Sonja Crystal Williams: 1:39
Now here I’ll be the first one to admit to you I’m not the expert when it comes to building communities. I’ve built some communities with some clients and we’ve done some successful things, but it really does. My observation is that it really does require. If you’re in the position of being the business owner, or if you are in the position where you’re on a team, it really does require a lot of legwork, and what I want to talk about today is really being in that position where you might be thinking about building some type of community or building up your audience. And how do you approach that from the standpoint of really looking at it, a few different ways. Am I going to build this out by myself? Am I the sole person responsible? And I’m just going to use a really simple example.

Sonja Crystal Williams: 2:24
Let’s say you decide I want to engage my audience more by building a Facebook group. Okay, so the question you got to ask yourself again am I doing this solo? Am I doing this maybe with some type of support? And support can look a little different, and I want to address that different ways. Support could be I bring on someone for a specified period of time. They don’t work for me full time. You know they’re coming on on a project basis and they’re going to help me launch this thing. So that could be an approach. It could be I’m going to hire someone as maybe a freelancer or a contractor to support my efforts specifically in this area. They have a very specific role or niche. Or your other option is if you’re hiring internally, this might also roll out as part of how you build up your team. So I want to walk you through each of those scenarios and really ask you to think about what category do you fit in?

Sonja Crystal Williams: 3:27
If the past few episodes this season have been resonating with you, it’s time to take a time out and really think about how you’re going to approach this. Oh and, by the way, I’ve got more episodes, coming up with some more ideas and more guests that I’m interviewing around different ways that they build and engage their communities. So you’re going to get some more ideas from this, but let’s pause for a minute. I want this to be really practical for you. If you’ve got a pen and paper, go ahead and grab it. If you’re a note taker on your phone or on some type of app, grab your note taking app and start to think about how am I going to approach building this community? Okay, now, there’s a lot of different ways that you can approach this, and again this example, I’m just gonna use really simple Facebook group.

Sonja Crystal Williams: 4:10
Now, if you are gonna launch that Facebook group first, you need to kind of map out how you’re gonna approach this. And let’s use our first example making the assumption that you are doing this solo, you are the sole person in charge of building this community. You have no partner, you have no colleague, you have no one on your team, and you are gonna do this thing from scratch, and in some earlier episodes, I did chat with some people who built these communities from scratch. It is possible. It is doable. What I would say, though, is you need to start out mapping out your ideas and your thoughts about what this group is, what the intent is in terms of what you’re going to share in the group. So you really need to get a very clear strategic vision in mind.

Sonja Crystal Williams: 4:58
What am I doing with this group? Do I already have a name for what this group is going to be called and does that name resonate with my current audience today? One of our earlier episodes was with Matt Chambers at M3 Yoga. At M3 Yoga, they have a name for people in their community. They call them M3 Warriors. So is that something In fact? Warriors was used twice when I was interviewing Kelly Leardon. Kelly Leardon also. Her program is called Walk Like Warriors. So same thing she’s referring to her audience as Warriors.

Sonja Crystal Williams: 5:29
So you wanna think about is there a name that I’ve already given to people who are already participating in my brand in some way, shape form or my community, and do I name my community after that? Because in many cases, you don’t necessarily want the name of your community to just be like a replica of what your brand name is. That’s typically not going to resonate as well for attracting new members always not going to resonate as well for attracting new members always. So put some thought into what am I naming this community. Are there specific guidelines this community needs to follow? So you really want to think about that as well and what’s the framework of how it exists, especially if it’s an online community, especially in this example I’m using, where I’m talking about Facebook groups? You also need to really take into account what public guidelines for this group am I publishing in terms of what the rules of engagement are like no spamming, nothing that’s self-promotional. Or, if there are going to be self-promotional posts, maybe that you have a day of the week that you dedicate people to drop their own upcoming events, their own upcoming things, that you dedicate people to drop their own upcoming events, their own upcoming things. So you really want to think about that too.

Sonja Crystal Williams: 6:38
Okay, so that’s kind of in a nutshell and there are probably more pieces you need to explore, but again, I’m going through this high level. What’s the name of my group? Who am I inviting to be a part of this group? How do I expect them to be engaged? What are the guidelines this group needs to follow? And then you might go a little bit deeper and to start thinking about what am I going to be sharing in this group? And that again depends on the format that this group takes.

