Benay: [00:00:00] Welcome back to another episode of Coach Pep Talk, the podcast for people who run their own coaching businesses. Each week I talked to an expert who shares wisdom that helps us be better coaches and better coaching business owners. This week I’ve got Michelle McGuire on the line from Bossy Girl Media and she’s talking to us all about Facebook and how to use Facebook successfully to build our coaching business. So I’ll see you on the other side.

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Benay: [00:01:33] I know many of you have been looking forward to this episode because it’s all about Facebook and how to use Facebook successfully in your coaching business. My guest today is a lady I met at a networking event here in the Sunshine Coast in Australia and she gave an absolutely phenomenal talk on social media and just blew me away with her down to earth style and her expertise. She basically helps gorgeous entrepreneurial girls with their social media through Consulting Training and done for your services so she knows what she’s talking about and she just helps communicate it in a really clear way, which I think you’ll find in this episode. We’re gonna be talking all about Facebook and I hope you get a lot out of it and enjoy the show.

Benay: [00:02:24] Hello Michelle and welcome to the show.

Michelle McGuire: [00:02:26] Thank you so much for having me. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Benay: [00:02:29] I am so excited that you have come into my life when you did because Facebook seems to be a very hot topic and it’s a very hot topic in my own Facebook group. Everybody’s really keen to learn more. And you just seemed like the perfect down to earth expert to sort of share your wisdom and knowledge with us in a way that we can actually understand and use in our coaching business. So thank you so much for agreeing to come on the show.

Michelle McGuire: [00:02:52] Absolutely my pleasure. Hopefully I can sort some things out for you.

Benay: [00:02:56] I know you will. Okay, so let’s just jump straight into it and let’s just set the scene a little bit with your view on why Facebook is a good social media tool for coaches, because there are so many choices out there. Why Facebook?

Michelle McGuire: [00:03:12] Okay. Yes, the social media world in general can be a little bit overwhelming it’s a bit like starting a diet, it’s just way too much information. However, Facebook is and probably always will be the best platform, generally speaking, because they still have the biggest audience by far, where we’re up getting towards 6 billion people now on Facebook so your audience is definitely out there in Facebook land. There’s absolutely no question about that. So you know the stats don’t lie. Whether you like other platforms or not is irrelevant. You should do what you love, but Facebook is just something that should be in everybody’s portfolio of what they’re doing on social media for sure.

Benay: [00:03:47] So you can really tap into your tribe or your or your niche area even if it’s pretty specific because so many people look at it.

Michelle McGuire: [00:03:55] And as we know Facebook knows way too much about all of us so they’re very good at targeting. So yes whatever you need to find, your audience is definitely there on Facebook somewhere.

Benay: [00:04:05] Okay I think that’s a compelling why. So another big question that it’s always coming up is people getting really confused between what’s my personal page, what’s a business page, and then what’s a group and how do you use it together? And do you need all of them? Can you shed some light on that space for us?

Michelle McGuire: [00:04:26] Yeah absolutely it can be totally confusing because lots of people ask me the question about well I’ve got my personal profile but I don’t want any of my business to intrude on that. I want it totally separate. And they are totally separate. So you have to have all of them pretty much. so The way it works is you have to join with your personal profile, which most of us already have and that’s all your personal stuff, but your profile if you think of it like a filing cabinet, for want of a better analogy, is your personal profile and then your business page is like a file in that filing cabinet. So you want your business page because you’re not allowed, you’re not supposed to according to the Facebook terms have any business post on your personal page. So you should have a business page to put all your business postings on. However, what a lot of us have also noticed of course is that the engagement on a business page is pretty woeful these days because Facebook is of course pushing you to boost all your posts and pay to be on Facebook essentially. So the third part of that scenario is a Facebook group which is really what I want to talk a lot about today. It’s definitely something that we all need to be heading for. So the group is tied to your Facebook business page. And if you think of, if we go back to the analogy of filing cabinet, you’ve got your personal profile, which is the filing cabinet, your business pages which is like a folder in your filing cabinet, and your group is the specific pages in that file where you’ll get exactly what you need. So the exact information and in our terms the exact engagement that you need. So hopefully that might clarify a little bit for some people.

