WEBVTT 00:00.170 --> 00:05.070 Here are some quick tips to improve your Facebook group and make it more engaging. 00:05.100 --> 00:09.810 First is to choose a name that stands out and is searchable. 00:09.810 --> 00:12.600 We quickly thought about this in The Last Lecture. 00:12.600 --> 00:19.110 But here's an example for each of these tips I'm going to show you a case study of why this is a good 00:19.110 --> 00:25.130 tip but when you search for photography you see all of these different groups. 00:25.320 --> 00:26.050 Hey look at that. 00:26.070 --> 00:29.040 A lot of these are named photography. 00:29.070 --> 00:37.240 Now this is not necessarily a bad idea for just getting as many members just to name your group photography. 00:37.440 --> 00:41.340 But I'm sure there's thousands of other groups just named photography. 00:41.340 --> 00:50.420 Whereas if you searched you have a more specific group for example landscape photography DG I drone 00:50.420 --> 00:59.790 photography San Francisco photography minimalist photography This gives more of an idea what this group 00:59.880 --> 01:05.180 is all about and will ultimately create more engagement from your members. 01:05.190 --> 01:10.800 Yes a lot of people love photography and in general photography might be good but I'll bet you that 01:10.800 --> 01:17.040 most of these more specific groups get more engagement from the people on the group. 01:17.160 --> 01:20.290 And this follows the pattern of growing your audience. 01:20.310 --> 01:26.970 I would much rather have a thousand true fans in my facebook group than 10000 people but no one actually 01:26.970 --> 01:27.850 engages. 01:27.870 --> 01:33.350 Our second tip is to have and enforce group guidelines. 01:33.360 --> 01:40.050 I also mentioned this before but specifically if you want people to to not post spam messages or if 01:40.050 --> 01:44.760 there's specific types of things you don't want people to post have that in your course description. 01:44.760 --> 01:48.940 Here's an example of Nick is side hustle nation. 01:48.990 --> 01:58.440 He has a podcast that I really like and his pin POAs actually is the welcome but it also includes the 01:58.500 --> 01:59.700 rules of the group. 01:59.730 --> 02:04.560 You can see that in the description he just has a very short one sentence description which is nice 02:04.980 --> 02:12.060 and it's perfect right there and I actually like how he uses the pin post to have the rules because 02:12.090 --> 02:14.120 anyone that comes to his page. 02:14.130 --> 02:20.250 This is what appears on the top and this is much more eye catching than the description over here a 02:20.250 --> 02:23.700 lot of people won't even read the description so they won't even find the rules. 02:23.700 --> 02:30.510 Not only that he goes a little bit further and he uses an image to explain the rules and he makes it 02:30.510 --> 02:34.850 a little bit funny with some spam so he's doing a lot of good things right here. 02:34.860 --> 02:41.610 But the thought about enforcing the rules is important too because if you let it get away and people 02:41.610 --> 02:46.020 start spamming people are going to leave that group they're going to stop getting notifications for 02:46.020 --> 02:46.610 the group. 02:46.710 --> 02:49.890 So as soon as you start your group make sure you enforce the rules. 02:49.890 --> 02:53.100 Our next tip is to welcome new members. 02:53.100 --> 02:57.540 I use my pen posts in the online course Masters to welcome members. 02:57.540 --> 03:02.640 I actually posted a video that is a quick welcome which I think is a nice way to engage with people. 03:02.820 --> 03:06.720 I prompt people to post an introduction about themselves. 03:06.750 --> 03:13.670 Also sometimes message people individually who joined the group and asked them to introduce themself. 03:13.710 --> 03:20.490 One other thing I do to welcome members is every couple of weeks or so I'll create a welcome announcement 03:20.790 --> 03:21.840 and I'll welcome everyone. 03:21.840 --> 03:27.630 I'll tag people who are new and I'll put together a a graphic or something and welcome them to the group 03:27.630 --> 03:33.030 so it's not just the same thing that people are welcome from the welcome pin post or something like 03:33.030 --> 03:33.300 that. 03:33.310 --> 03:38.160 But this creates a little bit more engagement with new members and the more you can get new members 03:38.160 --> 03:42.400 excited about the group the longer they will be engaged and the more engaging you. 03:42.450 --> 03:44.450 Your group will be overall. 03:44.460 --> 03:49.230 Of course you should be sharing resources with your group and the point I want to drive home is that 03:49.230 --> 03:52.090 it doesn't necessarily have to be your own content. 03:52.260 --> 03:58.410 Yes it would be great to be able to write enough content every day of the week to be able to share something 03:58.410 --> 04:03.600 with the group but you might not have that amount of content you can use. 04:03.690 --> 04:08.790 Previous content and I loved doing sort of the throwback thursday thing where I share an older resource 04:08.790 --> 04:13.380 that I put out maybe even years ago to kind of refresh that content. 