S3E2 | When your group members feel seen…
Episode Description:
When your group members feel seen, your engagement flourishes and people don’t want to leave your community! Sandra discusses multiple easy ways to acknowledge your group members, support them, and even get them engaged in a friendly competition.
Show notes
“Creating posts is gold, creating comments is silver, and reactions are bronze.”
In our last episode we talked about how important it is to have a group that’s engaged…but how can you help to stoke the fire to keep that engagement going? Something I like to do is to acknowledge people. If you’re familiar with the five love languages, it’s time to lay on some words of affirmation!
We don’t necessarily need approval from people, but a high-five or something that says “I see you” goes a long way, and this is what I want you to bring into your groups.
One of the ways that I like to do this is when someone replies to your post, you can like the comment, or even heart the comment if you want to go a bit further. Using a heart or laughing emoji—when appropriate—shows that you did more than just acknowledge the comment, and helps the commenter to feel seen. You can also do this if someone writes a post in your group, or you can comment something like “way to go!” “yes!” or “that’s awesome!” All based on the context of their post, of course! Sometimes, a simple acknowledgement like a laugh or words of encouragement can be the difference between someone buying your product or joining your membership or not. (I know this is the case for me when I’m considering a product or membership!)
Providing reactions during Facebook Lives, like responding to comments, acknowledging questions and concerns, and even laughing at jokes can make everyone in the chat feel very seen and appreciated. Doing this in a Facebook Live is particularly effective, because it’s super interactive and allows you to acknowledge your audience in a way that you just can’t in an email or sales page. Saying the names of people watching the Facebook Live, like “hey Lisa, hey Kelly, how are you doing, welcome back!” is another simple way to make people feel seen and appreciated.
Another tip is to offer encouragement in your group. If something horrible is going on in the world or your industry, offer encouragement and support. You can do this by creating a post in your group, on a Zoom call, or Facebook Live. Be compassionate and show people that you care because that’s what a community is for.
If your group has 250 members or more, you can see who the top contributors in your community are. (You can see this info by going to “group insights” on the left-hand side and clicking “membership.” The first thing you’ll see is your group’s top 10 contributors in the past 28 days.) Once you know who your top 10 contributors are you can take a screenshot and go into your group and thank those top contributors. Thank them for contributing with their posts, comments, questions, and support for other group members. What I’ve found with this top contributor post is that it sometimes sparks competition to see who will be on the leaderboards next month! As long as everyone remembers we’re all in this together, a little friendly competition doesn’t hurt!
If you don’t have 250 members yet, you can still go into your group and thank everyone in the community for contributing, commenting, and supporting one another. Let them know you appreciate what a great community you have!
Acknowledging people in your group is a great way not only to increase engagement, but to keep members in your group as well. And hey, it may even lead to big sales for you down the line as you work this acknowledgement muscle!
I hope this episode gave you new ideas on how to engage your group! And thank you for listening to and sharing the Engaged Groups Podcast…a podcast is nothing without listeners! Talk to you soon!