How Membership Sites Can Ignite Member-Led Engagement: Strategies from Community Expert Jade Olivia Memberium

[00:00] Micah: Hey, everybody, it's Micah Mitchell here with another episode of the Membership Site Success Show. And our guest today is Jade Olivia of jadeolivia.co. She's a fellow consultant in the Keep Space. And I recently learned a community engagement expert, especially member-led

[00:20] Jade: engagement expert. So Jade, welcome to the show. Thanks. I'm excited. This is a really, really great show. I'm happy to be on it. Cool, cool. So let's dive right into it.

[00:30] Micah: What is member-led engagement in a community? What does that mean?

[00:36] Jade: Yeah. I guess if you could, if you were to take 100 membership owners and pull them and say, what's the biggest thing you want? 100 out of 100 are going to say, I want more engagement. I want better engagement. But then the opposite of that is, if I were to personally pinpoint and call out the two biggest engagement problems that communities have, it falls into usually two

[01:00] Micah: categories. Either there's no engagement and it feels like the owner is just kind of posting all

[01:06] Jade: the time, trying to get people to open up and it's time consuming and they're talking to themselves. Or the opposite problem where there's plenty of engagement, but it's not at all what they want it to be. And it's just kind of like the Wild West in there. And sometimes it can be kind of spammy or negative. And it just, it turns into its own thing instead of what it was intended for. So what I specifically love to talk about and help membership owners with is how to generate, and I chose these words carefully, focused member-led engagement in your business's online community.

[01:43] Micah: So let's, I'm going to use a dumb example. Let's say there's some sort of sports training, let's say tennis, right? And they've got a big group of people in there doing tennis. They add on a community because they've heard that, oh, community goes with membership. I need that. What is the right approach? Like if you, if you have this, you know, let's say ex Olympian,

[02:03] Jade: tennis star, whoever's training people or whatever, where do you start with them? How do you,

[02:08] Micah: I guess, outline that consulting conversation? And I'm thinking of all the people watching this. Some will have a community. Some will be wanting to add one.

[02:17] Jade: Yeah, no, absolutely. I love that question because I would actually venture to say the biggest mistake

[02:22] Micah: membership owners make with their communities is having one just to have one, or because someone

[02:29] Jade: said it was a good idea, or like it's, it's an afterthought or a box to check like, oh, and there's community. So when I'm consulting with business owners about when and how they should start one, or conversely fixing it after the fact as well, is always a conversation about, we have to define everything first. And the biggest thing to define is what is your community for? And here's like my mic drop statement that I want the whole world to hear. And I want, I want everyone to understand this, that community is not an objective. Community is the format. It's, it's the medium, it's the container, but having, adding a community for community is ultimately going to end in a quiet or, uh, you know, kind of unregulated environment because it's just there, but no one knows how, when, why, what it's for, with whom, for what end, and everything's just a

[03:28] Micah: big question mark. So, you know, business owners are like, oh, I added it because I thought it would

[03:33] Jade: be great. Cause as humans, you know, I don't need to tell anyone how much community and culture and, you know, communing with people of shared values. That's a really important part of life. That's why we, that's why we have businesses. It's why we're in other Facebook groups and communities and, and all these different things. But if you're going to have one as a part of your business, that's a whole different ball game. And at the end of the day, the community has to have a purpose

[04:00] Micah: more than just being there. Okay. So I hear the buzzword, like people come for the content, stay for the community. And I think what the purpose of my community is to increase, let's say, retention, um, and increase discussion around the topics I'm teaching. What do you do in a community to, to make it hit those goals?

[04:22] Jade: Yeah. And by the way, I love that you called that out where, um, the result of community is often backend ROI instead of front end ROI, right? Like you're increasing your, uh, your lifetime value of the customer. You're in decreasing churn, you're increasing retention, all of those things. Um, and you're right, people do stay for the family. So I love that so much, but you know, people, so for example, I I'm extraordinarily social. So like I'll go into any community and start talking and having a good old time, but most people aren't like that. Most people are going to go into a space and kind of see what's going on and they won't be the ones to open up and be vulnerable. So my favorite way to, to describe this in a way that just makes complete sense to everybody is imagine that your community, I'm going to draw a really big metaphor here to, it's my birthday party. So if I'm having a birthday party, the objective is people are coming to celebrate my birth. They know, they know they're coming for me. They know why they're coming. They have a general idea of what's acceptable and what to expect. Right. But I, as the hostess of the party or the membership leader or community manager, right. Um, I have to be a very thoughtful,

[05:45] Micah: intentional and considerate host. So for example, in a parallel to onboarding, for example, when you