Benay: [00:05:55] I’m just writing down, cabinet, folder, file.

Michelle McGuire: [00:05:58] Yeah yeah.

Benay: [00:06:02] Okay so do we… How would it, like if you have a coaching business and let’s say, yeah OK I’ve got a personal profile page, I’ve got a business page, and maybe they have a group maybe they don’t. Can you talk a little bit about how we can make those work together and where it’s good to spend time?

Michelle McGuire: [00:06:19] Absolutely. So if you don’t have a business page, get yourself one. It’s not where you’re going to get most of your engagement however, it is a very good feeder for your Facebook group. And if you don’t have a group it’s something I really want to talk to you about today. I think that everybody should have a Facebook group because, especially for coaches actually, because more than just about in any other business it’s so important for a coach. You know people aren’t going to hire you if they don’t know and like and trust you, which is what marketing is all about. But for coaches in particular I really just think it’s so important that people know that they’re going to gel with you pretty much before they go to book you or ask for more information. So a groups are going to give you that opportunity to really dig into you know, what your potential dream clients are looking for. What are their issues? What do they need help with? And it’s going to give you a lot of ideas for programs and products and that type of thing. It’s very very valuable direct feedback that you probably won’t get from your Facebook business page. Because the business page is still, you know, you might have 10,000 followers for example, but Facebook in their wisdom, because God love their algorithm, they decide who sees what as we all know. And did you know, a lot of people don’t know this, less than 2 percent of your followers at any given time will actually see that post on your business page. So you’ve spent all this time building up your huge following only to wonder why on earth is my engagement dropping. Why am I getting two comments and one share or nothing? Crickets. Even worse. You post a lot of stuff that you put your heart and soul into it you get nothing in return. And that’s due to the Facebook algorithm and the fact that as I mentioned before they really want you to be paying to boost a lot of your posts and it might not be much money each time but it certainly adds up.

Benay: [00:08:05] Do You think that actually making that investment is a good idea?

Michelle McGuire: [00:08:10] I do but it depends what you use it for. I use it for boosting my numbers in my group. So it depends, because to me the group is the more valuable part of that equation. That’s where you’ve got your audience. It’s a bit like a captive audience because the way it works in a group is every post you make is notified to every single member of your group. So if you’ve got 2000 people in your group and you make a post, all 2000 people are notified. They might not all come and look at it, but at least they’ve all been notified. Whereas, if you compare that to your page where you might have 10000 followers and only you know 500 of them are going to say that post. I know where I’d be spending my money. So if you going to be, honestly I think that you can get a lot of stuff done these days without paying to boost anything at all. I’m not a fan of paying Facebook to do much in the way of anything at all. So you can actually build quite successful businesses without spending any money and using all organic traffic, which you’ll get a lot more off from the group than you will from your page, but I still think you need both because the page feeds the group.

Benay: [00:09:08] Okay, before we move on to groups can you talk a little bit about how you make your business page or is this page for your coaching business be a feeder for your group?

Michelle McGuire: [00:09:18] So because you know now that not that many people see your post you can be a little bit more repetitive for starters. So don’t be too scared to say, oh well you know I’ve already posted something about my brand new group this week I better not say anything until next week. You know now that only 2 percent of your crowd are going to see that post you want to do it repetitively. So maybe if you’re doing posting once say twice a day, you could actually make every second day, you can say something about hey come and join this brand new group or just weave the group into what you’re posting about. I tie a lot of things in, I might post an inspirational quote for example, but if it’s something to do with friendship or lifting people up or positivity, then of course I’ll tie that in and say hey if this is more of what you’d like you can find it in our group. So you just keep pulling people across from your page into your group, because the page is nice and you get followers, but the group is better because they become a captive audience. So just keep using it to pull people across to your group.

Benay: [00:10:16] Great and how… I mean I’m listening to you and thinking, oh posting many times on my day or my business page. I’m lucky to do twice a week. What is a good rule of thumb that coaches should use for how much they should post on their page?

