Code 015- How to Increase Facebook Engagement with Bella Vasta

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How to Increase Facebook Engagement

Facebook expert, Bella Vasta, shares her best tips to grow your Facebook Group and and increase facebook engagement for your business.  We find about Bella’s bucket strategy as we apply it to our wading staff example in the fly fishing niche.  Lots of good times and laughs so hope you enjoy!

 

 

Show Notes with Bella Vasta

00:10 – Here is a link to the Bella in Your Business Podcast.

2:20 – Facebook’s first Super Bowl Ad right here.

11:45 – Bella notes snap chat glasses as a strategy for getting some unique content out for the wading staff.

15:00 – I noted Orvis and the challenge of competing with the bigger brands.

20:00 – Bella notes pretty link which is a must have tool for your wordpress site.  

27:20 – We discussed Zapier and the ability to integrate and automate almost everything with it.

29:10 – Michael O’Neal was on the podcast here and shared his best tips on podcasting and creating a great brand.

30:00 – Bella was on Stelzner’s Podcast here

30:20 – I noted Pat Flynn and the mentorship along with the Wet Fly Swing.

40:20 – The bot at facebook.com/bellavasta and Bell

44:00 – the Mini cooper to get hiking.  It’s got to be a convertible. 

 

You can find Bella at JumpConsulting.net

 

 

How to Increase Facebook Engagement Highlights:

• Understand your 5 main buckets or topics before getting started with your group
• Schedule the content within the buckets for the next month
• Don’t do themed posts and stay unpredictable
• Use snap chat to create a ton of great short videos
• You must run the group before passing onto a manager
• Go live using the nurture sequence emails from your 3 intro questions
• Use meeting rooms to get people live and to bond with group
• Try using a gift card like a $35 Starbucks gift card bonus as an example
• Run a challenge to post a pic or something in the group
• Don’t make your challenges obvious but mix them up
• Make Units about a certain topic

 

How to grow a Facebook Group

1. send an email blast that goes back to buckets
2. put the Facebook group in the invite
3. from Facebook page – link to the group (new join group CTA)
4. Run a promo video for the group
5. Use Instagram stories to promote group
6. Post screenshots of group but use coloring tool to tease it
7. Use group URL and Use pretty links to make it easy to redirect
8. You have to show up in the group

3 Questions to Ask when people apply for your group:

1. What’s your email address with a nurture campaign for the leads
2. Ask what’s your biggest challenge around the subject
3. How did you here about us could be another question

(you can use a $300 software that automatically puts your information into a spreadsheet)

 

Engagement Features and Facebook Events

• put together an event if going live
• change your cover profile and change it up if going live to keep cover fresh
• Everyone will get notification if going live
• Make it a social learning group to get access to units

 

Big Picture Tips from Bella in Your Business

• You have to love failure
• You have to let go of the rains and take ownership for VA’s work
• If business plateaus then you need to understand when to change it up

 

Resources Noted in the Show

Snap Chat Glasses

 

Read the Full Transcript with Bella Vasta:

Click here:  Bella Vasta Podcast Transcript to get the Full PDF Transcript

or continue reading below……..

Bella 0:00
I would rather you have 50 very highly engaged people who are like little birds chirping waiting for you to feed them, then 5000 that don’t ever come to the nest, you know what I mean? But I do want to drop some ideas on just the different features and problems and solutions that we’ve been able to solve in there if I if I can refer second.

Dave S 0:25
That was Bella vasta. Describing why size doesn’t matter when it comes to Facebook groups. This is going to be a fun one. Welcome to today’s session of the marketing podcast.

Unknown Speaker 0:35
This is outdoors online co the marketing podcast that helps you elevate your business through online marketing master sessions. Join Dave each week as he helps you grow your online influence via interviews with leading entrepreneurs from around the world.

Dave S 0:52
There you go. They’ll have asked Facebook groups expert professional speaker and seven figure dog walking business consultant breaks down the good stuff Today, Bella gives us her five bucket strategy for creating content. How and why to go live with groups early on and why Facebook units are the bomb.com turn up the earbuds and enjoy today’s episode with Bella vasta from jump consulting dotnet

Bella 1:16
How’s it going, Bella? Good, Dave, how are you today?

Dave S 1:18
Good, good. Thanks for taking the time. I’ve, you know, I’ve been catching up with some of your, some of the podcasts that you’ve got a really great podcast, Scott, I’ve been enjoying that. I want to jump into kind of everything you have going now I know You talk a lot about Facebook groups, but maybe you could just fill us in how you first got into online marketing.

Bella 1:38
Um, oh my gosh, how did I get into it? Um, in 2012 I actually started my own Facebook group because I wasn’t happy with what was out there in my industry. And so I’m in the pet industry, and I saw a lot of cattiness and bad leadership and just stuff that I didn’t really agree with. And I of course came in there like a bull in a china cabinet how I typically do life. And the, the admins didn’t really like that either. So I decided to create my own sandbox. And so in 2012 I started one of my own groups and I’ve created multiple more since then, but I just kind of decided you know what, like birds of a feather flock together and I was gonna attract my flock and create my own little community.

[expand title=”CONTINUE READING HERE”]

Dave S 2:24
There you go. So So pretty much you just jumped into Facebook and and then how did you bring it up to where you’re speaking now and it sounds like that’s where a bulk of the work you do, how’d you get into all of that?