[05:50] Jade: come in, instead of just saying, come in and help yourself, a really great hostess would say, Hey, you know, bring the doorbell, park on the street. I'll send you, you know, here's the address RSVP, please. Here's what time to arrive. They come in. I welcome them warmly. Here's the bathroom. Here's where you put your coat. Here's where the snacks are. Here's where everyone's kind of hanging out. And by the way, at eight o'clock, um, you know, expect, you know, cake. So that would be a really great parallel instead of just saying, come whenever I'm not going to give you my address or care if you show up. Um, but the, I think even more importantly is that it would be a really bad birthday party. If everyone came and I said, great, everyone's here now sit down and I'm going to stand on the table and I'm going to tell you my birth story. I'm just going to talk at you about my birth and about, about me and about everything about me and how my birth was awesome. And it's, I'm,

[06:52] Micah: everyone should be glad that I'm alive, right? That would be a parallel to a community where people

[06:56] Jade: have a group and they end up accidentally just treating it like a social media platform where they post and hope for engagement, but that's not what a community is about. That's what your social media is for, not the group. So a really great membership leader will give guidance to people, not just on how to have fun and what to do there, but how to do it without me. So I would say, hey, Micah, by the way, you should totally hang out with Sarah. You guys are both, you guys both work with keep. And then all of a sudden you guys will go and talk about it because everyone knows me because they're there with me and for me, but they don't know each other. So a really great hostess of a party or community manager will pay attention to who's there and no data points about them, which is just another word for friendship and knowing things about people. I'll intentionally make connections and I'll introduce people or, you know, hey, we're playing a game over here and I'll facilitate those activities where people can have fun, not just listening to me talk. So there's, you know, having a really thoughtful, intentional, engaged community is very much like hosting a party because a party isn't about people watching you. A party is about people having fun

[08:06] Micah: together for a purpose. That's such a great analogy. I'm, when I go to events, I might be a little extroverted, but typically I'm introverted. And so anytime I go to a party, if the host doesn't do what you're saying, I'm kind of like lurking around, you know, just kind of what do I do with myself? I don't feel, even if they say help yourself, it's kind of like, uh, you know? Um,

[08:30] Jade: but I love that idea of introducing, you know, if I'm thinking about it this way and thinking of the

[08:36] Micah: communities I've been in, some of them have done just like you said, Hey, let me pair you up with so-and-so you guys have mutual interests, whatever. Let me kind of kick things off, get it started versus just like cast you into there. And I'm sure some, well, I'm assuming some extroverts do better than I do in communities. But for me, if I'm not led into it, I don't really know what to do. And I don't want to do the wrong thing, like overstep and post something I maybe shouldn't have. Tell me what, let's say you have a customer who like we're talking about, they want to retain people. Um, but they might not be that they might not be as social as you, let's say, is there some instructions you give to somebody, you know, like what's the most important do they need to take on a different persona to make this work or does it work for all kinds of people?

[09:24] Jade: Yeah. Well, as far as organizing your team to facilitate, I like to make a clear demarcation of roles of the people that are on your team in the community. Because at the end of the day, the thought leader, the business owner, the content creator, basically, you know, the brand voice for all intents and purposes, they're, they shouldn't be in the community any more than a regular member, just commenting and having fun. Um, it should be, there's a clear line between the thought leader and people are there under that umbrella of their thought leadership. But it's not a place for the

[10:05] Micah: leader to actually be on stage because they should be busy being a brand leader and creating content and teaching the classes or doing the things. And the community is a place for the members to shine,

[10:17] Jade: not the leader under a, for a reason, but it's not a place for the leader to be talking. It's for them to be on the stage and the focus of the conversations is about them. So that's why I like to make a really clear rule between what the leader's role in the community is. It's actually very little. Uh, there's a community manager whose job is to be the hostess and it's their job to know things about people and to facilitate the activities so that people are, um, I'm always drawing attention to other people. So for example, in my professional community management work,

[10:51] Micah: people will hire me because I'm a subject matter expert, but when a member opens up and posts a

[10:57] Jade: question or share something, I, I will always be the first to respond, but I'm always bringing other people into the fold. So if Micah were to post in my community, I would say, that's awesome. I'm so glad you said that. You know, you know, who could be a really great fit for that? My friend, Sarah, because Sarah actually has experience and blah, blah, blah. So I can only do that if I keep track of who's there and remember what's important to them and their levels of expertise. And I can bring people in and kind of push them in the same way. What at my party say, Hey, you guys go over here and talk about this because I know that you two should, but you don't know that until I, until I tell you to do that. Um, but then the other half of the other half of the answer to the question that you asked is so far, I've kind of discussed how the, the team can facilitate that. But as far as getting

[11:49] Micah: members to actually open up the absolute best thing that you can do is to help them, like tell them how, tell them

[11:59] Jade: when, give them screenshots and examples of a really successful post that they could potentially emulate and get value from. So if my ideal situation is, and I encourage everyone watching and listening this to go, what do you actually want your members to do? Because if you can't define that, they certainly can't. So if I were to sit down and put thought to it and say, in a perfect world, my members would be on my website. They'd be engaging with my course that I have set up in LearnDash, but then Membarium knows when they've completed stuff. So I know in a perfect world, I would want people to post and share

[12:39] Micah: something when they completed module one. Instead of saying, good job, you completed module one.