Michelle McGuire: [00:10:32] Well I think it depends on the size of your following actually. So if you’ve got less than say 2000 followers, you’re really only looking at once today.so don’t panic and go oh my God I’m going to spend all my time on social media. Once you get past the sort of thousand, 2000 mark then up it to maybe two times a day. But, what I normally do is, if I post twice a day, I’ll usually post something of mine. So maybe inspirational quote or a little story or whatever and then I’ll post something of someone else’s, because that’s the other thing that makes people more engaged is don’t just make it all about you show them that you’re a good social citizen and you follow other coaches that you admire or other personal development people that you admire or even just what are you reading right now. I’ll often put on, okay what’s on your reading list. This is what I’m reading right now. Just engaging stuff that isn’t necessarily directly yours. Sharing other people’s content is always a good way to go. So that eases the burden of oh my gosh I’ve got to create I was content. You don’t really, you just have to curate other people’s content a lot of the time too.

Benay: [00:11:30] Great that’s probably given everybody a big sigh of relief. So…

Michelle McGuire: [00:11:32] I think it is because other people panic and go I’ve got no time; I can’t do this.

Benay: [00:11:37] And so can you just recap that, so if you’re under 2000 members, what is it called, likes on your page then you post just once.

Michelle McGuire: [00:11:46] Only once a day. Yeah you don’t want it you don’t overload people when you’ve got a small crowd so once you get past sort of a thousand, fifteen hundred, 2000 then you could up it to twice a day definitely. Having said that if your someone who already posts twice a day don’t panic you’re not going to turn people off. Just to take the pressure off.

Benay: [00:12:03] Yeah, if only the 2 percent are looking at it and you can probably post ten times a day, it doesn’t matter.

Michelle McGuire: [00:12:06] And that’s the thing once you know that, it kind of takes the pressure off you get oh okay, only ten people are seeing this so…

Benay: [00:12:14] Okay. Is there anything else you know, that’s before we leave talking about pages and switch over to groups, is there anything that is really crucial to have on your business page?

Michelle McGuire: [00:12:24] Well I think it’s crucial for it everywhere so groups and pages these days is just video content in general. It’s massive. I mean even with accounting for the low amount of times Facebook going to show that post to anybody, if it’s a video post, even on your business page, you’ll get so much more engagement. Probably six or seven times the amount. A good example is I do a video every Tuesday and I always, I post it in my group, but I always share it across to the page and even on the page, which usually gets quite low engagement, it will get six or seven times the engagement of a regular post that’s just got a picture or a story attached to it. So you definitely want to be doing some sort of video content. And don’t freak out everybody because I can feel people going, oh my gosh, she wants me to do video!

Benay: [00:13:14] And we’ll get to more of that, dig into it…

Michelle McGuire: [00:13:17] But yeah as a rule video content is king and it’s not going anywhere anytime soon. In fact, it’s only going to ramp up even more so, it’s not a luxury anymore. You can’t be thinking; oh I can probably get away without doing video. The time is fast approaching where you really can’t say that anymore. So you really do need do some sort of video content on a regular basis. And it doesn’t have to be every post obviously but you know a few times a week, once or twice a week, put some video content on there and you’ll see it for yourself How much more engaging that content is.

Benay: [00:13:44] And I remember when I when I saw you speak, it must’ve been maybe two or three weeks ago now, you said that you never post anything that’s just text, you always have a picture.

Michelle McGuire: [00:13:55] Always yes. I mean those days are long gone. I know when Twitter, for example, first started out, it was all just text. It was like a big news feed and even Facebook used to have quite a lot of that. But those days are long gone where you should be posting anything that’s text only. That’s number one rule for any kind of social media. Always have a visual element because it’ll just get lost in people’s news feeds. I mean you know that’s why Facebook have their algorithm, because if you think about it they couldn’t possibly post everything in your news feed of every person that you follow. You would never ever get through your news feed, so I totally understand why they do it. But you have to think like that. What’s going to help this stand out in that person’s news feed and visual content obviously is the way to go.

Benay: [00:14:32] Yeah. And what about the actual banner that’s at the top of your business page. Is that important these days?