Bella 2:36
Um, you know, speaking has always been something that’s been very heavy on my heart, something that I’ve always always wanted to do and when I got the opportunity, I when my life settled down because I had a child that was born at only 12 ounces. We were in the nick you for six months, and when we were going through it all, I was always like that that fire burning in my belly to speak On stages and inspire people just grew even more. So in about 2017 ish. I finally was at a point in my life where I could actually start, you know, focusing my energy towards that we were out in the woods with my daughter, and she was healthy and happy. And so I just started applying everywhere. And it turns out that the topic of Facebook groups and building online community really started taking off because there wasn’t a lot of people talking about it at the time. And then interestingly enough, it’s just gained more and more popularity. Facebook actually did their first Superbowl ad, spending 10 to $11 million on the topic, Facebook groups, and then lo and behold, we find ourselves in COVID where Facebook groups are now like on fire because that’s where everyone is now communicating. So, um, you know, I started speaking because I grabbed the microphone and got on any stage that would allow me to, and then I started really becoming known for becoming being an expert in Growing relationships and therefore your business through building online communities, specifically Facebook groups.

Dave S 4:06
Yeah, through Facebook. No, that’s awesome. And I want to dig into that because I think there is some confusion. A lot of the people listening here. You know, a lot of outdoor brands, we have a lot of fly fishing companies, and some of them you know, everybody knows about Facebook, they know about gross, but I think knowing exactly how to dig into it is a question I love. I’ve heard you talk about this before you talk about the devastating Facebook page in a group but the front yard versus the backyard. backyard. Can you tell us, you know the difference of groups and pages and why we need a group?

Bella 4:34
Yeah, totally. Um, the difference between so your Facebook page is like your front yard, right? And it’s where cars drive by and they don’t really actually stop and see the only people that actually come and knock on your door are the solar panel guys or people trying to sell you things right. your backyard is where you actually invite people back there. That’s your Facebook group. That’s where the party happens. That’s where you actually take the time to play. And to figure out, Okay, what supplies do I need? What’s the theme going to be? Who am I going to invite. And then when they come in that backyard, it’s very much that you’re trying to get a lot of people to enjoy their time there, right? You’re the host, you’re there to make sure that the grill is still flowing, that the drinks are still happening, that the Wi Fi is still on, and Spotify is still playing. You’re there to make sure that like people make friends. If they’re not back, they’re like, sitting down looking at you. And you’re just talking at them, right? Like This isn’t like an audience. This is a gathering where people have an experience and have a lot of different experiences in that backyard. But it’s also kind of exclusive in the way that to get there. You have to come through the back gate, you have to be invited. You know, it would be really weird. I want your listeners to think about if you know that solar panel salesman, walked around to your back door and knocked on the door. It was like hey, so I was wondering I was helping your neighbor. Do you want some solar panels? Like that would be like creeper weird like, let me call the cops. Get out of here. Yeah. And so that’s that’s kind of what I always tell people that your your page is really that front yard, you need your front yard, right? Like you need your message to the world, but the world isn’t going to come sit in your front yard, nor are you going to put an inground swimming pool in your front yard and just sit there and be like, yep, this is me chillin and barbecuing, but you’re not invited. Like, it’s just it’s so different.

Dave S 6:24
Gotcha. Gotcha. Okay, so, so that’s the big there was so so when you think about the groups, I mean, I guess maybe you can just start us off from you know, if somebody kind of new to it. Maybe they are just thinking about starting their group, maybe they have a group, but what are the steps to kind of optimizing that and getting it prepared for for that party?

Bella 6:44
Yeah, so, um, like anything in life, we need to have a plan and we need to prepare. So I would always encourage people to reverse engineer it, you know, figure out why do I need to have a group and I also want to, you know, push you guys to think that if you haven’t already Don’t turn your mind off to groups because you don’t necessarily have to be the administrator. For one, you could be someone who supports an administrator with your area of expertise. So if you know there’s someone that maybe has an outdoor group or a hiking group or a outdoor Family Fun group, and you come along as the fisherman expert there to offer Facebook Lives, or tips or tricks, or blogs or videos about how they can enhance that bigger, you know, subject and you can do that as well. But if you’re going to start your actual group, you need to kind of define who is your avatar? Who are the people that you want in there and why typically, it ties back to business right? And let’s think of them just so we can use a thing as we’re going through this. So yeah, so let’s say that avatar is fly fishing companies, right. So they have all sorts of there’s there’s shop owners, there’s guides, but there’s people that are in that fly fishing niche and, and they they’re just getting started. Okay, cool. So they’re just starting their own flights. fishing business to sell

Dave S 8:01
well, so, yeah, I guess there’s a number of different examples. We could talk here but so they have a business going, they’ve got a business going, but they really haven’t started their Facebook group yet. Okay, okay. So maybe it’s it’s is it business people or is it people that are interested in fly fishing? It’s both so it’s a lot of it It typically it’s somebody who really loves fly fishing starts a business and fly fishing and then you know, starts digging into it and going from there.

Bella 8:28
And what are they selling?

Dave S 8:29
So they’re selling for example, they might be selling a fly rod, they might be selling a fly box flies, they might be selling their service to guide somebody on a trip.

Bella 8:39
Okay, awesome. So services and equipment. Yep. Okay, this is gonna be fun. It’s gonna be so much fun because I know nothing about slide eight and I know perfect thing about about Facebook groups and small but

Dave S 8:52
the great thing about this is that by well we could talk more about this but the, the podcast so I’ve got two podcasts, right so I’ve Got one that’s a leader in the fly fishing space and I’ve got a new one that’s it’s outdoors online marketing. So that’s why we’re recording this and it’s roid focus. I’m going to be hitting on both of the the, the audiences for the show, but I’m really niching it down for just that company. So it’s gonna be really cool because I think like you said, this is gonna be fun so let’s let’s keep Let’s keep going.