[12:45] Jade: That's a huge opportunity to prompt someone to say, Hey, congratulations. You finished module one, go in the community and share exactly what surprised you, what you found hardest, and ask a question of someone who's been really experienced at this a long time. And then include a screenshot of someone who did that really, really well. So I have a reference point. So tell me exactly and be specific. What, how, when, and why? Like I'm going to get value and feedback from other people's perspectives if I post in the community. So make that really clear. So that's kind of like the both sides of it, how the team can facilitate that and how you can get the members themselves to open up and have

[13:25] Micah: conversations. There's a lot of wisdom in there. So let me unpack it a little bit. So

[13:31] Jade: I can go on for a while. I love this. It's great. It's fantastic. So first of all,

[13:36] Micah: you're saying that the site owner, the content creator, the stage personality, let's say, it's not really their job to run that community. It's their job to establish a place for it, but then having a community manager in there. And I love that because it's, it's like in a lot of situations, you kind of have a setter who makes you look better. Right. And if you do it yourself, they're kind of like, well, is this how this person spends their time? Do I want to spend my time like that someday? Right. Is this someone I want to emulate? What if they do not have, let's say they don't have a team, they're a solopreneur, but they're a thought leader and they're building up their stuff or even that nobody on their team really fits that mold. They might have a tech person or support person. Where can they, is this a position they should hire? Is it something they can effectively

[14:25] Jade: outsource? Yeah, those are, that's a hundred really, really great questions. First of all, I wanted to like call out an example that maybe the people listening can, can draw a parallel to. So when I was saying the leader shouldn't really be the one in there, a really great example is keep. A lot of us are very familiar with keep or have keep or use keep or certified partners. And I know that if I go into the keep Facebook group where they just launched a new community as well, I don't expect to get FaceTime with Clayt mask. I expect to go in there and have conversations

[15:01] Micah: and get ideas from other users. So try to think about that when you're thinking about your own

[15:06] Jade: community and you're like, Oh my gosh, I'm not giving enough value or anything like that. Like

[15:10] Micah: what is your role as the leader? And what is the, what is the other, what are the roles of the other

[15:16] Jade: people who can be the conversational mouthpieces of that? Because if your time is worth what you're charging, then you shouldn't be giving that away in droves in the community. But you know, you brought up a really great point about like, there are solopreneurs, or maybe you have a VA who's not necessarily someone you want to be your mouthpiece because they're more of like a project manager on the side. It's that I, I love to talk about these roles, but it doesn't necessarily mean that it's a hundred different people doing it. It's more like what hat are you wearing when you're doing it? And so if I'm a solopreneur and if I have a, and I have a community, even though I am the community manager and I'm the leader, I do need to separate those roles and wear a different hat. So if I'm a content creator and I'm a leader and I'm scheduling material and I'm being, being an authority in my field, that's one thing. But then when I'm active in the community, it's a completely different role. And I want to make sure I'm not talking about myself or my solutions. I'm talking about them

[16:19] Micah: and I'm getting them to talk with each other, not them talking to me and at me. Cause again,

[16:25] Jade: and I will, this is like my favorite thing to say. And I will say it a hundred times today, Micah is that the worst thing you can do is treat your community like your social media channels.

[16:36] Micah: And that's what we really want to avoid. Tell me more about that. Cause I'm not a big social media buff, but I would have seen them very similar. So what, what is the difference? Can you elaborate?

[16:47] Jade: Yeah. Oh my gosh. Absolutely. So you don't have to be a social media expert to, to understand this concept. The point of social media, especially as a business is for me to post valuable, hopefully high engaging content. And if it performs well, that means people are liking their commenting and they're sharing. And if you think about the level of connection there, it's a hundred percent between me talking at them and them engaging back to me. It's a place for me to be the focus point and for them to engage with me and at me. Whereas a community, I think the biggest mistake people make is they treat it like social media. It's like, they're, they're posting the same thing. Like I'm going to post on my social publicly and then I'm going to post in my community. And then they go, I hope I get

[17:40] Micah: engagement. I hope I get engagement. But I think the way that I genuinely define community