04:13.380 --> 04:19.020 But if someone else has put something out that you think your students or your group members would like 04:19.380 --> 04:25.410 posted to your group Here's an example of me sharing Scott Duffys shout out to another great instructor. 04:25.410 --> 04:32.520 He wrote a great article about online courses and so that's why I shared it with my group so you can 04:32.520 --> 04:34.610 find resources all over the place. 04:34.770 --> 04:35.960 And this again doesn't. 04:35.970 --> 04:39.550 It's not just for online course crater's this could be for any type of group. 04:39.780 --> 04:44.110 With each post we should be prompting people to engage with the posts. 04:44.250 --> 04:47.120 Here's an example of Nick Loper inside Hazle nation. 04:47.160 --> 04:51.330 Every week he puts out the same similar posts. 04:51.720 --> 04:55.930 Time for Friday wins and he asked people what people did this week. 04:56.950 --> 05:01.370 It's one of the posts that gets the most engagement you can see here 43 comments. 05:01.480 --> 05:05.210 The photo or whatever he posts with it is different every week. 05:05.230 --> 05:11.290 It's not always the same and so you can switch it up but whenever you post and it doesn't necessarily 05:11.290 --> 05:16.260 have to be just once a week but with most of your posts you should be prompting people to engage. 05:16.300 --> 05:17.230 Ask them a question. 05:17.230 --> 05:20.980 Ask them to share their own thoughts about whatever you're posting. 05:20.980 --> 05:26.490 Our next tip is to use visual content within your posts. 05:26.710 --> 05:32.820 I would argue that adding a photo or something visual to every post makes it more engaging. 05:33.010 --> 05:34.860 Here's the convert kit family. 05:34.870 --> 05:40.750 This is the email software I use and if you scroll through these posts it's all text and it's kind of 05:40.750 --> 05:48.130 boring but when you get a post that has an image like this one which is a great resource to this is 05:48.160 --> 05:52.040 this obviously stands out and just growing through this group. 05:52.040 --> 05:54.600 You know all the ones that are just text based. 05:54.610 --> 05:56.770 They just blend together. 05:56.890 --> 05:59.710 But when there's a big image that's what stands out. 05:59.740 --> 06:05.260 So I really like that Iggs example of using images to create more engaging posts. 06:05.290 --> 06:08.060 Use the live feature. 06:08.200 --> 06:11.320 I go live every week in my online course Masters group. 06:11.320 --> 06:15.630 This has become sort of one of my most popular posts. 06:15.670 --> 06:22.840 You can see that over 121 views There's about 700 members of my group right now it's been a couple of 06:22.840 --> 06:24.190 months since I got started. 06:24.190 --> 06:30.730 These are all students of mine and typically I get a lot more engagement with the live videos than just 06:30.730 --> 06:32.480 regular posts. 06:32.530 --> 06:38.020 It's important to try to be consistent if you can keep it to a schedule that's even better if you can 06:38.020 --> 06:39.820 do it at the same time every week. 06:39.880 --> 06:44.470 Even better if you can't do it every time and if you can't do it every week just make sure that you 06:44.470 --> 06:49.600 let people know that you are going to go live ahead of time so that they can mark it on the calendar 06:49.600 --> 06:53.870 or at least just have it in their mind and be ready when you do go live. 06:53.890 --> 06:58.190 Lot of people do watch the videos after the fact and that's totally fine too. 06:58.360 --> 07:02.430 And my last tip is to use the pin post wisely. 07:02.430 --> 07:07.290 You saw a couple of examples before of how I do use it for a welcome message. 07:07.290 --> 07:13.540 Nick Loper uses it to welcome people to prompt people to introduce themselves and to explain the group 07:13.630 --> 07:14.950 rules. 07:14.950 --> 07:21.680 Other ideas is if you have a very varied engage group once it starts to get really big and maybe there's 07:21.750 --> 07:26.680 510 posts in the group not just from yourself but also group members per day. 07:26.710 --> 07:32.110 You might want to reserve that pinned post for whatever you actually post and this is something I did 07:32.140 --> 07:37.180 early on in the online course Masters group and when you're starting out you might want to do this too. 07:37.240 --> 07:38.490 Whenever you post something new. 07:38.490 --> 07:43.360 Pin it to the top so that when someone does come to your group if they're a member or there's someone 07:43.360 --> 07:48.790 new they see that new content especially if it's important if you're selling something if you're promoting 07:48.790 --> 07:55.420 a product or if you're just giving away a high quality free piece of content or something put it at 07:55.420 --> 08:00.040 the top so that you know group members are going to see it. 08:00.040 --> 08:05.410 Sometimes things can get pushed down if more and more people are posting in the groups so at the end 08:05.410 --> 08:09.850 of the day I chose to use my pen posts as my welcome message. 08:09.850 --> 08:15.970 But I can always pin something if it's important for that day or that week and then reappear in my walk 08:15.970 --> 08:17.710 a message at a later time. 08:17.710 --> 08:24.080 Awesome I hope you enjoy these tips and I hope they help you have an amazing engaged Facebook group.