How do I use Facebook groups to expand my own business

Less than a year has passed since the dismissal And now Facebook is the source for 95% of consulting work for this private entrepreneur.

11 months after starting my own business, I discovered that I was fully loaded, and my salary was equal to the amount I received while I was in the position of vice president of a marketing agency, which I left. And my success is almost entirely due to the power of the communities on Facebook.
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Before that, I used Facebook, like many others. He was for me a tool to keep in touch with friends and family, share news and rest from work. The means for business development were LinkedIn and Twitter. Everything began to change when I signed up for training for online entrepreneurs and received an invitation to the group of trainers on Facebook.

At that moment I didn’t even imagine that Facebook would be the source of 95% of the leads for my new business for me and would lead me to 85% of my current clients. This is how I acted to achieve this.

Search for relevant communities on Facebook

Most of the groups for entrepreneurs that I meet on Facebook are “private” in nature. That is, to get access to them, you need to click on the button and wait for the approval of the administrator. Do not be alarmed by this. In some of these communities, there are basic requirements, usually related to the area of ​​interest, area of ​​activity or characteristic features, others are devoted to paid training. For example, there are groups for women entrepreneurs. And to get an invitation to other communities, you need to subscribe, say, to a paid coaching program.

Yes, the first group I joined belonged to the latter, but soon I received an email inviting me to join another by downloading an e-book on the website of the entrepreneur. For freelancers and individual entrepreneurs like me, closed Facebook groups offering exclusive content and interaction are becoming increasingly common . Look for references to them in the letters received after downloading free materials.

However, this is not the only way. On Facebook, there is a great algorithm that offers communities you might like, you just need to start joining them. Going to the desktop version of the social network and being on the page of any of the groups, you will immediately see the recommendations on the right sidebar. Here you can find other communities whose members have similar interests.

The founder of Market Like a Nerd, Amanda Goldman-Petri, for 30 days of active participation in groups on Facebook, found a sufficient number of clients for personal training. And for 90 days she received 120 thousand dollars as an advance, and 90% of this amount was brought to her own community by all in the same social network.

Goldman-Petri gives 3 important tips on finding the right groups for building your own business.

1. Do not join the community of their direct competitors.

2. Concentrate on groups whose size varies from 500 to 10 thousand people. They are large enough for the time spent to pay off, but not too numerous - you do not risk getting lost.

3. Make sure community members are really active. Do not pay attention to the site where people go only to leave the advertising post.

What to do when you find yourself in a group

My main mistake was that I spent too much of the day writing posts and answering questions. You want to be noticed and began to react to you, and therefore you very quickly find yourself literally everywhere - and this is not the most effective strategy .

In groups there is a search string. Use it by entering keywords related to your product or service. For example, I was looking for something like “advertising”, “PR” and “public speaking”. If I may say so, I tried not to turn off this rut ​​and respond only to the main themes for my business. This allowed me to effectively distribute the time I spent in groups on Facebook.

There are a few more rules that I have formulated for myself. I actively participate in only three groups of my own. At the very beginning, I entered about a dozen communities where, as it seemed to me, my potential clients could “hang on”. Later, I basically just tested them to find out which of them brought me the most bang for your buck.

Since before the approval of the membership of the group, you can say quite a bit, right after this point, I take up viewing the main news feed. This allows me to make a first impression about whether this community can really be a good place to find clients. For example, once I found myself in a group with pretty women, but it turned out that the lion's share of them is involved in network marketing. They clearly did not fit into the portrait of consumers of my services, and therefore I quietly left this group.

If, after viewing a dozen posts, it becomes clear that the community is suitable for me, I create my own message, in which I tell about myself and my business, and then evaluate the responses. If people leave positive comments and ask questions, then this means that it is worth making a little more effort.

So, by keywords I find the group and enter into conversation on several branches. Also, every few days I write posts that are somehow related to my business, and try to teach the audience something — or just try to bring benefits to any of the methods available to me. For example, I give some tips on the places where you can find your first job related to performances.

What should be the results

What happens after I start posting and answering questions in such groups on Facebook? Sometimes someone just writes to me in a personal and talks about what he saw my post, and he wanted to learn more about my services. In other cases, I manage to get people interested so much that they like my work page and join my community, where I can already offer them something more openly.

Anyway, the results should be something like this. As any entrepreneur (and not just a marketer) knows, if you cannot turn interest into income, then it is worth nothing.

My business is 16 months. Starting from the 11th month of his life, I have no “windows” that are not filled by customers who have already paid an advance. To a large extent, this contributes to my participation in communities on Facebook. And I'm not the only one who uses this approach to generate leads. Online marketing strategist Emily Hersh, whose business this year brought her $ 250,000, says that 80% of clients come to her from those numerous groups on the social network in which she actively participates.

But you do not need to be an online entrepreneur to use the power of Facebook communities. They are also capable of benefiting various independent consultants, including those occupying local niches. Stephanie Melish, a certified business coach who often works with local clients, says she got 2 clients, a contract for a series of lectures, and several offers of business collaboration through participating in a group for women from Charlotte, North Carolina.

“This allowed me to form my own authority in the local market and enlist the support of reliable referrals,” Melish says. “For example, one of the clients came to me after seeing a post in which one of the group members asked about local business coaches, while others mentioned me in the comments.”

Considering my previous fruitless attempts at generating leads with LinkedIn, I very much doubted that the results on Facebook would be at least a little better. Less than a year later, I admit with delight that I was wrong.

PS We recommend another useful article - How to stay productive when everything goes to hell.

The author of the translation is Vyacheslav Davidenko, the founder of the TESTutor company.