[17:47] Jade: is a place where it's about us and it's not about you. So the goal of your businesses, social media channels is to get a lot of engagement and it's really great. And people are really, really loving it. They're loving you in your community. It's the opposite. We want to get them talking and to shine the light on them and everything is about them. The focus is about them and we're prompting them and we're guiding them through a journey and we're having them talk to each other and them helping each other and commenting and doing the engaging. It's completely, completely different. And, and the

[18:22] Micah: reason I'm so passionate about this is because I, once I decided, I was like, I'm going to document

[18:27] Jade: what actually works. I joined hundreds of communities and the ones that I felt, I don't want to say like bad in, but I guess like very alienated is the ones where I, it was basically like a micro version of their social media. It was just them talking at me, them posting content. And I might comment if I have a question or something, but it's not a community if I'm not meeting other people besides you. I genuinely believe that. At least those are the good ones that people stay for. Because when you say, Micah, people join for the material and they stay for the community, what you're saying is they stay for the family. They stay to hang out with everyone. Not because I hope the leader might comment on my post. That's not why I'm staying in a community. I'm staying because of the people I met there and we share values and we have amazing conversations for a reason. Yeah, that makes sense. I, I think I

[19:25] Micah: get it now. So thank you for helping me understand that a little bit better. Let's do kind of a, what if, so let's say I am the thought leader influencer and I do go and create a piece of content and let's say I, it gets great reception in my social media channels. How do I approach my

[19:44] Jade: community with that? Do I at all? Or, or how does that work or look? I like to tell people that it's not about doing something different. It's about the way that it is facilitated. So a really great example is think, think Montessori, not lecture hall. So lecture hall would be your social media. I'm standing there, everyone's looking at me and I'm sharing information with you. But in a community, you can still disseminate that same information and be in authority. And of course, you want to provide value in your community. You just want to change the approach. So instead of you talking at people, you want to change the approach. So it's a much more group oriented conversation. So for example, one of my favorite communities that, that I'm in, it's free. And I participate every week come hell or high water because it's so fun is the, the leader, she goes live every Wednesday. And there's a lot of communities that do that. The difference with hers is that she goes live and we all get to join. So it's a meeting. It's not a webinar. It's a meeting. And every week you never know who's going to show up, but she has an agenda. We have a conversation, but she facilitates it. And we go into like breakout groups and we come back and we, you know, we, we banter with each other. And it's so fun because we get to be live. We actually get to physically interact and we're learning from her and it's two further levels for people to participate and engage. If you can't be on zoom, you can still watch the live stream and you can chat along with it. And the live stream turns into a post for continuing content and people can watch it later or you can reference it and have more conversations about it later. But that is so much more community oriented than a community where I live stream every week and I talk at you and I teach you something.

[21:49] Micah: Gotcha. So it's not a place to syndicate your regular content. It's not like I built this content. I send it through all my channels and keep including my community. You're saying sure syndicate it in

[22:00] Jade: other places, but when you bring it to your community, it's really that you're trying to have a discussion around that piece of content or, or organize people around it maybe. Yes. Yes. And on a deeper level than that, that's why I always start out talking about how you have to define things first. So if, if I make the decision that my community is forum based, where when I onboard people and I tell them what to expect, I tell them that it's there, that in order to get value from the community, they, they should be posting and they should be commenting and supporting and answering other people's questions. So having those kinds of things defined, because there's other formats of communities, there's like cohorted group learning, like a, like a challenge Facebook group, for example. That's a completely different experience than a forum where you have people kind of just talk and answer at each other, you know, with each other instead of you leading the conversations. So knowing, knowing what the community is for and the kind of engagement that you want, then you can design

[23:05] Micah: your strategy around that specifically. So instead of stressing out about like, oh, what am I going to

[23:12] Jade: say today? And how am I going to facilitate it? Well, that can easily be defined and facilitated if you know the experience that you want people to have and for what reason and what you want people to talk about. That's going to make it a lot easier when the time comes. So we're going to talk about this

[23:28] Micah: today. We're going to talk about this today. Think about, I think, I think my favorite way to, to calm

[23:37] Jade: people's nerves, I guess you could say about, you know, it does sound daunting to, to set the table in such a way where people are happily talking with each other about the things you want them to talk about when they should be talking about it. That's the dream, right? And it sounds really overwhelming

[23:52] Micah: to people. And my favorite way to calm people's nerves is to say, guys, this is really just the same business best practices you already know about, just in the container of your community.