Bella 9:24
I love being thrown into a pond that I’ve never been in this is great. But yeah, totally. All right, so um, so what I would do if I was a fly fishing business doing equipment or services, I would instantly think about what are my five buckets now buckets mean and this works for anything with like social media, okay, like you can really apply this to any like to Instagram when you had Gen Harmon on you could do it to to YouTube, you could do it to almost anything, but I want you to think about five buckets and that means five topics right? So maybe you One is all about services. One’s all about equipments. One’s all about types of fish or types of water or how the fish act different types of weather. I don’t know I’m just making this up, right. And and so you come up with like these five topics, essentially, I call them buckets. What this does is it allows you to accurately describe to your followers like, Hey, listen, this is what you can expect in this group. And then you also it helps you create that content long term. Because when you come across things, it’s not just a mishmash of throwing spaghetti up against the wall and seeing what sticks. You’re like, Oh my gosh, that was a really cool article, or that was a really cool topic, or that was a really cool video or podcast, or blog or group or something that had to do with one of your five pre determined buckets. And so that’s, that’s the first thing I would do. You got to have a direction because you can’t just say, Oh, it’s a general fly fishing group. And it’s like kind of whatever I want whenever I want Because then that what that does is that creates for the administrator a lot of stress. Yeah. And and Dave, like you’ll you’ll wake up every day feeling like a failure because you’re like, what do I post today? Oh my gosh, I haven’t posted for two days i, this is terrible. I know I should have done this. Why did I do this? And so if you have your topics predefined, you can create your, your what I call foundational basis content that you can then schedule so that when you do have those on the fly thoughts, that’s the extra cherry on top. Does that make sense? Yeah,

Dave S 11:36
yeah, I got you see. So you basically you can schedule all this content. So you can go in and have your buckets. So you’re making sure to dig into that and those posts, but you can also just add some random stuff along the way. You also I mean, questions, right? You want to be asking a lot of questions for the group. Um, yeah, so I mean, so the first thing is the strategy of the content. So you got to figure out like what your topics are right? And you put that in so you have your basic foundation and look And let’s take it just for example, just so we keep going on this niche down even more. So I was just talking to somebody this week and they have a, so a waiting staff, it’s this thing you use in the water, it looks like a stick, but it helps you from not falling down when you’re crossing the stream. You know, I mean, so it’s really cool. And this was actually really cool because it actually tells the temperature of the water. It’s got all sorts of nerdy cool biological stuff. Yeah. So you stick it in the water, it tells you exactly the temperate, which is cool. But anyway, so But the interesting thing about this is that I’ve been working with this company who produces it, but I was just talking to a guy who’s actually helping him be the US distributor for this product. He’s in the UK. And, and he was just struggling with all this content creation. Like he didn’t know he just felt like he was the little guy. How did he grow? You know? So let’s think about him. How do we help him create a Facebook group if you’re thinking about that waiting staff and some content and I can fill you in as we go?

Bella 12:53
Okay, um, the very first thing that came to my mind and this might be a little space cadet II, but I just have to say this. Yes, um, you don’t have to To be on Snapchat in order for this to happen, but I feel like Snapchat glasses would be this guy’s like best friend, because they’re glasses that you literally wear and you press a button up at the top corner and it records 10 seconds of video or you could take a picture so so like Think of yourself as like Inspector Gadget, and, and they’re waterproof too, by the way you can put them under water, although I’m sure it’s pretty murky. Yes. And because when you’re going across the water in this imagine the point of view where you’re actually seeing the person’s two hands using this waiting staff. And and then you can see what the temperature is on this staff, right like it’s the point of view is scroll stopping. So for one of the five buckets for this guy, I mean, you literally could be like, you know, Mondays walking and you’re walking is always in some sort of body of water using these things, you know, and you can make like a one minute video. It doesn’t have to be that big, but you can just it’s kind of like a demonstration. Another one might be Um, gosh, I don’t know enough about this. So you’re gonna have to help guide me. But I’m wondering, you know, knowing about cuz. Okay, so fly fishing. So learning about and I don’t know the audience but yeah for me as a novice learning about different knowing how to look at the different lakes or streams or reservoirs or whatever they are to know that, Oh, this is the spot where you could fly fish and this is the spot where you shouldn’t fly fish because XYZ exact so more so like staking out where you can go Mm hmm. Um, maybe if you’re a guy, or these people guide Yeah, let’s

Dave S 14:40
take that lead and let me kind of riff on this level because so we got these five buckets. So potentially, so I like the first one, you know, Monday. So basically you’re breaking out into say days a week. So if you had Monday through Friday, you might have Monday as your, your walking thing or your fishing day or whatever. And then maybe you have another day where you’re, you know, I don’t know, doing whatever but you want to break it up by day and have a specific Kind of a theme, is that the way to do it?

Bella 15:03
You could but I actually try to encourage people not to do that because I think it gets really stale after a while. So do you think every Monday is gonna be the same thing? You know? So that’s kind of why like I almost in a group, I would say just when you get going, I would do something like Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and not every Monday is the same thing. But your topics are always like kind of mulling around. Okay,

Dave S 15:28
okay, gotcha. Gotcha. Because

Bella 15:29
the worst thing that happens is like when people are on autopilot, and they’re like, tasty Tuesdays or what? Yeah, it’s just like, it’s boring. Seriously, come on.

Dave S 15:39
No, that was all that’s like old school stuff, I guess.