Michelle McGuire: [00:14:40] It is, yes. So what I see a lot of is that people cram too much. Try to put a lot of text into that, which is not a great way to go. If you’ve got a great tagline maybe put that in there or your business name. But in general don’t try and put too much text, make that a really stunning visual element. And actually speaking of video, Facebook will now let you have video cover images, or cover videos. So that’s a great place to put video and it could be a good place to get your feet wet with video because you only had to do it once and then it just lives up on your cover image. So, and that’s as easy as uploading a picture or changing your image, you just, when you go in the options, the options will give you an option of a video.

Benay: [00:15:19] Right so you put one of you talking about your business?

Michelle McGuire: [00:15:22] yeah, and it doesn’t play the sound unless people click into it, so it’s just something they look at. But it just gives them more of a feel for you. So it’s a bit like a very short, I think it needs to be between 30 seconds and 90 seconds long, and then it just loops. So what have you put on there, and if you think of it in terms of it doesn’t actually have to be a full on video, you can create a video using still images. So if you’ve got a bunch of images that really speak a lot about the feeling of your business or you know that’ll give people an idea you can actually put those into a video. Doesn’t have to be you talking.

Benay: [00:15:56] Guess it could be a slide show too.

Michelle McGuire: [00:15:58] Absolutely yeah. But it’s just another more engaging thing to do with your cover area which is important real estate. So, something to think about.

Benay: [00:16:06] What about any sort of opt ins or linking with your groups from you from your business page. Anything like that, really?

Michelle McGuire: [00:16:14] Yeah. Well speaking of important real estate, the most important real estate on your Facebook business page, is that call to action button which lives just at the bottom of your cover image area. A lot of people have contacted us on there, which I think is a complete waste of time. If you are having a Facebook group and you want to use that wisely. That would be the place to use, say join us and then when you go into format that button you tell it, this is the web address for my Facebook group. So people have a quick option to join your group straight from your business page. That’s Another way to pull people across. So I took a be really careful what use that button for, because you don’t get many chances to grab people and that’s one of them.

Benay: [00:16:55] That’s really great. Okay. Anything else you want to say That’s sort of a must have, or some important information for a coach to think about their business page, before we move on to groups?

Michelle McGuire: [00:17:06] I think as much as possible you want to be pulling people across to collect email addresses, because it’s another thing that ties in really well with Facebook. I’m sure everyone’s doing it, but just in case they’re not, if you aren’t already building an email list, get on it right away. And Facebook’s a great feeder for email lists and it can come from your business page, as well as your group. So create something, some valuable document that people might want. A planner, or a document, or whatever and you know be gathering e-mail addresses all the time and you can you can have that. You could actually use your call to action button for that. you could have it in your about section on your business page. You can mention in quite a few ways and then of course do some posts on it occasionally, but another thing people don’t know about is maybe the pinned posts. So you can create a pinned post that just lives at the top of your page all the time, so you might want to create a post about downloading this free document that you’ve created that add some value and then pin it to the top of your business page. So that’s the first thing people say no matter when they come in. So it doesn’t disappear chronologically Like all your other posts.

Benay: [00:18:07] That’s a great idea. I’m thinking, oh my gosh I have… Of course I have my opt in for my website.

Michelle McGuire: [00:18:13] Yeah …

Benay: [00:18:16] Yeah yeah. That’d be great. Okay, excellent Michelle. Are we ready. Are you ready to move on to groups?

Michelle McGuire: [00:18:23] Sure am. Yep.

Benay: [00:18:24] Okay, so let’s get into groups and why… First of all, what is a group for people who don’t know what it is and why is this so important for coaching businesses?