Sonja Crystal Williams: 7:05
Is this a group that is able to connect online, but we also have a physical, some way, shape or form, face-to-face way of connecting with each other, whether that’s Zoom meetings, webinars on a regular schedule, conferences or classes. In some way, shape or form that might be online or even in person, or even in person. So, depending on what life your actual group takes on, you want to keep in mind what is the content in between that I’m distributing online or, in this case, into my Facebook group that is going to get these people or my audience engaged. Okay, and you need to think about that really carefully in the beginning, because when you do this solo plan on investing the time, energy and effort to being the conversation starter, you are going to be the conversation starter. When you do this solo, especially in the beginning and I will share that from my own experience in launching Facebook groups for for other brands that you have got to be the conversation starter in the beginning. As your group grows, people may begin to feel more comfortable posting proactively so that you don’t have to do all the work, but you definitely, in the beginning, before you have a nice sized membership as part of that group, you’re going to probably be the person putting in the work in the beginning, Okay, so that’s the approach as solo, as a solo kind of person, committed.

Sonja Crystal Williams: 8:39
The other thing is you got to really think about what’s my time commitment? Okay, you’ve chosen to take this on. You’re not paying anyone to do it, so you’re kind of making a swap here, okay, so for you it’s either time or it’s money in a lot of cases, with a lot of business owners, and in this case it’s a swap for time. So how much time am I committing? Am I committing time on a daily basis to this group? Am I committing time on a weekly basis? And if so, again, how much? How long? Ok, how much time, how long each session, am I going to spend creating new content to publish into my group to get people engaged?

Sonja Crystal Williams: 9:19
Thinking about new content, new topics, thinking about how I’m going to get new topics to share that people would be interested in, how I’m going to get new topics to share that people would be interested in, and a lot of that will come from your audience. So, as much as you can you also, in that planning phase, want to do a little bit of strategic research. What does my audience want and ask them like your audience will participate with you. It’s a good opportunity to be transparent. It’s a good opportunity to be authentic and really ask them where you need their help and where you want their participation, and you’d be amazed at how much they will participate and want to do that and be a part of the process. That’s something you can do in the early stages, during planning, but it’s something that really never ends. You need to always be kind of checking you know or doing that inventory check so you can figure that out. Kind of checking you know or doing that inventory check so you can figure that out.

Sonja Crystal Williams: 10:11
Now, next phase, if you are listening to what I’m saying and also saying yourself, the idea of building a group on my own is a little much, and that could just be because either A it’s foreign to you completely, or B again, time or money. I don’t have time. I’d rather spend the money to hire someone who is better at it than I am. I don’t want to go through the learning curve. I’m going to bring in the support and I want that support to keep me informed on how this group is being built and what kind of engagement is happening and what’s being shared, and I want to have my input on that. But you don’t necessarily have to be the builder, okay.

Sonja Crystal Williams: 10:49
So this is where you and or again, if you’re working on a team and you all decide that you’re going to outsource this particular aspect, you might find someone in a niche. Now, one of my earlier episodes, again with Quinn Tempest Quinn shared that when she started her collective that she has now had for several years, she went out and found someone who specialized in building communities. So you might ask yourself the same question Can I go out and do a search and you could do that asking for referrals of other people? You know, probably in the marketing space, digital marketing space of other people you know, probably in the marketing space, digital marketing space. You could check directly on freelance networks like Upwork, maybe even Fiverr, but I would probably lean more toward an Upwork for something like that. Or maybe even search through LinkedIn, look through profiles and find people on LinkedIn who might fit the bill and who specialize in building communities. You could also go the agency route If you are already working with an agency and that agency provides work for you, if they have a specialty or an experience or background in helping build communities and manage them, then that could also be an opportunity for you.