Bella 15:41
Yeah. So but but what I’m saying is the way in which like, almost don’t be predictable with when it’s coming but be predictable with the types of messages and content that you’re providing. So you know, if there’s if there’s one bucket where it’s like a show and tell kind of thing. And you choose to use the snap glasses or Snapchat glasses or a video of any kind Honestly, I mean, it could be a talking head if you want it, but it seems like this would be more of a show and tell kind of thing, then that could be one of your buckets. Okay. And how does he in that was a question, you know, how does he compete with the big guys, right? You’ve got these big companies, these bigger companies who have this great marketing budget and they’re killing it with their Instagram photos and their videos, their production and in Orvis is one of the big companies, right. They’re this gigantic company. And they’re a great company, by the way, they’re awesome. But so how does he compete because he feels like he can’t he doesn’t have the time to create the great content. So is it okay to create just a little video here and throw it on there? That’s if it’s not perfect. Totally. Yeah. So I mean, like one one time that this guy goes out and he like, I’m just gonna keep using Snapchat glasses as an example. But like, let’s say he goes out and he takes like 30 4050 different snaps, which is just 10 seconds each right? He now goes back to his office and he has all this content. So He could create, you know, a 32nd video. And he could create 530 second videos off of one time going out, and then be talking about them and posting them in the group. And then that’s how you reuse them. You know, like maybe you play the video, but then you also have a post that breaks it down into talking points or something or you start a discussion on it, or you say, Hey, I’m gonna post a video tomorrow and it was this place and it was this time and it was this set it up. Who What do you think the temperature of the water was the person comes to this. So like, there’s a lot of different ways that you can reuse the content but in terms of how does he compete with places like Orvis, um, it’s, it’s, he is unique. He is that person. He’s not this big box brand. And if he reframes his thinking to realize that these people want to connect with another person that they can see themselves in, you know, like, imagine he is going across and he has these glasses on and he trips and he falls. I’m pretty sure we’ve all done that. You know, that right there is something that a big box company might not show, but that he could post and you can be like, Oh my gosh, like this dude’s just like me like, he’s goofy like me, or he’s not as polished and I think, especially nowadays, like people want to see things that aren’t as polished but at the same time are straight into the point, right? I don’t want to watch a five minute video of you stumbling around. But, you know, give me some bloopers or, or something like that. And that’s, it’s the humanization it’s the human side. Yeah, that those big box companies can’t compete with when you’re yourself you’re representing your company, or the company that you work for you are now a human being a person and you’re not hiding behind a logo. And that in itself, my friend is a major advantage over any corporation anytime.

Dave S 18:50
So that that’s great now and what if again, so starting out, you don’t have hardly you know, you’ve got just a couple people, you know, you’re a couple buddies or the group. Yeah. How do you grow That Facebook group,

Bella 19:01
okay, so there’s a lot of different ways depending on what you have access to. So I’m just gonna rattle off a bunch, and they may or may not work for everyone listening. The first one is you can send an email and you invite everyone to the group, the second one still does have to do with email. And that is maybe if you already have a nurture campaign going on, or you have a way that people come into your company. off the bat, you offer them like, hey, join our community. And it’s, you’ll get XYZ which are goes back to those buckets, right, you can expect to learn or see or hear or get or whatever it might be. The other thing also has to do with email is put it in your signature of your email, hey, join our group or however you say it, like have an invite in that like right underneath where your signature is, you know, like make it like a call to action. So those are three right there. Another one is from your Facebook page, go ahead and link your group to your page and then invite them by by changing that call to action instead of like There’s a lot of different call to actions you can do. But you can put join groups, that’s one of them that you can do. You can also do a cover video or a cover photo, and have that call to action, be it so if it’s a photo, have that photo with like a big old arrow right down to that join the group button or have a whole video that’s like basically like, do you want this and this and this, and this and this join arcs. There you go. Click here, you know, like, like a promo video for it. Yep, you can create square videos for it. And you could post it on your Facebook and Instagram. You can do Instagram stories or Facebook stories. And what I love, one of my friends Chris Straub does this, he, he had a group for a little while, where he would post it on like screenshots of what was happening in there or what he was teaching in there. But then he would take the coloring tool and scribble over it so you couldn’t see it and basically say, join the group to see the rest of it and he would tease it on his interest. grammar Facebook stories. So it’s kind of like a foreplay. Right? The other thing that you can do and sorry, I have like, way too many ideas. Oh, great is, um, you know, you can take that group URL. And the problem is, you don’t want to say, Oh, go find my XYZ fly fishing group. No, because then what happens is people are typing it in, they’re searching, they’re looking, they have decision fatigue, they get lost, they get confused, and they bounce away. So the way that you avoid this is you go to your website, you download something like Pretty Link, that’s a plugin that you can put in. And you can say, you know, XYZ fly fishing, comm forward slash group. And so that’s what you can tell people to go to, and that link will redirect them right to your group. Okay. So that’s really important too. Like any of my groups, I can give you a URL, and it goes straight to it because if you have people search for it, they’re going to get lost and you will lose them.

Oh my gosh. All right. I mean, like, my brains going really fast. many more things I could give you

Dave S 22:03
this. What I love about the podcast is that, you know, it’s all recorded. So even though I didn’t track it all, I’ll be on

Unknown Speaker 22:09
the show notes. Exactly. Yeah,

Dave S 22:11
the show notes are I love I love all parts of the podcast. So it’s good. Yeah. So so those are awesome. So another big question, you know, that comes up is, you know, again, time, right? So you’ve got this group going starting out, you know, you got to help, you know, you’re the person right, maybe starting out, but how much time do you take to moderate? How much time do you have to go in yourself in the group? And how long do you get to that point where you can kind of step back a little bit? Or, or can you?

Bella 22:35
That’s a fantastic question. And it’s gonna vary depending on the person. So if you have a plan, it all comes down to like systems. So if you have a plan, and you know that next month, you want to focus on summer issues, according to all five of your buckets, you could go to Starbucks, sit down for an hour to write out your content, schedule, it all And so that you have, you know, two or three posts coming out each week, for that month, and then you just go in and interact and engage with people, right? Because only part of it is scheduling content. The other part is engaging with people and showing up for them and responding back to them. So it’s gonna vary depending on what kind of promises you’ve made to your group, and what kind of leader you are, and what kind of purpose your group is serving. for comparing contrast, right, yeah, I’m a support group right now for COVID and people trying to navigate through the ideal loans and the pvp. You know, you’re gonna, if you’re in a group like that, you’re going to expect the moderators and the admins to be answering you very quickly. And the successful ones are the ones that are answering within 10 minutes. Yeah, the ones that are getting it taking a day to get back to you is letting panic set in and people are finding their solutions other places. Now, if this was just like a two Typical Small Business Group, right? And you had like casual discussions, or maybe you met a couple of times a month in the group, and people already expected it, then it’s going to be a lot less work than something like PPP, or you know, the loan. So it really depends. But beauty of this Dave is that you, my friend can determine. So if you want to be in that group all day long, then you can do it. If you don’t, then you can devise a plan to make that happen.