Michelle McGuire: [00:18:33] Okay, groups are important I think for every business, but as I said before particularly for coaching businesses, because coaching is such a personal interaction with your clients. They have to know, well I can trust you before I’ll even think about working with you. Perhaps more so than in any other business I can think of. So groups are perfect for this because a group is an opt in, in and of itself. People have to ask to join your group, rather than just click a follow button on your business page. So you can target your group in the description of your group. You can talk about basically who your ideal clients are. So this group is aimed at women over 35 who have been made redundant, for example might be your group. Whatever your dream client is going to be. That’s what you want to put in the information part of your group where it talks about group, for people who are sort of shopping for groups. You want to grab them with, you know, this is who is going to be in my group. This is what we’re going to talk about. This is how we’re going to help each other. So obviously when you’re setting up the about part of your group you don’t want to be to salesy, but you just want to draw people in with, this is the kind of support you’re going to get by joining this group and this is what you’ll get out of it. This is how we can help each other. Obviously your purpose for the group is to bring in new potential clients and then turn them into clients through being part of your group. So that’s the main focus, is for you it’s creating a captive audience of people that you can ask questions of, you can get feedback from. You can convert into clients. If you’re looking at creating any information products or courses down the track, it’s a great way to find out what people are looking for in those terms. So yeah a group is so so useful.

Benay: [00:20:12] Okay so there might be some people who already have groups going that are listening and there also might be some who haven’t started at all. So for those who haven’t started yet, could you maybe give us some idea on how you even start and set up a group and any rules or where things that you need to have in place to sort of help everyone play nicely?

Michelle McGuire: [00:20:33] It’s really simple to set up you can actually do it from your business page. You’ll see an area sort of towards the middle of the page where it actually talks about groups and it’s a little button that says create group. It’s that simple. So you click on that fill in all the sections. One thing I’d probably suggest is, most people would be a member of some groups already, go into the groups that you are already a member of and have a look at their about section and read through the terms and stuff on their group and just see what appeals to you. And let’s not reinvent the wheel here, just if you if there’s a particular thing that you like from someone else’s group you can borrow that. So they might have a part in their about section which talks about their rules in terms of you know, no spam, no direct selling, no this, no that. So if you see that in another group just incorporate what you like from other people’s groups. it’s fine to do that no one has a problem with it because all you doing is setting up you know how it had all of these groups. So have a look at what other people are doing, see what you like, and then just write your about section in those terms. So you want to say, this is who this is aimed at. This is what we’re going to do here and this is how we are. So you know, we’re all about helping and supporting each other. Please remain positive. Tell us about your, whatever your challenge is you’re working with. Whatever it is that you want to set up. That’s your opportunity to do it, but it’s a really simple process. It’s literally just answering your questions. Uploading a cover image and then your set to go. literally takes five minutes so it’s a very easy thing to do.

Benay: [00:22:00] It’s super easy. Okay and then, once you’ve got your group going, then what happens? What’s next?

Michelle McGuire: [00:22:06] Okay first thing is obviously, you have to, when you set up it have at least one person in your group so maybe talk to a friend first and say, hey I’m going to nominate you as the first member of my group. Make sure it’s okay with them. That’s the only requirement to setting up a group, is that you have to have at least one person in it beside you. So after that of course you would go back to your business page and the first post you would do would be an announcement that we have this brand spanking new group, come and join us, this is what we’re about. And you would share your personal page, you would ask your friends to share it. you Would invite anyone that you think suitable, and it might just be your friends in the beginning honestly. And they might weed themselves out after a while, but you just want to get the group going because the way Facebook works again with their lovely algorithm, they have a feature called suggested groups, which is eventually how you’re going to get a lot of new members. But to get on the suggested groups feature you want to be seen to be an engaging group. So if you’re growing quite quickly in the first few days by doing all of this inviting friends and whatnot, you’ll start to appear on that featured groups area when other people are looking through Facebook and you know just reading the news feeds and whatever. And that’s how you get a lot of new members. It’s always quite surprising to wake up in the morning and have new requests sitting there for people on the other side of the world and you think, wow how did they find me. It’s usually through that that feature of recommended groups. So the more engaged you can be in the beginning, as in growing with new members, Facebook goes, aha, this must be a really useful group we’re going to promote that for them. And it’s totally unpaid which is always nice. So it’s a good organic way to grow your group.

Benay: [00:23:36] You know that’s good. You know while we’re talking about you know, you wake up and get all these requests to join your group, it’s something I’ve got in mine. And a lot of a lot of them I recognize from my email list and things and some you know, and some I’m like, where did these people come from and so you know as the facilitator often will look on their hover over their profile. See other groups they belong to, and I want to make sure they’re legit and their a coach and actually into my you know, into what we’re talking about. Do you do any sort of checking or anything like that before you actually allow somebody into your group? Do you have any suggestions around that?