[24:08] Jade: Like your business should have a purpose and a target audience and a capture mechanism. And you're going to prompt them throughout their customer journey. You're never going to have a sales page without a call to action buy now button, right? Same thing with your community. How are you going to prompt them and guide them to the experience that they should be having instead of being reactive? And, oh my God, I got a post today because no one's talking. That's not what community is for. So just think about the same best practices you, you unfold in your own business, having a journey and a purpose and a reason and, and timing and instructions and guidance to get people through your journey and to success. Apply those same principles to your business. And that's when the light bulb should be

[24:53] Micah: clicking for you. And you're going, oh, it's not, oh, and there's community and, oh, I'm going to add it

[24:58] Jade: because everyone told me to. You realize that it serves a real function in your business and it should have a clearly defined objective and format and its own prompts and customer journey to get people to talk about things, but they're going to be informed behind your greater purpose, just like your

[25:17] Micah: business. It's all the same. So let's do a little kind of role play here. So you, you're familiar with Memberium, right? And we've got a community. I have not done a great job of that. I, I did, I guess a great job in the sense that I wasn't part of it at first and someone else was managing it, but I feel like it's kind of died down in there. Maybe we weren't managing it proactively like we should have been. Um, what would you suggest for a Memberium community? What maybe help me define

[25:48] Jade: as an example, what should our goal be there in your mind? Yeah. Uh, well, since it's a, it's an amazing tool for memberships and quite familiar, I use it myself. Um, but the thing is, is that I'm sure just like keep users, right? There's a lot of different kinds of people using it for a lot of different reasons, but the functionality remains the same. I buy Memberium because I need membership, login and logout capabilities, but the, the types of businesses and the strategies behind the reasons people might be using it are going to vary greatly. So that means you as the leader, you can't really tell people exactly what to do at every step of the way their own businesses and their own audiences

[26:37] Micah: and their own objectives are going to inform that. And in those kinds of situations, again, as it goes

[26:43] Jade: with keep in general, I get the most value when I'm hanging out with other users of the same tool, finding out how they're using it. And when they share something, I think I never would have even thought of doing it that way. And it's only from the wide variety of perspective and experiences, not just what the tool can do itself, but how people are successfully using it and how they can support and share ideas with each other. Well, that's an environment rich where you could really

[27:12] Micah: facilitate some amazing conversations. So, you know, I like to think of prompting conversations on

[27:20] Jade: two lanes, one lane being guided by myself as the leader on the timely function. So for example, maybe January is, is, you know, themed about membership UI and like how, if you're using a very on your website, what do you have it look like? Do you set up channels? Do you put it on your homepage? Right. And so you could think about your own thematic content and then design a bunch of prompts underneath. So, you know, emailing them once a week, you know, Hey, what do you think about

[27:49] Micah: this? What do you think about that? Go post it in the group. Right. So you're guiding people to talk about the things you want them to, when you want them to talk about. And then the other lane of,

[28:01] Jade: of engagement prompts to get them to talk is on their own time, their own delayed progress. So as people are going through memberiums customer journey, let's say I'm a new member. Well, you're going to prompt me to introduce myself or ask some questions about, Hey, who's been doing this a long time. I could really use some advice on this and blah, blah, blah. Or, you know, let's say because you can track my app usage, you know, that I've reached a hundred members on my website, right? Well, then you can prompt me and say, congratulations. Your membership is growing, go in the community and give people some advice and tell them about your milestone. Right. So I've just described two amazing customer journey prompts that have no end because you as the leader are guiding conversations on the topics that, you know, important to them. And then the second level is

[28:51] Micah: where are they at? Cause everyone's going to be at different parts of their journey. And that provides

[28:57] Jade: a huge opportunity for someone who has been in your, in your memberium group, in your community for 10 years. And I just joined and I feel helpless and I don't know what the hell I'm doing. And I'm not really techie and I'm scared. And, and I'm going to get a lot of advice and I'm not going to go to that community expecting to own your time and say, Mike, you help me. Mike, help me this. Mike, help me with that. Hey, help me set this up. Hey, I didn't pay for that. I could pay a consultant to do it, but that's not what your time is for. You're the leader and you're there to, to provide the experience for people. But if you can help people both have guided conversations that are timely and relevant in the industry that you can schedule and help them out where they're at, you're going to be able to prompt a lot of amazing conversations.

[29:48] Micah: That makes sense. So there's a, maybe like a date based, you're saying January is this theme, February is that theme, but then there's an individual as they're going through the process, milestone based almost, Hey, you accomplished this or you're new, you know, introduce yourself. Let's talk about the new person introducing themselves because I've been in a bunch of communities where that's what they say. Hey, come in and introduce yourself. Is there any specific thing to make that magic or more powerful? Cause I might jump in and be like, Hey, I'm like, I have a WordPress plugin for memberships. It's good to be here. Is there more of a game or something you can do there? Or is that, is that the idea?