Dave S 24:28
Gotcha. And that plan might be just to get some other moderators in there to help to help with that. I mean, I guess you eventually you got to get going a little bit and then you can kind of slowly move away and then what about Yeah, maybe can talk about that. First it can you actually add people to help with the admin?

Bella 24:45
Yeah, so there are things called community managers, but I don’t believe that you can really hire someone on to do a job unless you’ve done it yourself. And I kind of feel like that about everything in business and in life. You have to be in the trenches. So, and and you’ll probably fail the first five times, honestly, because a community manager is a newer kind of job and title. And it’s very close to like a virtual assistant. And you’re like, well, what’s the difference, right? And so, it you have to get really clear on what you’re looking for, what your outcomes are, what your goals are, and, and what you want them to be doing. And it’s difficult, I really would encourage you, if you’re starting a group, you shouldn’t be in it to try to get out of it and think it’s going to run itself. Most of the time. If you’re starting a group just like this client we were just talking to you about, you’re gonna want him in there all the time or being like the spokesperson of it. Could you have a VA that you hand off the content that you sat down at that Starbucks or whatever, and wrote out and said, Hey, virtual assistant, can you schedule all of this for me? Can you do that part of the work? Sure. But you know, it’s important that that person needs to be in there. If you’re a big box company like Orvis, then yeah, you could have a bunch of different moderators, because we’re not getting on that personal level. So again, it kind of goes back to What’s your goal for the group?

Dave S 26:11
That’s right. That’s right. Okay. So that makes sense. And then keep talking about just a couple of general things we might have kind of glossed over at the beginning. So if, if you’re setting it up, I mean, there’s a couple things right, you can add the questions to ask description. Can you talk about some of the things you want to make sure to have in there, when you’re kind of setting up your group?

Bella 26:28
Yeah. So um, you can ask three questions when people go in, and you can also have them, um, you know, check to agree to the rules. I always, always, always encourage people that one of those three questions needs to be what’s your email address? Yep. And I really feel strongly that you should have a nurture campaign on the other side of that, and it should literally be like, hey, thanks so much for joining the group. Here’s what here’s who I am. Here’s what you can expect for me. By the way, I’ll be back in your email tomorrow or next week or whatever it’s going to be and and almost set the extra But the other reason to this is that if you have an important event coming up in the group, or you have an important launch or a message or Facebook just decides to poof, it’s gone tomorrow. At least you own it. Yep. Um, the other thing that I would suggest is with these questions is I don’t think people actually give enough thought to these questions before they do it. But ask them, what’s your biggest challenge around? subject? Right? So because right there is your buckets, right? There is your content, right? There is your I don’t know what to post. Well, you’re getting it all the time. And, and I would, I would highly do that. And then if you want, you can say, you know, how did you hear about us or How’d you get here? Or another question that will help give you content or or prompts. Now, the toughest part about this too, is that people always say, they come back to me like a year later. And like, Bella, how can I get all this information they just collected? I didn’t write it down. Well, you’re screwed. Sorry, but you’re screwed. Yeah, um, But if you use this really cool software, I will forward it to you. It’s a $300 one time purchase, you install it, you can use it on as many groups as you want. And what it does is with the click of a button, it automatically puts it into an Excel spreadsheet. This Excel spreadsheet, aka Google Drive, she like a spreadsheet, right? Um, this is this is where the magic happens, Dave, because you can do two things. One, you can give it to your virtual assistant or you and you can put it into your email, client, you know, ConvertKit, or whatever it is, and start those nurture sequences or two, you could hook it up to this is where it gets really geeky and really exciting. You can hook it up to Zapier zap, er, and you can make it so that every time something gets added to the spreadsheet, it automatically puts it into a list in your email or your your email, campaign or right and then that automatically triggers that nurture sequence

Unknown Speaker 28:59
but All

Bella 29:02
right, that’s awesome. If you wanted to go live, like you know, every Friday and just answer people’s questions, then that’s something else, you know, you could just pull up that spreadsheet, and you can sit there and you could be like, okay, so Joey had this question. And here’s the answer. Susie had that question. And here’s the answer. And in that way, by going live, you can actually, people will fall in love with you more because they can see you and they can hear you and it, it helps you, it helps them know like and trust you and connect with you even more, you know, and then you’re not sitting there thinking. And I know Bella said I should go live, which they talk about. I don’t really feel comfortable on camera, but these people are literally giving, they’re handing it to you on a silver platter. It’s just your system needs to be operating in such a way that it’s smooth like butter, and it’s and it just really is supporting you. That my friend, is how you really rock it with groups and take it to the next level. Always know what to say.

Dave S 30:01
That’s going that all just comes back to basically asking those those good those three questions and and

Bella 30:08
keeping good track of those Yeah, yeah and

Dave S 30:10
I I typically I’ve been just I have the same thing and I like you said I’ve got a whole list in my Google you know drive of what these people have said and you know, again I know exactly what the number one struggle is because you know, they’re answering it there’s I had a Michael Neal on from the solopreneur hour podcast and he dug into the Zapier and the it was pretty awesome all the all the nerdy stuff so I’ll put a link to that in the show notes as well as the stuff awesome you talked about in okay and then also what about so you know, the rules What do you Is there a guide is there anything we can let people know what what they need to have in there for the rules?

Bella 30:46
Um, you know what, I would honestly just tell you to copy Facebook’s, you know, like, go and click from they give you suggested ones and then I would consider if you needed to add any additional, um, but yeah, I wouldn’t get too To call

Dave S 31:00
to crazy about that. Okay, so not too big of a deal.

Bella 31:03
Do you want some engagement ideas?

