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We, as business owners, are always looking for ways to grow our business, right? And today, in this episode, we are going to discuss “How are you going to use the power of networking online through Facebook groups?” So, let’s dive into another episode of the Bilna Sandeep Show!
We Are Celebrating!
Today I’m quite happy because we are celebrating something. We just crossed a thousand members in our free Facebook group. The name of our Facebook group is ‘Homepreneurs’, and it’s a free community for women entrepreneurs run by the Homepreneurs Club. So, if you are listening to this episode, I’m assuming you are probably a business owner or want to start a business. And if you are a woman or a lady entrepreneur, I would love to invite you to our free Facebook group. So, the link is there in the show notes below or the blog post.
And so, before you continue on this episode, I want you to pause. Look at the show notes, and please send a join request. It’s free. It’s going to take you just three to four seconds, and please do that and come back to us, because I have a lot of things to tell you today, including how you are going to make use of free Facebook groups to grow your business.
1. Shortlisting Facebook Groups for Business Promotion
So, the very first thing I want to tell you is that, if you have a Facebook account and have been active on Facebook for quite some time, I’m sure you are part of quite a lot of Facebook groups. I am as well. So, the first thing that I want you to do is to shortlist the Facebook groups that you are part of, because it’s going to be too difficult to actually be active on all of them. So, decide, first of all, what you want from your business and what kind of Facebook groups you want to be promoting your business in, and I’m going to tell you how to do that.
But first, I want to give you a free resource for this. If you go to the show notes, we have created an Excel sheet. It’s a Google sheet. You can click on that link and you will be taken to a landing page where you can just sign up for it. It’s a freebie we are giving away; it’s basically a free Google sheet. Once you go to the Google sheet, you can create a copy of that Google sheet and use it for yourself. Feel free to edit it in the way that you want. But basically, this sheet is going to help you. First of all, shortlist the groups that you need to be part of. Once you’ve shortlisted, I’ll tell you what the other columns are going to help you with. So, before we go into the details in the Google sheet, I want you to actually look at what types of Facebook groups that you need to be part of in order to grow your business.
2. Join Business Communities and Grow Together: Get Tips and Connections from Other Business Owners!
So, the first thing is to be part of a community of different business owners. So, if you are not yet part of our free Homepreneurs community, you can join our free Facebook community, because when you are part of another set of business owners’ communities, it’s not just homepreneurs; there are so many other communities as well available in the UAE for you to join for free, where you are going to get a chance to meet other business owners. So, when you are part of such groups, what happens is that you’re not just going to promote your business. You’re also going to make connections and relationships with other business owners, and, you know, those connections—you cannot actually tag them with a value or with the amount of money because you might have gone through some situations in your business, some kind of difficulty you’re facing, and probably someone else in that group is also having a very similar issue—you just post whatever issue you’re going through.
For example, you want to ship something to the USA, right? And you don’t know which shipping provider to use. You just put it up as a post in these kinds of groups, and I’m sure there will be somebody who has done it before you, and a few of them may be ready to share that information with you. So, instead of going back and forth to different places researching, someone who is in your shoes or who’s been in your shoes and has done it already is ready to recommend some supplier or some shipping agent to you. And that is a huge amount of time you’re saving in your business, right?
Same way as whatever you know, like the business models that you set up for yourself. If you get a chance to speak to somebody who is in a very similar industry as yours, they are probably ready to share the back end of their business also with you. I mean, not everybody is going to share that, but there are people who are very comfortable sharing such details with you. It depends. It’s a growth curve. Okay. There are people who try to keep it all to themselves, thinking that I have learned that the hard way. So let them also do that. It took me four years to reach it, so I’m not going to share it. So, you will, of course, meet those types of people, but it is inevitable. It’s fine to ask, and if they give you an answer, that’s fine. If not, that’s also fine because I have met both types of people: there are people who really, when I started my marketing agency, I met very few people who were really ready to share their experiences of running marketing agencies for five years, and they were able to help me, so this can happen in your case as well.
And now when newbies, new freelancers who are starting out, and people who want to start their businesses, their marketing agency, I also help them with that because I know I was helped by someone, that is why I could grow quickly. So, I always do the same. I have a policy that I return to the community, so that’s what I do. So, you will definitely find people who are ready to give it back to the community, but that is why you need to be part of such free groups where you are likely to find the business owners.
3. Create Visibility and Build Trust in Facebook Groups
The second type of group that you need to be part of is the place where your ideal customers are going to be hanging out. For example, if you are selling some kid’s activities, i.e. if you are selling a box of kid’s activities, who are your ideal customers? They are moms, right? So, you can be part of different mommy groups. It can be some communities, maybe, for example, if you are in a particular area, like, for example, if you live, I live in Barsha in Dubai, there may be some communities that only focus on Barsha, right? Or it can be something that focuses only on moms and workshops. We don’t know. I’m just giving an example. I don’t know if there’s a group like that. So, try to find groups where there are your ideal customers. And you go into that group not with the intention of directly posting your photos and the links to your business. That’s not what you do in a group, okay? Do not spam any groups with too many posts; people will get irritated. Do not do that. That’s not how you sell.