Michelle McGuire: [00:24:12] Yeah absolutely, the easiest way is that there’s a feature when you’re setting up your group of having the option of asking some questions on the way in. You can have up to three questions, so this is a good opportunity for you to just weed out people a little bit if you like. So for my group for example, I usually ask what kind of business do you have? What do you hope to get out of this group? And what do you hope to contribute to this group? Just I can get a feel of why they’re joining. So that’s always a useful feature is to have those questions. Look, people won’t always answer them and it’s your choice whether you approve them in that case or not, but I often do what you do, I just go check out their personal profile and try and get a feel for who they are.

Benay: [00:24:49] And sometimes if they’re really suspicious looking, I’ll email them or message them, and if they don’t me back then I just don’t believe them.

Michelle McGuire: [00:24:57] Exactly and that’s the lovely thing about a group you have absolute control over who comes into your group. So you can build it how you like. Nobody can tell you not to do that. So the questions are really useful in that sense. Just to give you an idea of who it is and why they’re joining just to give you a feel for how that groups sort of progressing.

Benay: [00:25:15] Okay so let’s get to, this one, I’ve had it one of my groups for almost four years now and it took me a while to actually understand how to be a good facilitator. A welcoming host promotes discussion, I thought it’d be easy, but man It was tricky. And I think you seem to be naturally gifted in this space. Can you give us some tips? How do you conduct a group once you’ve got all these interested parties and members involved?

Michelle McGuire: [00:25:44] Yeah.

Benay: [00:25:45] What do you do you how do you make it exciting and worth their time and worth your time?

Michelle McGuire: [00:25:49] Okay it’s probably easier for me because I think I’m naturally, some people would be diplomatically curious, some people call nosy, either way That’s what works for me. But yes there are a couple of things I always make sure I do. So when you’re getting new members, it depends how many new members you’re getting, in the beginning all go in every day and check if there’s new members and I’ll make a special post that welcomes them to the group. I tag them in the post so they know that they’re in there. I asked everyone else in the group to welcome them and my group is lovely they do welcome new people really nicely. And that’s number one so that they feel like, oh wow they’ve noticed, they didn’t just approve me, I’m not just a number. So make sure that you welcome them. When your group gets a bit bigger and it might be too time consuming. Just check every day, write the names down and once a week do a welcome post. Maybe make it welcome Wednesday or something you know a bit of a thing. But number one, yes, make sure you give you a welcome post on the way in, so that they’ve been recognized and ask them a question. And that’s the other thing I do a lot, is just every post, no matter what I’m putting, whether it’s an inspirational quote or whatever, I use to try and ask the question somehow. Even if it’s just a hey, what are you doing this weekend? I Hope something exciting. Just always thinking if I was sitting down have a cup of coffee with this person, if this group was my friend, what would we be talking about. So you know it’s like building any relationship. Ask a lot about them first and then offer a little bit about yourself. So if I say, hey what’s the run up to this week. Hope you’re doing something fun. I’ll just say I’m doing this you know, and people always respond. You won’t get everyone in the group responding, but you’ll get enough to keep the engagement going.

Benay: [00:27:22] Okay, ask a question. And do the questions need to be business related?

Michelle McGuire: [00:27:23] No.

Benay: [00:27:25] What’s the split there?

Michelle McGuire: [00:27:27] Um, 80/20 is the rule. So 80 percent of what you’re posting needs to be really nothing to do with business. It’s about other interests they might have. So if you know who your dream customers are really well, if you’ve done your homework on that, which wish we all should have. Then you’ll know that they might also be interested in family, or they have teenage kids, or their whatever it is, so you post a lot of stuff related to that and then the other 20 percent of the time that’s when you want to be talking about any offers that you’ve got, or coaching packages, or whatever you are promoting at time.

Benay: [00:27:57] Okay what about… Let’s say, I mean that your group is I guess it’s marketing related, it’s for business. It’s for entrepreneurs, female entrepreneurs. do you ask questions that are related to business or do you ask specifically social things? Like how are you. How are you. What are you doing on the weekend? Or say you know, have you done a Facebook live yet. You know?

