eye on, and this is the same for all social media as I'm sure you well know, is your
time.
Remember, your objective here is to drive a stream of highly targeted traffic to your store and crucially,
begin to understand who your ideal customer is.
Your objective is not to spend all day on these platforms because that would simply be counterproductive.
And so it's for that reason I'm showing you a very high level, a very basic usage, if you like, of
each of these communities, because at the end of the day, that's all you need.
And so with that in mind on Instagram, when you come to actually providing valuable answers to existing
posts, of course you'll want to come over to the search facility, type in your niche, follow people
who have themselves a significant number.
Of followers and where, of course, there is significant engagement within those followers.
And a good example of that in my case would be this one down here barked When I click on this, you
see that it's a community for dog lovers around the world, over 5 million followers and over 7000 posts.
A great community for me to get involved with and almost certainly where my ideal customer is going
to be hanging out.
Next on the list, we have Pinterest and once again, you can see I've come straight to my profile because
this is where you would add in your website.
Now, while this is, of course, a completely different platform in the way that we want to use it,
it's very, very similar to the way that I've just showed you with Instagram, because this is an image
focused website as well.
And the main principle here focuses around creating pins.
So up here under Create, I can click on Create PIN and you're going to get the idea immediately because
here this is where I can add in an image.
I could add in the image, the exact image, if you like, that I've already used on Instagram, a cutesy
dog with the wording over the top that says three ways to care for your dog.
Then I could expand on it here a little.
But crucially down here you can see a destination link and that would ideally be to my blog post because
that's where the value is going to be.
Do not be tempted to put in a link directly to the product page on your site.
That is not value, that is borderline spamming.
And then when it comes to responding to posts with your valuable information, what you want to do is
to come up to the search bar, look for your niche.
And then what I tend to do is to come over here to profiles and look for profiles that could be of interest.
So if you see here, this dogs Trust one with over 200,000 followers could certainly be interesting.
So if I were to click into this, you can see here under the description, it says we're the UK's largest
dog welfare charity.
Again, an ideal place for where my ideal customer is going to be hanging out and then moving on down
a bit further.
I can immediately see posts where I could respond to.
So for example, this one here, six signs of heat stroke.
If I spent just a little bit of time learning about this, I could absolutely provide a valuable comment
which would undoubtedly be hugely appreciated by the thousands of followers.
So it's likely at this point in the lecture, you're starting to think, Oh my goodness, there's so
much going on here, there's so much to do.
I'm really starting to feel overwhelmed.
And if that is the case, please don't worry.
All I would ask you to do is to watch these various techniques to the end.
Just let them wash over you.
Just listen to me talking.
And then in the next couple of lectures, I'm going to give you some structure as to how you can approach
all of these or perhaps some of these communities intelligently using your time in the most efficient
manner to drive that free traffic and discover your ideal customer.
So if you like, just sit back and relax.
Watch the rest of this lecture while I show you a few more methods, the next of which is Tick Tock.
Now, I'll be honest with you here.
I'm really only including this because I get asked about it a lot.
And while this is an incredible platform, it's also, in my opinion, very difficult to use it to drive
free traffic.
Why?
Because Tick Tock is all about creating engaging videos, ideally videos that are going to go viral.
And to make that happen, you need to dedicate an awful lot of time.
Time which I think could be much, much better used building other parts of your business that really
have a positive impact.
And so while I don't want to discourage you completely, please keep that in mind.
I also realize that this lecture could get quite long, so I'm going to split it in two.
So I'll see you in a moment for part two.