Let’s talk about why you should start with just a profile on Facebook or LinkedIn and then only later start your own group. This is a common thing. I see so many people starting their own Facebook group right away or starting a LinkedIn group. In fact, one of my followers recently started a LinkedIn group. So, I just wanted to share some insights and what I found works best in these situations.
The reach on social media is the highest on your personal profile
So, the reach that you get on social media platforms is usually the highest directly on your LinkedIn profile or on your Facebook profile. Because the algorithm is in your favor in these places. You will never have a higher reach on Facebook groups than on your profile. Groups and pages have a lower reach. When you start a group and you’re not super consistent with that group, it’s going to be hard because Facebook groups can die really fast. Unless you’re really on top of your content routine and publishing great content and engaging with people consistently, your group engagement will go down. And once it’s down, it’s very hard to revive a group.
Once a group is dead it’s almost impossible to revive it
Most people who start Facebook groups don’t have the consistency the content marketing routine build up to maintain good engagement rates. And then what happens is their groups just end up dying. And once a group is dead it’s almost impossible to revive it. A lot of people waste time and energy starting a group to early before they’ve dialed in their content marketing. That’s the first reason why I don’t recommend starting a group.
The second reason why I don’t recommend starting a group is because it’s not necessary when you’re bootstrapping. All you need is a profile on LinkedIn or Facebook. You can publish content there, you can connect with people, people can follow you. You can add friend, friends can add you and it’s awesome, it’s very intimate. And it’s very easy to build authority, to get people to trust you with just a profile.
Groups are great to scale, not to bootstrap
Now, the problem with profiles is that there’s a maximum number of people who can be connected with you. On Facebook it’s 5.000 people on LinkedIn it’s 30.000 people. So eventually you will max out, if you push really hard and your organic marketing will cap out. But most of the time you can bootstrap your coaching business to 10.000, 20.000, even 30.000 dollars per month before even getting close to capping out. So, there’s simply no need to start a group. Groups are great to scale, because with groups you can have unlimited people in there. Personal profile are not really scalable long-term but they’re great to get started.
When you start running paid ads, you can start a group
Once you start running paid ads, then you can start a group. Once you’re making 10K, 20K, 30K a month, start a group and channel people into that group. Instead of interacting with people on your profile, start a group, be really consistent with your content, keep it up, so your engagement stays high. How do you get to that point? By first doing this on your profile, because then you can build on the work ethic, consistency… You can find out what’s the ideal time and frequency of content and then you can just take it over to your group later. But if you try and kick start it right away, I promise you more than 90% of people who try this eventually their group just dies and they fail.
You need to solve problems in the right order
So, once you’re making 10K-30K per month and you’re running paid ads and you’re looking to scale to high six-figures and 7-figures. At that point it makes sense to transition to a group, in fact we’ve done this recently in our own business. We went from using a profile approach to now posting our main content directly in our Facebook group ‘The Scaling Community’. But again, you need to solve problems in the right order and you need to understand when the time is right to launch a group on Facebook or LinkedIn.
All Posts
Website