[30:25] Jade: Yeah. A hundred percent, a hundred percent. The best communities I'm in have extremely robust onboarding and welcome processes and systems. And one of my favorite examples is that I'm a,

[30:38] Micah: I'm the manager. Now I was once a regular member in a membership called a monkey pod OG membership.

[30:45] Jade: And I will never forget being onboarded. And I joined this welcome call. It was like, it was a meeting. It wasn't just a webinar. I got to meet people and I, we talked and the owner and the leader clearly lined out, not just what the group is for, what to expect and how to engage. He even included, this is what the group is not for. And the reason that sticks out in my mind so well is because it's funny, but it's true. He's like, this is not therapy. If you, if something in your app broke, this is not the place to come and complain about it. This is the place to come and proactively ask for advice or, you know, let us know, give us backstory that, you know, what have you tried so far? And we, we can all get behind you on that, but it is not a place for you to come

[31:32] Micah: and vent and talk shit. I can, I can picture Greg saying that this is not therapy.

[31:39] Jade: Not therapy. No, it didn't happen. Yeah. And so the table was set so well that the group literally runs itself. And it, I love everything about it because it's a paid membership for which there are already free communities, but people pay for the higher focused value in the kinds of elevated and expert level conversations they can expect because it's the it's, it's set and defined

[32:16] Micah: so well. It's managed well. It's, it's just so cultivated so beautifully that we know, like I

[32:24] Jade: gladly, again, I, I get paid to be there now, but I was once a paying member and I gladly paid that price for the better conversation than for the free for all don't know what's happening in the free communities that are, there's a bunch of official and unofficial ones for keep, but same, same audience, same purpose, but so dialed in that I gladly paid for it.

[32:51] Micah: It makes a ton of sense. It reminds me of live events when you go and you just sat there and you participate versus some events are a little more immersive and there's rules to play, like you're saying, and it just, it ups the game for everybody. It, I guess, prevents those things that would attract. So that's, that's great advice. Here's a question for you, slightly different angle or topic here. I'm typically telling people don't bother adding a community until you have about at least a hundred members. The purpose being that if they add it too early and there's nobody in there to interact with. Right. So in your mind, what is, when should they add it? You know, I'm an info marketer, let's say, and I'm, I'm trying to build up a membership base. Do I put that in initially? Do I wait till some certain amount of people? What's the right approach in your mind?

[33:42] Jade: Yeah. Well, when to start it is in my opinion, a lot more defined by the objective and the purpose of the group than it is the number, because you could have three people who know exactly what's up and have very lively conversations. And you could just as easily have a thousand people who don't know what to talk about. So they're not talking about anything. So it's less about how many people are there. And it's way more about why are they there? When should they engage? How should they engage with whom? For what reason? And when those things are defined, people are more likely to engage. I think one of the

[34:17] Micah: best like kickstart tips I have is, um, I have a whole bunch of them. So I'll just kind of start knocking them out. But so first of all, think about how busy you are as a business owner or leader

[34:31] Jade: doing customer service, especially if you're a solopreneur, you know, you design a course and then all of a sudden you get like a slew of questions that are very unique to their own use cases. And you couldn't possibly make another course about that because everyone's questions are unique. Well, how about instead of fielding customer service, you're, you could design a forum type community where people can ask each other advice, but it will be a lot better if you tell them how to ask a question because not everyone knows that intuitively. How do you ask a question really well? You provide a lot of context, screenshots, videos. This is what I've tried so far. This is, I I'm going to tell you all right that I'm not a techie. So that provides a lot of background for a really good question scheme. So, um, using your community as an outsourcing thing for your customer service is a really great way to kickstart a small community. Because anytime you get an email, you're like, ask the community, ask the community. Because if I'm a course creator and that's why I have Membarium, for example, well, if I have a course, I'm having a course. So I'm not teaching live classes, answering everyone's question. It's meant to be consumed and for people to apply it on their own. Otherwise they're paying for my consulting time. So I can't just sit there and ask questions. Plus when I answer people's questions, you're only getting my opinion. Imagine what an amazing community experience it would be. If someone asked the same question and five different experts answered with different opinions, that the person could, you know, have a

[36:06] Micah: lot better experience and more perspective behind it. Another great kickstart tip I have is for,

[36:13] Jade: and this, this is a little more time consuming, but very, very effective is if I have a community and I only have five members and everything's strategically designed, but it's still only five people that I'm

[36:27] Micah: going to plant five colleagues and tell them, Hey, you're in this membership for free. Don't sell or

[36:35] Jade: anything. Just be smart and be there. And I'll let you, you know, develop those relationships and they could potentially get business out of, you know, so it's a win, win, win for everybody. And you can tell since these are colleagues and friends that you trust. So let's say I had a membership and I was like, Micah, it's very, it's very kind of quiet and new right now. Would you mind if I put you in and, you know, I could direct you on to help me kind of cultivate these conversations? And you'd be like, sure, no problem. So if I have a community, I would keep a private ledger as the manager or leader and say, there's only five people. They know what to say that everything's strategically designed, but it's still only five people. Then I would make a private ledger and I would go down a list. And like

