Tag: growing your audience

How to Serve Your Facebook Group Without Sharing Your Book’s Content

Post author By Patricia Durgin
Post date April 12, 2023
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This series focuses on growing your author platform in 2023, specifically, via an online community such as a private Facebook group. Suggesting this when delivering workshops at Christian writers’ groups, I consistently hear, “But I don’t want to share my book’s content!”

Of course not. And you don’t have to because you know MUCH more than just your book’s content. You’ve lived, learned, and applied the principles in your book, haven’t you? Collected stories illustrating your points? Interviewed experts? Researched the Word and other resources to support your message?

Comparing your collective knowledge about your topic to your book’s content, there’s no contest. Your book contains segments of your wisdom; not everything you know. 🙂

You could spend years serving an online group without directly sharing your book’s content…because there are so many coordinating topics and sub-topics surrounding it.

A Facebook Group Is Ideal for Simultaneously Connecting to and
Developing a Relationship With Your Audience

Consider making your group “private” and “visible,” meaning that non-members can locate it online but cannot see its members or its posts.

Those two choices combined allow you to share the group’s link publicly and/or privately yet still vet potential members. The best of both worlds!

You Don’t Have to Become Your Group’s Sheriff

As your Facebook group’s Admin, you’re responsible for everything: training, responding to comments, adding new posts, vetting and welcoming new members, washing the windows…

Oh, wait, ignore that last example. 🙂

But it’s simple enough to reduce your workload by inviting one or more members to be moderators. They won’t have access to the full group settings, so they can’t lead a coup. Their role is to support you, respond to posts as they’re able, and notify you if a post (or a member) requires your attention.

My group doesn’t have moderators, and I’m the only admin. That means more responsibility. As the only member to create posts, I may appear to be a control-freak. Not true. Instead, this approach allows me to fulfill my other, non-FB-group duties and still offer group members a safe haven to: connect with me and other members, ask questions, explore freely, share encouragement one to another, and so on, without unruly or unkind members suggesting otherwise. You and I have been in other groups with little interaction from its leaders. Unruly or unkind members can wreak havoc in such groups that takes a long time to repair.

I believe in safeguarding the hen house before the fox visits. 🙂

The key to getting it all done is how you create / choose your content.

Release New Content on a Schedule That Works for You

Some online group administrators focus the bulk of their efforts inside their group. Others rarely show up. Find a rhythm that doesn’t run you in the ground and doesn’t cause members to feel ignored.

New content–both regular and unique–keeps the group in motion. You don’t want the wheels to stop, yet no one–including you–can spend all day every day there. Your members understand. They can’t keep up that pace, either.

Consider posting content based upon the day (ask this question every Monday, share that resource every Tuesday, and so on) or based upon an activity common to your group (this week’s goals, share your latest blog post, who needs help with Topic XYZ, and so on). There are many more options. This allows new members to join the group’s routine more smoothly, while long-term members become eager to share their answer to that day’s question.

It also helps you create content ahead of time so you’re not scrambling to “Come with something…anything…to post NOW!” while the clock ticks down. Not that that’s ever happened to me. 🙂

This content creation approach has a measurable benefit, giving you time to create deep-thinking posts, short video trainings in response to members’ questions, research examples that prove a point you made last week or one you plan to make this week. You have time to breathe, while still fulfilling your many other roles AND keeping the conversation going in your online group.

Next month we’ll cover the many benefits of leading an online group in Facebook. The same principles work in other online groups as well.

You’ll be surprised at how valuable serving your audience in Christ’s name can be to both you and your audience!

Part Three of this series next month.

Patricia Durgin is an Online Marketing Coach and Facebook Live Expert. She trains Christian writers and speakers exclusively, helping them develop their messaging, marketing funnels, conversational emails, and Facebook Live programs. Patricia hosted 505 (60-minute) Facebook Live programs from 2018-2020. That program is on indefinite hiatus. She’s also a regular faculty member at Christian writers and speakers conferences around the country.

Website: marketersonamission.com
Facebook: MarketersOnAMission

Tags Building platform, growing your audience, Marketing Sense, platfor

How to Grow Your Audience Using Online Workshops: Part Five

Post author By Patricia Durgin
Post date August 12, 2022
No Comments on How to Grow Your Audience Using Online Workshops: Part Five

Online workshops are a great marketing tool. But we don’t want to just hop online and yell, “I’m going live in 10 minutes! Join me!” Uh, noooo, that’s not how we do it.

Instead, we want to invest time “warming up” our audience via email so that when it’s time to promote our free workshop, readers aren’t taken unawares. Once we deliver it, we can develop it into a paid product next time. But right now, our goal is to grow our email list through free service. We’ll use our online workshop (often called a webinar) to do that.

For this series, we’ve chosen an unusual topic: ice fishing. What??? If we can learn the process for a topic unfamiliar to us, we’ll know how to adapt it for our current and future topics.

Here’s our breakdown of this series so far…

In Part One, we chose our topic.

In Part Two, we identified and researched various title resources.