How to Sell
You walk into a Facebook group, be it an entrepreneurs’ group or a group where you are likely to find your ideal customers; your intention there is not to sell something directly, but what will you do? There you’re going to create visibility for yourself. You’re going to build trust for yourself, so visibility and credibility, that is what will lead to the profitability in your business. How do you create that visibility as well as credibility is, when you show up in these groups as an expert or as somebody who is caring and who can give advice, for example, if you are in a mom’s group and they’re asking about something, you can always go in and help that mom if it is information that you know, and it doesn’t necessarily have to be related to your business as well. It doesn’t necessarily have to be related to the product you’re selling. But when you genuinely care for that discussion that is going on. And if you give a very value-based input into that discussion that is going on, a few of them are likely to take a look at your profile. So slowly, you are becoming visible in that group.
Now I am going to give you a really nice tip. If you are multitasking, please come back to me because this is huge. Okay, when I have given this tip to a lot of our Homepreneurs Club members, in a lot of the training that I have done, and to some of our clients as well, they were all wowed by it. Maybe you already know about it, but if you don’t, I will tell you.
So, any Facebook groups you are part of now, if you are already part of our Homepreneurs free community, I want you to go and try this out, okay? Go to that Facebook group, and there is a place where you can post your message or put a post there; you’re going to see a profile picture of yourself there. When you click on that, you’re going to get an option to edit your profile there. And you will be probably surprised to see that in each Facebook group you join, you can actually edit your profile to suit that particular group. Isn’t that amazing?
You get to share whatever information needs to be shared publicly with that group. So, if somebody clicks on your profile from that group, they’re going to see what you’re going to put up—even the cover image, which you can change specifically for yourself, and even the links, which you can change specifically for yourself in that particular group. So, your intention on each group might be different; you might be a business owner who sells different stuff.
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So, maybe for the mom’s group, you want to put up your mom’s activity, the kids link for that, or the images related to that in the cover image. But maybe when you go to another group, you want to sell your consulting service, so you put that up in that group, you know, and that is the magic of it. And when I first found out about it, I was quite surprised. And I started making use of it with different groups. So do that. If you haven’t done that, write it down for you to do and make sure you do it today, itself, sometime. So, yes, that is something you can do.
4. Write Down Promotion Days and Group Rules
Now coming back to the next point which I want to discuss. A lot of these groups, especially if it’s entrepreneurship or small business focus groups, mostly have a day for you to share about your business, like a business promotion day, so they might call it by different names.
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So, in our free Facebook group, we call it Wednesday promotion, so it’s basically on Wednesday. So, in the Excel sheet I have given you, you can shortlist the names of the groups. You can add the links to those groups, and the next thing you can do is write down the promotion day—whatever that is—and put it there so that you can put it on your schedule, you know, because in some groups, it might be on Sundays. Some groups might be doing it on Tuesdays. Some might be doing it on Wednesdays, so that is an opportunity for you to promote your business on those days, right?
So, write it down, and then also add one more column in that Excel sheet where you can put the group rules, okay? Because different groups operate on different roles, whatever rules you must be aware of. You can put it there because some groups might allow you to post freely about your business on any given day at any time. That’s okay for them. Some groups might have a specific day for you to post it. Some groups may not allow you to post about your business at all. So, whatever it is, make sure you check those group rules, and then you write them down in your Excel sheet, and in your Excel sheet, do not have more than 10 groups, okay? More than 10 groups are too much to manage, so do not do that. Do it only if you find it worthwhile; if you think that’s the right group for you, then you add it to that and shorten the list to 10, because more than that you’re never going to be able to do it. If you start a habit, and if you want to do something for your business, you need to make sure that you’re going to be consistent about it, right? So do that.
5. Join for Visibility, Not Direct Sales
So, and the next thing that I want to tell you is again, I want to remind you once again the purpose of joining any of these free Facebook groups is not to sell directly but to get that visibility. And it is for you to gain that credibility with the audience there, which will automatically lead to profitability. Then you’ll get enquiries but do not expect overnight results if you join today and expect, like, by tomorrow, to get orders from that group. That is never going to happen. That is like an overnight success, right? That is never going to happen for sure.
So, these are some of the few things you can keep in mind. Keeping this as a very short but action-packed, you have got five things to do, right? Do them soon, and I hope to see you in our free Facebook group as well. If you are a woman entrepreneur, see you soon in the next episode; that’s all for today.
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