To listen to the podcast episode that features this series, CLICK HERE.

“Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.” Helen Keller

I’ve been very tuned in to how powerful TOGETHERNESS is since I was a kid.  I was raised in a family with six kids.  I was an avid athlete on just about every team sport you can imagine.  I was always a key leader in school organizations.  And as it relates to business, I spent the past 7 years of my life building an in-person entrepreneurial community with my husband.  So once the dust settled from the launch of this crazy idea I had called Biz Women Rock, I knew without a doubt that I wasn’t simply producing a podcast or building a business that created products and services…I was building a community.  

Google defines community as…

“A group of people living in the same place or having a particular characteristic in common.”  Or “a feeling of fellowship with others, as a result of sharing common attitudes, interests, and goals.”

Basically, my community was getting created as I gathered my listeners, my supporters, my email readers, my coaching clients, my course students and anyone else who identified with the Biz Women Rock brand and brought them together for a larger purpose.  

This is what I’ve been doing since I was a kid.  And this is what I love.  Because I believe that my purpose is to make a massive impact in the lives of women around the world.  And I’ve seen over and over again how creating and leading a community allows me to do that exponentially.

In the past few years, the word “community” has become a bit of a buzzword within the online business space.  Everyone is talking about their “community.”  They’ve exchanged the words “following” or “tribe” or “email list” or “listeners” or “readers” for community.  And while I love this shift to utilizing my favorite multi-dimensional term, my purpose in creating this series is to expose just how intricate this whole building a community thing really is.  

I’ve identified seven simple steps to follow in order to build a tremendous community.  And I’ve even included some phenomenal advice from some of the most impactful and successful community builders I’ve ever had the privilege of knowing!

This series is broken up into four parts that will be showcased over the next four weeks.  So, if you happen to be diving into part 3, make sure you go back and listen to all the previous ones in order to get the full impact of the lessons here.  

One final note…

Building a community is not for the faint of heart.  Nor is it for someone who wants an “easy” business model.  Building a community and becoming a leader of one is for someone who wants to make an impact in a profound way on the lives of others, who wants to make ripples in the universe and do it through other people.  And as it pertains to business, it’s for someone who believes in giving value to a group of people they truly LOVE (and I don’t use that word lightly) before ever offering products or services for sale…because they understand the value and fragility of having an endless pool of loyal customers who believe in their brand.  

So, if you’re listening to this because you want to “build your following online,” you will definitely get some great ideas here.  However, I highly recommend you listen with an open mind knowing that building a community is something that happens in an entirely different stratosphere…and maybe, just maybe…you’ll feel called to lean into the possibilities it can open for you to live in your purpose.  

So here were go…

HOW TO BUILD A COMMUNITY

PART 3

 

 

Step 4: Experiment with ENGAGING your community

 

Downloads, shares, likes, comments, hearts, re-tweets, email replies, link clicks, product purchases…these are all ways we know people are listening to what we’re saying.  These are how we measure engagement.  

 

Engagement means active involvement.  It means that one of your members has taken the time to DO something because you’ve asked them to or because they were compelled to because of something you said or did.  

 

Why is it so important to have engagement?  Because when someone shares your post, comments on a thread or shows up to your event, they’ve given you their time, their #1 asset.  And every time they engage and give you more of their time, they get more and more invested in YOU and what you offer them.  And the more invested in you they are, the more loyal of a community member they will be!

 

It is so important to have your thumb on the pulse of your community so you know them intimately and there’s no better measure of this than their engagement.  

 

 

But HOW do you get your community members to engage?

 

Let me just say, it ain’t as easy as it looks.

 

This section is called EXPERIMENTING with engagement because that’s exactly what you’re going to do…experiment.  Try things out.  Test, fail, test, succeed, test again.  And as a side-note, this experimentation never stops.  No matter how long you’ve been in the game, no matter how much you think you know what works and what doesn’t, you will always – SHOULD always – experiment.

 

That being said, I want to share some of the strategies that have worked very well for me to encourage engagement in the Biz Women Rock community.  

 

1. Ask questions people WANT to answer.  Natalie Eckdahl audio.  There is a significant difference between just asking a question and asking a question that you know your community members really want to answer.  The question should be simple to answer and compel your community to take action.  This should typically be in line with the niche you’re in (asking business-related questions within a business group), but absolutely doesn’t have to be all the time.  As a matter of fact, asking completely non-topic related questions is a GREAT way to build rapport among the community members as they get to know each other on a personal level.  