In Part Three, we chose our title (it’s a dandy!).

In Part Four, we discussed priming our audience for our upcoming webinar using what’s called “pre-launch” emails.

Part Five

It’s time to invite them to take an action. We’ll do that within a series of “launch emails.” We’ll discuss that task next month in part six.

Today, let’s double-check the goal we set for this workshop. Why? It’s so easy to get off track! It’s good to regularly confirm we’re on course before getting too far afield.

We’re still committed to our initial goal…to grow our audience. And we’re still planning to offer our workshop for free. Consider both decisions as two sides of the same marketing coin. 🙂

Note that we could always change our goal and charge for our workshop instead. Free and paid are both valid options. Either way, now’s the time for a final decision. After today, it will be too late to change our goal. Why? Because once we begin marketing the workshop, our marketing message must be clear and consistent.

Let’s continue with our initial goal of offering our knowledge for free so we can grow our audience base. This will show us not only IF our audience is interested in this topic, but WHICH readers are interested in it, and since workshop attendees need to give us their name and email address, we’ll have MORE readers after the workshop than before, which was our plan from the beginning.

Some marketers are discouraged when offering free content; they want to be paid for it instead. Understandable. But remember…

We ARE “paid” for free webinars. Just not in dollars.

Each time a new or current subscriber enters their first name and email address in those little magic “opt-in boxes,” they’re giving us something of value. How so?

They’re raising their hands and saying, “I want to know more about this subject!” That information, my friend, is gold. Once we know who in our audience wants which parts of our message, we can offer them more of what they want and when we’re ready to, create a paid product that they’re more likely to buy. YES!!!

So onward we go!

Let’s talk more specifically about the content for our launch email series next month.

Tags growing your audience, marketing, Marketing Sense, workshops

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How to Grow Your Audience Using Online Workshops: Part Four

Post author By Patricia Durgin
Post date July 12, 2022
No Comments on How to Grow Your Audience Using Online Workshops: Part Four

Want to grow your audience faster? Online workshops (also called webinars) are a great option. In this series, we’re using an out-of-the-ordinary topic (ice fishing!) so you can follow the process step-by-step no matter which topic you offer. Learn the sequence then apply it to your message.

In Part One, we chose our topic.

In Part Two, we identified and researched various title resources.

In Part Three, we chose our title (it’s a dandy!).

This month, in Part Four, we’ll discuss how to warm up your current email readers, so they’ll be interested in your (as yet undisclosed) online workshop when you’re ready to market it.

Some call these “pre-launch” emails. Some call them “seeding” or “pre-webinar” emails. All are correct.

In this example, our audience is ice fishermen. I know, I know, unusual to say the least, but the goal is to learn the process. Grasp that, and you can use it for any content you want to offer, either to your established audience or those (in this case) ice fishermen who don’t yet know you can help them.

So…back to your email series.

You’re regularly sending emails related to your overall topic, right?

Since our workshop’s content teaches how to eliminate or survive ice-fishing dangers, we want to bring this concept into our pre-webinar emails. Indirectly. Why? Because we’re not yet ready to market our webinar.

During this, our warm-up or pre-launch phase, we want to help readers (ice fishermen, remember?) begin thinking about how dangerous ice fishing can be. That way, they’re more likely to be interested when we market our webinar on surviving those dangers. Get it?

Of course, they all know it can be dangerous, but they push that fact to the back of their mind, or they believe they already take every necessary precaution to stay safe. We want to challenge that notion without challenging them.

Increase the pressure on a potential problem bit by bit then offer your solution to that problem, and readers will want your offer.

There are many ways to introduce this topic without being pushy, abrasive, or an alarmist. I’ll list a few, then you can take it from there.

You might research various past or current news stories to mention in your email(s), highlighting what the victim(s) could have done differently. If you choose this path, be sure not to “steal” your workshop’s content. Simply point out a poor decision or, going in the other direction, share (perhaps for the umpteenth time) how to check the ice’s depth before stepping on to it or driving over it.

Whatever your topic, it’s always appropriate to review the basics from as many angles as possible.

You might suggest a book or magazine article (that you’ve read) that highlights this subject, but again, not anything that will cover what you plan to cover in your workshop.

You might interview someone who had a harrowing experience while ice fishing. The goal isn’t to scare your reader or cry, “Wolf!” It’s to bring this topic up in your regular email correspondence with them so that when you market your workshop (that solves this specific problem), they’re already warmed up to the topic. You’re not starting “cold.” Meaning they’re more likely to respond to a workshop related to how to eliminate or avoid the dangers of ice fishing.

Begin sending these pre-launch or warm-up emails 60 days before you begin marketing your webinar. If that sounds like a lot of emails, it’s not. One email a week (if you send emails out weekly) is only eight emails in two months. No more than you’d normally send.

Next month we’ll discuss ideas for your launch emails and beyond.

This process applies to anything you want to offer, whether free or paid. It’s not necessary to use this sequence of activities and emails, but if you do, it will be a smoother, easier, and hopefully, profitable process for both you and your readers.

See you then!