Sonja Crystal Williams: 12:04
In this case, though, a couple of areas where you need to be clear. You still need to be clear on your vision. You still are probably going to be need to be the person who names the group. It’s better to come from you than to like try to outsource that part, because if you’re hiring, remember that they’re going to have to take some time in the beginning to get to know your language, your, your tone of your brand, what you want to communicate to this community, what’s important to them. There’s going to be a learning curve for that person that you bring on, or, if it’s an agency, learning curve for them too, and so, while that’s happening, you have got to be on top of delivering what your vision is where you want this group to go, and then I would even put it on them to help you come up with realistic goals of how this community grows, and even get specific if it’s possible, meaning that you have some goals you want to hit for how many new members join the community. Maybe that’s a monthly basis, maybe that’s a quarterly basis, maybe it’s a percent increase versus an actual quantity that you’re counting, but you all need to talk about that and decide on how you’re going to approach it. So you need to have that clear vision.

Sonja Crystal Williams: 13:15
And then again, money is being exchanged here, so you need to have a budget. And if you don’t know what that budget is, again shop around. Check on the freelance networks like Upwork. Talk to some people directly on LinkedIn freelance networks like Upwork. Talk to some people directly on LinkedIn. Ask around to people within your business or work community for referrals and find out what the range is, and it might look very different. Right, the pricing of hiring a freelancer to work on this individually versus an agency might look very different, and then the price of someone who comes in and helps you set up the community in the beginning versus someone who’s going to manage it for you on an ongoing basis also looks very different. So you want to keep that in mind, okay. So again, that hired support route, agency route, freelancer route you decide.

Sonja Crystal Williams: 14:03
And the final option is to slowly build your own team internally, and that might be ideal if you have some people maybe within your organization that have already been working and you need to decide either A I’m going to shift someone into this role or I’m going to hire altogether. Now, here’s one little thing that I will say about this is that don’t assume that the person who’s managing your social media is equipped to run your online community. Maybe they are, maybe they aren’t, and that’s something you really do need to assess, because there is a difference between the role of someone who is a community manager versus a social media manager. A lot of businesses particularly I’ll see this happen with small businesses, because everyone wears a lot of hats in a small business environment Okay, and so there tends to be a tendency to assign this to the social media manager. But if your social media manager needs to be really focused on content creation and they’re already up to their neck and creating reels and images and things like that and again, this very much depends on how you have your work split out Then you need to consider hiring a separate person to manage and build the community. They should be collaborating, however, together okay, but this is where it also matters that you break out the roles, as you’re hiring a team.

Sonja Crystal Williams: 15:26
In a perfect world, if you are launching some type of online community and let’s stick with our Facebook group example you’ve got a community manager who might be responsible for the maintenance, the creation and maintenance of multiple communities. It could be Facebook, it could be your separate online community where you’re using software like Mighty Networks or Thinkific or something like that and you’re managing your membership and dropping things to them within that community and that community manager is taking care of all communications specific to the community. So they might be sending out emails, but they’re not sending out emails to your entire list, just sending out emails to your community. They’re thinking about specials and promotions and conversations that need to happen within your community. So, in a perfect world, you have a person dedicated to that role, and that role is different than a social media manager. And then, in a perfect world, you have a separate person doing graphics and a separate person doing video. That’s the ideal setup and if you are thinking about taking the approach of hiring internally for this role, that’s that’s probably where you want to aspire to get to. If you’re in a larger company, there are probably people within some of these roles already. So then again, you’re just deciding do we have enough work to bring someone on full time or do we reassign certain responsibilities to someone else on our team? And then you make that decision on whether or not you want to do it OK. So these are some things, just again that I really want you to think about.

Sonja Crystal Williams: 16:56
Pause for a moment and again, if these past few episodes that we’ve been having conversations around engaging community and building online communities, if it’s been resonating with you, take a moment, think about how you might approach the creation of your own community. Or, if you already have a community, how does this help you get more streamlined in how you maintain your community moving forward? I would love to hear from you. I would love to hear, especially if you already do have a community. Let’s share online, you know. Drop some answers, you know. How did you build your community? What are some tips that you would share with people who are newer to building communities? Let’s definitely have a conversation about it. Until then, I will be bringing on some more guests in our next few episodes and we’ll continue our conversation about building community. Thanks again for listening. Have a great one.