 

This is a post Natalie Eckdahl made in her Facebook Group.  Her community members are business women and her question has nothing to do with business.  BUT, everyone was so excited to answer it, including myself, that it had more than a dozen comments in no time!

 

Something as simple as, what are you up to today? like I asked in the post below, can get a great response because people want to tell you what they’re doing!

 

Hint: you’ll noticed that I added my own answer to this question, as well as a photo of me doing what I said I was doing.  Sharing your own answer to your question is a great way for your members to get to know you better and adding a photo adds another visual dimension to the question that forces their eyes to notice!

 

2. Take surveys.  I promise you that your community members will be honored that you’re interested in learning more about them, what they want and how you can serve them better…if done the right way.  I’m not going to go way in depth about the science behind creating a good survey, but what I will tell you is that getting your community members to actually fill out the survey is strategic.  Here’s a quick technique I used a while back that resulted in a 47% response rate!  That’s crazy awesome for a survey!  

 

Secret survey hack: I sent a private message to the top 100 most active members of my community (these were the folks who emailed me a lot and were active in my Facebook Group).  Although it was a templated message, I customized it for each individual.  I let them know how grateful I was for the important, active role they played in the community and that I was specifically interested in hearing more about what they really needed so I could continue building a community that was valuable for them.  Forty seven ladies filled out the not-so-quick survey!  

 

The best part about engaging your community through a successful survey campaign is not necessarily that you get a lot of people to do it, although that’s awesome.  It’s that you get so much insight into who your avatar is, what she/he need and wants and how you might be able to serve them better!

 

3. Ask your community to engage with you in a specific way. Every week on the Biz Women Rock podcast, I have a segment called Biz Women on the Move where I feature the successes, insights and lessons from my community members.  As I see great stories come up within our Facebook Group, I reach out to them individually and ask them to call in and leave a voicemail so I can share their win on the show!  I am very specific…

 

“Hey Kelly, congratulations on such a great win!  I would love to feature you on an upcoming episode of the show!  Please leave a voicemail at 813-489-9630 saying something to the effect of, “Hey, it’s Kelly McRae of Kelly McRae.com.  My big win is XXX.”  I literally give them a template.  This makes it clear to Lynn exactly how I want to feature her and it completely eliminates a need for me to edit her voicemail for the show!

 

And yes, I write this just about every time I invite someone to share on the show!  It makes them feel special! (and they are!)

 

Proactively asking your community members to engage with you in a very specific way is incredibly powerful in that YOU are guiding their interaction with you (so you can then re-purpose their interaction for the benefit of the community) and making each of your community members feel so special by doing it individually.

 

4. Experiment with content delivery.  As the leader of a community, you are most likely sharing content with your members on a regular basis.  Perhaps you have a weekly podcast or a bi-weekly email.  Maybe you do a Facebook Live Q&A session, blog article or YouTube video that is broadcasted each week.  Maybe you’re hosting live workshops or online webinars. However you’re sharing great information that directly benefits your members, it’s important to constantly experiment with how you do this.  I’m not only talking about varying the delivery methods (sending emails and your podcast and live workshops, for example).  But really, I’m talking about constantly tweaking and playing around with how you’re delivering that content.  

 

For over 2 years, the format of my podcast was the same.  A 30-40 minute interview with an awesome business woman about her business journey.  The shows were awesome and full of great stories and business strategies.  But…I got bored.  And if I was bored, I’m sure many of my listeners were bored!  So, I changed up the format (thanks to some major butt-kicking by my friend Glenn the Geek of the Horse Radio Network).  The format that you’re now hearing – different segments, incorporating my community into the show, transitional sounds, etc.  All of it is a new experiment.  Not only does it invigorate me as the leader and dial me into the roots of the show, but it’s created an electric shock in my community, delivering a pattern interrupt that’s grabbed their attention once again.  And the impact has been MASSIVE!  I am constantly hearing from my ladies how much they love the new show.  They’re posting within the group about a segment they loved.  They’re referring to a book I spoke about within a thread of a post.  Experimenting with this one platform has enlivened all the other platforms of communication for my community!  