Dave S 31:05
Yeah, yeah, you know what, you could take this wherever because I mean there’s so much we’re not gonna build even you know, I mean dig into everything I I’ll put links to you know, I know I heard a little bit with Michael stelzner and that that podcasts and stuff so

Bella 31:18
Oh, awesome. Yeah you um, did you go to Social Media Marketing World? No,

Dave S 31:22
but I’m planning on this this year. I love stels Well, I know I know that’s the that’s the one thing hopefully it comes back but but no, that’s that’s a high on my list to get out. I’ve Pat Flynn and some of the his crew you know, that whole they’ve all been kind of mentors for me over the years. So

Bella 31:39
that’s awesome. Yeah, good people. Your podcast sounds amazing. Yeah, it’s

Dave S 31:43
it’s a good it’s a good crew. The cool thing about the fly fishing and outdoor space, especially the fly fishing is it’s super, super conservation oriented, you know? Yeah, about the fly fishing but it’s about conservation. So that’s where my passion I’m kind of the outdoors online is kind of the Yin yin and yang sort of thing, right? That like almost polar opposites kind of bringing those together, but Okay, well, let’s just let’s jump into what we covered a little bit on promoting the group. Is there anything else you know? And I think that’s the straw, you start with a little group, you know, do you need to get to where you have thousands and thousands of people can you know, with 50 people can you have a good engagement?

Bella 32:23
So size doesn’t matter when it comes to Facebook groups. What matters is the engagement. And you I would rather you have 50 very highly engaged people who are like little birds chirping waiting for you to feed them, then 5000. Don’t ever come to the nest, you know what I mean? But I do want to drop some ideas on just the different features and problems and solutions that we’ve been able to solve in there if I if I can refer so yeah, go for it. All right. So I’m in Facebook groups. They have a section for events. And I highly recommend that people put together events like so that means, like, if you’re going to go live, create an event, people love to know that and then also put it up on the cover profile. Don’t be bashful about changing that cover profile, we all have access to Canva it’s super easy. And it also keeps it really fresh. So if you’re going to go live, or you’re gonna, you know, have a challenge or, or you’re going to do something, don’t be bashful and do an event. And when you when you do an event up to I think it’s 500 people it will or maybe it’s 100 I totally forget right now up to a certain amount of people it will automatically invite everyone so everyone will get well you shouldn’t you guys and then every single time you post inside that event, anyone that like said yes, I’m going they’re going to get that notification. So that’s only going to help with engagement nice. Um, the other other thing is like, if you go into settings and you make your group a social learning group, Which I honestly I think every group should be, it will give you access to units. units are really important. It’s kind of like a, like a virtual filing cabinet, if you will. So maybe you have a couple of topics that keep coming up, or maybe it’s your five bucket topics. Or maybe it’s like, you know, how do I start a business and fly fishing, or it’s something that keeps coming up, you can put it into a unit so that when people ask all the time, they actually can go there, because the biggest problem, Dave, is that once we post something on Facebook, it decays. Yeah. And and the other thing is, is that Sure, we can use that search feature. But yeah, I don’t know about you, but that search feature never shows, or no, yeah. So if you as the moderator can create these units, and you can, you can attach these posts to them, like, you know, oh, wow, that was really good posts, I want to make sure we don’t lose it. And you don’t want to just add it as an announcement because you’re limited there. That’s a really good idea. Um, something else that I would encourage you to do and now We have meeting rooms that just came out, I would encourage you to get people on camera in a meeting room and and that could even just be like open office hours or from Friday from four to five, you know, grab your favorite beer and come on and hang out with us. Like it’s just a way to get people to bond and if people are bonded and they feel like they know other people in the group, they’re going to be more willing to actually share, engage and ask their question, even if they think their question is stupid. We’ve all heard that too. Right? Oh, I don’t want to ask it. It’s dumb. I’m sure someone else asked it. Um, the other thing is that with you want to make members feel special to and again, this is something that your guy again Orvis can’t do but you’re let’s just call him Joe. Something that Joe can do that like Orvis can’t do is Joe could very easily and it’s going to be different in different places. So I’m just just generically using Starbucks because everyone knows Starbucks, but I’m sure people have different feelings about it. But we Just gonna go with it. But you could very easily just buy a $50 gift card to Starbucks, take a screenshot of that virtual gift card posted in your group and say, Hey guys, Happy Saturday, free coffees on me up until $50, it runs out, I just asked that, you know, you only get at all and you don’t abuse it. And all of a sudden, like, Whoa, this group is cool, it’s cool. Even if you don’t actually get out, go do it, you could do it. You could do that with Dunkin Donuts, you can do that with like, almost anything because everything is like a virtual gift card now, right? Um, so that’s just kind of a cool way you could run a challenge. You could, um, you know, say hey, like this week, I want everyone to post a picture of X or go out and try to use this lower and take a picture of what you caught with it. Or I don’t I don’t know what it looks like in in your, your, your thing, but you know, you could do a challenge. That’s always really exciting. Yeah, um, the more that you can kind of show that challenge and I also encourage you if you decide to do it, too. You guys don’t all always make it about just the, like, the obvious like fishing, right? You just said it was conservation, right? So maybe you could have a challenge of like, Alright guys, um, I want to see who can pick up the most amount of trash this weekend show me a picture of your, of your mom your bag when you’re done. And the biggest bag wins a $50 gift certificate to Amazon or, or to your company or something like you could do that. Or if it’s a bunch of business owners you literally could do like, Hey guys, we’re gonna do a squat challenge who how many squats can you do in a minute like, right? And that’s just to get you up out of your chair because you’re sitting there all day working, or there’s or planking challenge or something. Don’t be afraid to appeal to someone’s like humanity like who they are as a person and not always be business. I’m going to take a deep breath today even questions because I could keep going Yeah,

Dave S 38:00
yeah, so I will. So when I had the unit, I just want to go back to that quickly because I think that sounds like an awesome thing. So basically, you’ve got these units, which helps you if you want to, you can put them into maybe the, you know, for your five buckets, right, your different things and it helps you put your content in there. So I mean, in you can put basically as much content as you want in these units. Is there anything else to know about these is it pretty straightforward and getting started with them.