Michelle McGuire: [00:28:24] Yeah well both, a mixture of both, but one thing, and this is something we’re just about to run in the group and it’s a great way to do several things at once. I’m just about to run a five-day free challenge and this is something you really want to be doing periodically in your groups is running challenges of some description. So for mine, as you said it is marketing related so something a lot of people are scared of are videos, so we’re running a five-day challenge with video, because number one it gives me something to promote across all of my other social channels to build the group in the lead up to that. So I’m putting lots of lots of posts out there on Twitter and on Instagram and all over the place, saying you know if video something you’re scared of hey come and join this group we’re about to start a five-day challenge. So it gives you a really good opportunity to promote the heck out of the group for a very specific reason. And people love a free challenge. And if it’s something they’re interested in like video or if it’s your clients, if there’s a particular challenge that you see coming up a lot you know, if you work with families for example, you could run a challenge around you know, dealing with teenage kids or whatever it is. I mean you can make your own. But challenges are just such a good way to go, to build the numbers in your group quickly, and to really strongly engage the people who already are in your group.

Benay: [00:29:35] And I know I mean, because I’ve joined the group, and it’s really easy to promote your group to my network, because I’m like, oh wow, you know my friend Michelle doing this really cool challenge, you know, send them a link. And I want to share because it’s just really easy.

Michelle McGuire: [00:29:52] Challenges are just such a good thing for so many reasons. Like I said it’s a great promotional tool, but it’s, in terms of engagement it’s priceless. I mean, you’re going to really get to know those people over that five days or however long your challenge is. The people who are participating you will really dig into things with them. And it will give you a lot greater information about what other things they might be working on or what this information they might need. So all the while you’re gathering really good information about, okay what other programs can I develop if I don’t already have it. You know you’ll get lots of great ideas as you go through the challenge. So yes it’s a little bit labor intensive for you during the buildup and during those five days but it’s so valuable what you get back.

Benay: [00:30:30] I was going to ask how hard is it to actually coordinate and deliver a challenge?

Michelle McGuire: [00:30:34] It’s not massively difficult, it’s really up to you. If you think it’s going to be difficult it will be. I mean, I’m pretty laid back at this stuff like I um, you know obviously because on mines a Facebook Live challenge I’m not doing a lot of content building before that because my… my posting is going to be live every day for those five days to put the challenge out there and talk about the day’s topic, but it’s not massively difficult really. If you just think of it in terms of whatever your challenge is, you’re really going to know your content around that, you’ve probably already got content either on your blog or somewhere else. So just repurpose, I mean if you’ve got a great blog that you have on the website for example, and it’s you’ve made a few posts related to what this challenge might be that you’re going to run, you know, you’ve already got some content there. So start building your posts early so you’re not trying to do them all at the last minute. I would recommend again, that everyone involves video quite a lot of challenges, like just to make the announcement of what today’s challenge is, even if it’s a two-minute video. Doesn’t matter, it’s going to get people’s attention, it’s far more engaging. But it’s not a huge amount of work because even in a big group you’ll probably only get 20 to 30 people participate at any one time so it’s not you know dealing with hundreds of people. So, but do keep in mind of course during those five days or however long your challenges. Yeah it’ll be a bit more labor intensive because you’re going to be going to everybody’s entry or submission for the day and you want to give them decent feedback. So yes, there’s a bit of work upfront, but my view on it is that it’s just priceless priceless information that you’re getting back and feedback from your own clients or potential clients that you just couldn’t get any other way.

Benay: [00:32:10] So really it sounds like you are spending your time promoting it just to get people into the challenge. And then you’ve got whenever content, maybe a two-minute video per day for what you want to… What the challenge for that day is and checking up the responses that the challenge participants make to that video that you post.

Michelle McGuire: [00:32:32] Yeah and then giving them some valuable feedback. But then you know that’s when you pull in the group too, they want to get feedback from everybody else.

Benay: [00:32:38] Yeah yeah.