 

If you have a video blog or Youtube channel, change up the look, feel and even the duration of your show!  If you’re a blogger and your articles typically look the same, start incorporating more commentary within your posts from your community members.  Maybe throw in an audio clip within the post so your readers can listen to that commentary.  It’s makes your media delivery multi-dimensional and interesting.  

 

5. Be willing to fail. When you’re willing to experiment, you open yourself up to failure.  Lots of it.  Because doing something new is unknown territory.  Sometimes it may stick.  Sometimes it won’t.  Sometimes it really won’t.  

 

I think I’m pretty damn good at asking questions people want to answer within my Facebook Group, but every once in awhile I put something out there that is a total guess and no one comments.  Not one person out of 4,000 people!  And I’m not gonna lie, it doesn’t feel great.  

 

In June of 2016, I decided I would officially meet some of my community members in person and launched the Biz Women Rock Summer Tour.  This was definitely an experiment for me…just because a community is engaged online doesn’t mean they will choose to show up offline.  You still need to make it worth their while and do the appropriate marketing.  The Tour started in Tampa, went to New York, Arizona and finally in Chicago.  Tampa was phenomenal.  Almost 30 women showed up to hang out and get to know each other!  It was a huge success!  But when I showed up to the New York and Arizona locations at the times I had posted, no one was there.  And no one ever came.  To either of these meetups.  I had failed to do the appropriate marketing push that would have guaranteed people in the room.  And I knew it.  Rather than get down about it, I chose to look at it as a sobering reminder that even though I have tens of thousands of folks who follow my brand around the world, I still can’t lose sight of the basics of business and events.  

 

Never stop experimenting.  Because experimentation breeds innovation.  Experimenting helps you chisel away at the stone and expose your core gifts and value to your community.  

 

Step 5: Give Your Community What THEY Want (Not What YOU Want)

 

I consider community building the antithesis to the traditional business model.  A traditional business model has us believe that you first create the PRODUCT or SERVICE (something you think people will want to buy), then look for the AUDIENCE to get it in front of and hope they buy it.  Billions of dollars are spent in advertising in this way.  

 

But community building is an altogether different model.  First you build the AUDIENCE.  You do so by giving them value.  By being someone who actually cares about them.  By giving them a space to connect with others who are like them.  By being a resource for them.  By making them laugh or providing them with information they seek.  

 

And then, before you spend the time or money building something to sell to them, you shut up and listen.  What are their pain points?  Where are they struggling?  What questions do you see come up again and again?  What do they keep asking for?

 

I’ve never seen anyone as good at this as John Lee Dumas and Kate Erickson of EOFire.  They have created a multi-milion dollar business by simply listening to what their community members are asking for and then creating it for them.  They started with a daily podcast, Entrepreneur on Fire.  They grew their audience of listeners.  They attracted sponsors.  They attracted some big names to be on the show.  And over and over again, they would have people asking them, how did you do that?  How can I start a podcast too?  How can I get sponsors?  How can I get people to come onto my podcast?  So, they created Podcaster’s Paradise, an online course and community of seasoned, beginning and about-to-begin podcasters who want to learn how to start, grow and monetize their podcasts.  As their community grew through their weekly webinars educating folks about podcasting and the benefits of Podcaster’s Paradise, more people came to them asking for webinar help.  How should I put my webinar together?  What webinar platform are you using?  How can I increase my conversion rate?  So, they created Webinar on Fire, an online course that teaches folks how to create and present a webinar that converts.  As the years continued and more and more people became part of their community, they got more and more questions about how they actually accomplished their goals.  They noticed their members struggling between their desire to do great things and actually doing them.  So, they created The Freedom Journal, a beautifully bound journal that helps you accomplish your #1 goal in 100 days.  

 

Looking from the outside, anyone might say these two are lucky, that everything they do is simply brilliant.  But, it’s not luck and it’s not brilliance.  It’s being plugged into the needs of their community.  It’s listening.  It’s asking.  It’s creating what their members want and then giving it to them.  

 

The absolute BEST part of this reverse business model is that the possibilities for revenue generation is endless.  As long as you continue to put love and energy into your community members, they will continue to tell you what they need.  And all you have to do is continue creating those things, one after another after another.  You’re bringing in revenue because you’re creating products and services that fulfill the needs of people that you love.  Does life get any better?

 

***

This concludes Part 3 of our series on How to Build Community!

Listen to Part 1 HERE

Listen to Part 2 HERE

Listen to Part 3 HERE