Bella 38:25
They’re the bomb, calm, Dave, you can do whatever you want. And basically, the only way you can mess it up is by not having a structure. So make sure that when you name a unit, it’s about a specific topic. And you don’t have that topic, you know, represented in multiple units, you know, you want to be very specific about what each unit is for. But other than that, it’s just like, you know, as a post comes up, you up to the top right corner, you click those three little buttons, and you can say add to the unit or create a unit, you know, so it’s really a neat way of just correlating the content. Gotcha,

Dave S 39:00
gotcha. And, you know, as we started to think about kind of wrapping this thing up a little, I had a couple of big things I wanted to touch on one of them was, you know, so customers, right, you’ve got obviously you might have this might be part of your business and, you know, how do you take those people in the group? Are you taking them out and building? You know, getting, I don’t know, leads? Or, or is this more just building the community? And you’re not really talking about any your products in there?

Bella 39:23
Super question. Um, it depends. And it depends on how you’re using your group. So I believe in using groups like a funnel, and so is it top, middle or bottom of the funnel? You know, a top of the funnel would be like a really massive group where you might not be as engaged or as present all the time and it’s kind of a catch all. But then in that group, you’re like, Hey, guys, if you really like, you know, the general idea of fly fishing, if you want to really get around fly fishing business owners who are trying to scale their business, you might want to join this group and then once You’re in that group, you might want to be like, Hey guys, if you’re a fly fishing business owner and really want to have accountability, and uh, you know, weekly or monthly coaching sessions, you know, group coaching sessions, then join this paid group where post so you see how like, you kind of funnel it down. Yeah, so the answer, I’m sorry, it depends. Sure. Um, but it goes back to what we talked about at the beginning of the podcast of what’s your strategy for the group? Why are you doing this group? Exactly, exactly. Okay, help when I when I consult with like brands, and help them figure out like, their whole group strategy. It’s, it’s how we play with it, because I believe that almost always you do need a big catch all group, right. And, and then you can once they’re in that group, because you’ve got more of a How do I describe this? Like, everyone’s in the backyard, but only a couple of people get to actually sit at the table with you and with you.

Dave S 40:57
Right, or hang or hang out? Yeah, exactly. All right. They’re the ones that maybe they’re there till the end of the night. You know? Yeah,

Bella 41:03
that’s a good one too. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 41:06
So okay,

Dave S 41:07
yeah, exactly. They call it little kids. All right. What about a resource? Is there any you know, I don’t know if there’s a book or a some online resource that we can take deeper that maybe I don’t know if, you know, maybe isn’t your stuff or something else for somebody if they wanted to take this conversation further.

Bella 41:23
Um, so one, I actually consult with brands and help them figure out their strategy. But if they wanted something that they could like, download, um, I actually have a URL that I’ll send to you. I forget what it is, but it goes to my bot. And my, I apologize, my bot pops up. So it’s facebook.com forward slash, the Bella vasta v like Victor ASPCA.

Dave S 41:48
So, okay, so we got so to wrap this up with a couple of a couple of people, these aren’t really random to you, but so the pet maybe without going too deep into it. I mean, you’ve got the podcast. Bella in my business, right? That that’s your pot and then you also have, can you talk to the pet and then maybe you can just give us maybe without digging into the pet that fully just give us the best pet tip. If you have a pet, if you have a pet, what are you? Are you still in that business at all?

Bella 42:16
Yeah, so what I do is I help scale, pet sitting and dog walking company is from six to seven figures, whoa, I help get them on their first couple employees, and then how to create internal systems so that they can kind of step away from their business and keeping the visionary and grow and grow and grow. And so that that’s what I do. And I simply do that because I started my own pet sitting company back in 2002 as a way to get out of my parents house in college because they wanted to put a curfew on me and I thought that it was more beneficial for me to sleep overnight in people’s homes with their pets, so that I could go out and karaoke and salsa merengue game bachata nice. Um, yeah, that’s, that’s kind of how that So

Dave S 43:00
that’s it so could you just briefly walk us through how do you what are the big steps to scaling a six to seven figure these companies in the pet industry?

Bella 43:09
pets? Yeah, so it totally comes from this is this is just advice for anybody because yeah, it doesn’t matter what you’re selling you know that day. Yeah. Um, it really comes with having a clearly defined goals. And when I say goals, I like 90 day goals. I’m sure john Lee Dumas talks a lot about that the freedom that’s, that’s more attainable, and you know, our brains can understand that. I think like I said earlier, you have to do it first and then you have to get out of your own way. I think that in any any case you have to love failure, your relationship with failure has to be like BFF because you have to learn and grow from it and you have to fail in order to succeed. And I also believe that you have to like let go of the reins like you have to become a really good leader, meaning you have to not just get people When you have someone come on board and help you and then you don’t get what you want, you have to take a lot of ownership and responsibility for that and constantly be trying to become a better communicator. Therefore delegator right because a lot of people want to delegate but they don’t know how to actually do that and then correct and continue because there’s a lot of correcting and continuing but then on the flip side, they also don’t know when to cut a loss when they need to and they keep it for way too long and it drags them down so if it ever point your plateau in your business, it’s kind of really a chance to kind of start looking at yourself in your in your leadership abilities and your vision and then also who what company you’re keeping and and is your team that got you here going to get you there. Right right. I mean, I talk about this forever. I know this is awful.

Dave S 44:50
I know what maybe we’ll have to leave this to the board otherwise but so hey, what other random what so so this is we talk a lot about fly fishing, get outdoors. Do you have an hour outdoor activity you love that you do out there. You know these days?