[37:16] Micah: every day I'd be like, well, I want someone to post and I don't, I don't want to do the one

[37:22] Jade: posting. I want to teach them what it looks like. I would privately reach out to you and I'd say, Micah, Hey, will you ask a question in there? And then I'll, I'll privately prompt someone to answer, right? So I'm, I'm staging conversations, but if you do it silently and strategically in the background where I only reach out to one person privately every couple of days, they won't know that I'm around robbing that and I'm getting people to do that. But after a while, let's say I have you and four other of my friends in there and I'm directing you to have conversations and answer. The members don't know that. And the members are going to see that behavior and they're going to emulate that behavior. And they don't know that you're an expert because you're in my community, right? They're not in yours. They don't know who Micah Mitchell is. They don't know all of the things that he does. They just see you answering questions and that gives them permission to answer questions and gives them confidence to open up because they're like, Oh, this is what we do here. And then pretty soon you're going to get that ball rolling. It's going to happen organically. Plus with this strategy, with this strategy in the background, plus with the growth of the membership.

[38:30] Micah: You know, this whole thing kind of reminds me of a well-run mastermind. It's almost like the community models a good mastermind where it's not about the, the thought leader. It really is about how well can you get them to interact with one another and good masterminds often have a lot of rules, right? Versus just free for all. Otherwise it gets a little crazy.

[38:51] Jade: Let's see on the, as far as your tips go, I want to ask you, what's the thing that surprised you most

[38:59] Micah: when you started to, to manage other people's communities? Like what was the thing that you learned? Cause I imagine you were already good at it. You'd already been involved and you said you even went and researched a bunch of them. What surprised you?

[39:13] Jade: I think what's surprising me is, you know, how I'm really passionate about saying like, don't treat your community like social media. Don't just post, don't talk at people. That's not

[39:24] Micah: what a community is. What surprised me is that the only asterisk to that point where I would say this

[39:32] Jade: is acceptable is I'm finding that there's this kind of unspoken growing trend where most people are starting communities for that sake. It's a community. They hope that people form a family, but I'm seeing this trend where people are creating groups as an alternative to their email list. So I might, you know, host a lot of videos on TikTok, for example, and the call to action is join my free group for the lead magnet instead of opting in and getting onto my email list for the lead magnet. And so they're using groups, not as a community, because we all know what community means.

[40:13] Micah: This strategy is not community. This strategy is a group for exclusivity sake. And I don't have a

[40:21] Jade: problem with that. In fact, I've purchased things that way and I've gone down people's funnels that

[40:26] Micah: way. People make a lot of money doing that. It's just that I'm okay with that because I am told off the bat, this is not a community. This is a group so that I can get information. And I have no expectation

[40:42] Jade: of meeting other people. It's not some weird echo chamber where they're posting content. I'm literally put into like a Facebook group, for example, to get more information. And I know that I'm being sold to, and I know that I'm not there to meet people. And so I'm seeing this trend as like an intentional piece of exclusively viewable information in lieu of an email list, which is, again, it's not a bad strategy. I just think it's really important to say

[41:14] Micah: that's a group. That's not a community. Interesting. So they're kind of like hijacking what could be community for messaging essentially.

[41:24] Jade: Yeah. For consumption of material in the exact same way that I would treat my email list.

[41:32] Micah: Gotcha. Where do you see all this community stuff going in the future? Like let's say five years from now, is it going to be maybe the same principles apply, but what do you think it will look like?

[41:43] Jade: Oh, it's, it's not looking good for a couple of reasons. Number one, I feel like the things that I'm saying and sharing aren't groundbreaking. I feel like I didn't make it up. It's like, like I said, this is business best practices. It's just, I care about it in a community,

[42:04] Micah: probably because I'm social and I love communities and I have more online community friends than I do

[42:09] Jade: in real life. And I believe in, in families and in these places are so important. So like, yes, please grow your communities. But as with anything that's trendy and growing, like, especially since COVID online communities, you know, exploded, right? Well, as with anything that's wildly popular and trendy, you're going to see a lot of sucky ones. You're going to see a lot of, you know, just kind of dilution of what it was supposed to be. So like everyone has community now. And then the second thing that, that is discouraging is that there's so many different kinds of tools out there. I mean, every day you blink and there's new automation platforms and there's new community platforms and there's new tools and AI is doing this and blah, blah, blah. And like, there's just so much technology and so much information out there that it just kind of like dilutes it all. And, you know, every time someone's like, join my community, I'm having to navigate a new platform and there's a learning curve. And now I'm on someone's heartbeat website. Now I'm on someone's circle website. And now I'm logging into someone's memberium website. And, but it looks different than someone else's memberium's website. And I don't know what's running in the