Michelle McGuire: [00:32:39] One of the really nice things about, one of the reasons people will happily participate in a challenge in a group as opposed to a page or anything else, is that it’s such a closed environment and it’s a really safe place to let it all out as opposed to doing on a business page where anybody can see it. If it’s something like video for example, that scares people, a group is such a safe place for them to do that and that’s something I talk about a lot with in the lead up to it, is that, hey the only people who are going to see this video are the people already in your group. And you already kind of know them anyway because you guys have been chatting in the group and stuff, so you don’t need to be concerned that it’s going to get out there in Facebook land and everything else is going to see it. You can make all of your mistakes here and bare your soul with us you know, and so to speak. And it’s just a really safe place to do it and that’s what attracts a lot of people. So…

Benay: [00:33:24] Okay So it sounds like you know everybody who’s listening here is probably going to rush out and start a Facebook group.

Michelle McGuire: [00:33:32] Well, there’s plenty of room you know, I read the other day there’s five hundred million Facebook business pages, there’s only seven million groups so far. So there’s a lot of room for groups.

Benay: [00:33:45] And how many, have you noticed a trend in how many members a group actually needs to before it actually is useful?

Michelle McGuire: [00:33:56] Look it doesn’t have to be big, I mean I don’t know if I’ve just been lucky, but I’ll tell you sort of can only base this on my group so far, you know ours was very useful and engaging from only about 20 members onwards. So you don’t need a massive group to start getting a lot of really good use out of it and a lot of value for the people who are in the group. It’s really up to you sort of how encouraging you are in terms of posting things that will engage people, or just another tip I have is that anytime anyone posts something, I don’t I don’t obsessively go in right off the hosts didn’t answer them, but once a day, at the end of the day, I’ll go into my group see what’s happened that day and it’s all in the notifications. Facebook will tell you everything that’s happened. And I just make sure to either like, or respond, or whatever, just acknowledged somehow that they’ve communicated and added something to that group. So you really don’t need to spend more than about 15 or 20 minutes a day in your group. It’s not going to take up hours of your time, unless you’re running a challenge, in which case yes it’s a bit more labor intensive during those times. But on the whole 15 to 20 minutes a day is all you really should probably be looking to spend any good.

Benay: [00:35:00] That’s good. I know that was one of the questions that we had from one of the people in my group who were looking forward to this interview today.

[00:35:06] Because it’s scary, you say group, people think oh I’ve already got so much on my plate, I can’t do it. But it’s not massively time consuming unless you want it to be.

Benay: [00:35:16] Yeah. Okay. Michelle that has been just a pot full of gold actually. Thank you so much! If There was one thing you’d like our coach listeners to take away from our interview today, what would you like that to be?

Michelle McGuire: [00:35:33] I thought a lot about this actually, I figured you’d ask me a question like that. I think specifically because listening as a coach you know; as coaches we ask our clients to get out of their own way by getting out of their comfort zone. So I think we need to take our own advice. If this is something that scares you it’s a really good reason to do it. Specifically, videos, specifically groups. If those two things are something that when I say it and you go that’s the exact reason why you should do this. So we should follow our own advice. We are Always asking our clients to get out of their own way and get out of their comfort zone. That’s what we need to do too.

Benay: [00:36:05] All right Excellent points to leave everyone with. And If somebody wants to learn more about your work, or I think possibly get onto your group and get into that Facebook Live challenge. Where do they need to go?

Michelle McGuire: [00:36:19] They just need to pop over to the Bossy Girls Social Club on Facebook, so just search for that group and request to join, I’ll approve you straight away and I will make sure I welcome you. And yeah, we have a challenge starting on the 3rd of October so definitely a good time to jump in now and by the end of the five-day challenge, trust me you will be so unconcerned about video, you’ll wonder why you ever were worried in the first place. Hope to see you in the group.

Benay: [00:36:46] That is perfectly okay. Thank you so much Michelle for being on the show today. This has been a fabulous interview.

Michelle McGuire: [00:36:54] It was a great interview. My pleasure.

Benay: [00:36:55] Thank you so much. And thank you listeners as always. And please go over to iTunes and make sure to like Coach Pep Talk. Have A great day everyone. And happy coaching.