Bella 45:04
Um, this is gonna really sound funny, but I actually love driving my Mini Cooper convertible up north and going hiking. Oh, there you go. Yeah, like that’s my my outdoor like there’s nothing better than like the wind and the music and the stick shift.

Dave S 45:21
There you go in the Mini Cooper. I thought people

Bella 45:24
who were car enthusiasts were crazy. And then I got a Mini Cooper and then I got a mom car and then I got a mini cooper again. I’m like the only 37 year old I know that has like a fun car and a mom car.

Dave S 45:38
That’s it. So what is the beauty without going too deep? This is this is a good one because the baby kid actually Michael the solopreneur he is a big Porsche guy. Right? But yeah, so the Mini Cooper What is it? What’s what makes it so amazing?

Bella 45:50
Um, okay, so I like how it’s just First of all, it’s very unique. It’s very different, right? And it’s small.

Dave S 45:58
It’s really small, right?

Bella 45:59
Yes, but it’s like The safest car in its class. It’s all steel. It’s got so much personality like there’s no two Cooper’s that are really alike. They’re so unique. And it’s on an old, isn’t it? Isn’t it on an old car? Isn’t it based on an older car, or is it Yeah, yeah. Yeah. They’ve been around forever. Yeah, they’re, they’re bigger than the older ones. But, yeah, mine’s a convertible, I would never want them. That’s not a convertible. And it just, I love the stick shift. There’s not a lot of stuff that has stick shift. So I have like, enormous amount of like power with it. Um, it ended up being an ass so it’s I never even drive it in s mode because I don’t have a prop. Fast. Yes mode. Well, yes, it was

Dave S 46:39
s mode.

Bella 46:40
Oh, like the Super Sport mode. Yeah, sport. Gotcha. Yeah, yeah. So it’s just it’s just fun. it zips around. I could stop it on a dime like the sound system is is bumping because I also needed like the upgraded sound system. It just, it’s just fun. And when I when I spend so much time indoors, I work from home before it was cool. I’m sure Like you yeah and you know it’s just a nice like to get out and just feel the sun on your skin feel the wind through your hair. I mean it sounds so cliche, but it it’s my it really gets my vibrations up and just

Dave S 47:14
happy that’s awesome then you get out get out to a nice hike and then you’re in Arizona, right?

Bella 47:19
Yeah, yeah, I joined the Mini Cooper Car Club The first time I had the car and like we used to go on car rides and like in around Christmas, there was like 40 of us and we like you know got lights all around our cars and stuff and like people would stop looking at the houses that had lights on it and look at the minis that were just coming by it is it’s it puts a smile on other people’s faces like I’ve never had so many people at a stoplight. Be like cute car. People.

Dave S 47:46
It’s true. Yeah, the Mini Cooper is it definitely it’s one of those ones that you’d come up next to you and a Tesla and you’d be like, well, that mini Coopers pretty cool.

Unknown Speaker 47:55
It is it

Bella 47:56
is just it’s just fun. And my license plate even says jump in So like,

Dave S 48:01
insulting you know, so it’s just it just makes me happy you know and life’s too short you gotta you gotta just finally makes you happy you got to do that cool. Hey in the next few months anything new coming out with you jump consulting dotnet or anything else you want to give a shout out to?

Bella 48:16
Um Yeah, we always have stuff coming out but I’m not sure it’s gonna I mean if if any of you guys know any pet sitters or dog walkers looking for a 14 video series to help train your employees we’re coming out with a really awesome kick butt series to help employees but um, yeah, I mean, honestly, you guys if you want to start your Facebook group, or you know someone who wants to, but they’re just so lost in the strategy of it. I love strategizing and extracting from your you don’t have to come knowing anything like I will just kind of like how we just did on this podcast. I love just getting into people’s minds and deconstructing things and then reverse engineering. It’s exciting to me almost as exciting as my Mini Cooper.

Dave S 49:00
Let’s go. Alright, well this has been great. I’ve so jump consulting dotnet if they want to reach you and yeah, I just want to I want to thank you for coming on. This has been a lot of fun. I think it was this the first fly fishing kind of a little session. You’ve done

Unknown Speaker 49:13
it absolutely. A and I can’t wait

Bella 49:15
to listen to your podcast too. I admittedly have not had a chance yet, but it sounds amazing. Yeah, we’re gonna subscribe to it.

Dave S 49:23
Yeah, totally. It is. We got it. We have a lot of fun over there as well. So I’ll definitely put links to everything we talked about and, and keep in touch with you. And for sure. Yeah, you’ve got I mean, even in your show, you’ve got like a, what? 100 200 episodes over there, right?

Bella 49:36
Yeah, we’re coming up on our 200th episode in about a month. We just are launching 197 this week. And then, yeah, we’re up to 93,000 downloads. So I’m super stoked about that. It’s, as you know, podcasting is just such a cool way to deliver your brand and thoughts to you know, your community.

Dave S 49:55
It’s huge. It’s huge. All right, well, I’ll let you get out of here. And until we act again, I’ll talk

Bella 49:59
to you Thanks, Dave.

Dave S 50:03
A couple of today’s takeaways. dig in deep with Facebook units and go live with Facebook groups, especially early on, you get a chance, please share this episode with one other person you think could benefit from learning more about Facebook groups, that would be amazing. And I’d also love to hear what you think about the show and how I’m doing. You can reach out to me anytime by phone, email or social. Just check us out at outdoors online CO and drop me a message. And I am looking forward to next one. Click Play and let’s go. See you soon.

Unknown Speaker 50:39
Thanks for joining us today and for your support of the marketing podcast. If you found this podcast helpful, please share it with one other person and leave a rating and review on Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to the show.

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Conclusion with Bella Vasta

Bella Vasta shares her best tips on Facebook groups and the steps to increase Facebook engagement and grow your group.  We find out how to save time while moderating a group and how she helps scale 6 figure companies.