[43:24] Micah: background. And there's a lot of stuff out there. So I think it's, it's only made me double down on my

[43:32] Jade: passion for all of this because the things that I teach are platform agnostic. I think at the end of the day, I, I could never recommend a tool to anyone. Their specific use case will dictate the tool that's best for them. I don't walk around going, everybody needs keep. Everybody needs memberium, but if they're a good fit for it, if that's where their business is and that's what their needs are, absolutely. You know, I think people should buy what they need, not what someone else tells them they should have. So when it comes to community, as long as you like care enough to use strategy and have best practices in place, and really, you know, at the end of the day, if you're Don millering it and making your community about them and not you, you're going to be successful. Just the more clarity and the more direction people have, the better. And, you know, I love

[44:29] Micah: your example earlier, Micah, you were like, I'm not particularly, you know, you said I'm an introvert,

[44:33] Jade: but when I go to a conference, if they tell me where to go and the social hours from five to six in this room, but then there was a really fun, a couple of years ago, we were, I was at partner day for a keep conference and they had a really fun speed dating activity where like there was a row of people on one side of the table and on the other side, every minute the buzzer would go and they'd move. It was literal speed dating and it was so fun, but it was incredibly intentional and they

[44:59] Micah: told us what to talk about and they told us what to do. And even though I'm social, I know I'm not the

[45:05] Jade: only one who enjoyed it. So, you know, just treat your community like a really high energy, well-planned conference instead of a concert. People come to a concert and there's a whole slew of people just staring at one band and they're having fun, but they're only having fun with the people that they arrived with. They're not there to mingle and, you know, but a conference is different. We're there to see multiple stages and there's breaks and there's networking lunches, there's happy hours. This is where you go over here, this, and then come to this lunch and learn over here. And that it's facilitated in such a way where you can't not meet other people. And the more intentional the hosts are of that conference, the easier it is to have conversations with the people instead of walking around going, where are you from? What do you do?

[45:58] Micah: Nobody likes that, you know? Not even me. So if you treat it like a party and a really well-planned

[46:06] Jade: intentional conference, I'm going to have a good time. It doesn't matter what tool you're using, just treat people like people and let them be the show. It's great.

[46:15] Micah: I love it. So I feel like I've gotten way smarter in this hour about community. I always kind of knew like, yeah, it's a thing and we need to integrate to something to provide that for them. But I really was guilty of basically every mistake you've mentioned on this call, as far as my thinking and understanding. This has been amazing. This has been super helpful. Jade, how can people connect with you? If they, for example, want more advice from you, or maybe they want to hire you to help them

[46:43] Jade: with their community, what's the best way for them to get in touch with you? Yeah. So jadeolivia.co is not only my brand name, it's also the URL to my website and on Instagram, I'm jadeolivia.co. That's the best place to view my materials. I post a lot of videos of like engagement tip of the day. So lots of, it's pretty much like little pieces of a lot of the stuff we talked about, but in, you know, smaller consumable material. And then on jadeolivia.co, you'll find that I have a whole

[47:14] Micah: slew of free resources, lots of really great material for you to consume, as well as I have

[47:21] Jade: courses that you can take as well. But more than anything, I just, I want people to, to, to, I want to get this message out to the world. I feel like everyone's talking about engagement and everyone's talking about tools and nobody's talking about strategy behind engagement besides building a really nice home. But how are you going to make people feel like it's home and stay there

[47:43] Micah: because it's home? Yeah. I love it. When you first mentioned member-led engagement, when we were talking about community, I thought that makes immediate sense, but I've never heard anyone say that before. You know, how is this not more of a thing? So I think you're doing an amazing thing by, by promoting and teaching all of this because it is going to make much better communities. I've been in good and I've been in bad and it can make the difference in a whole program. Like the content isn't the only thing, right? It's, it's kind of the context, like you said, how it's delivered, how it's packaged. Well, thank you again so much for being here. Is there any last advice that you want

[48:19] Jade: to give people about communities? Yeah. My, my favorite thing to say that will help give people confidence to start pushing towards that engagement without posting is just think prompt, not post, prompt, not post. If you, it inherently means that if you can just lead and guide people and have them do it, but like under your leadership, you're rooting up those conversations instead of

[48:51] Micah: just post, post, post, post, post, post, just say it to yourself every day, prompt, not post. And then

[48:58] Jade: you'll realize that the genius is already inside of you. You already have your module set up. You already have your, your leadership and your authority. So just turn that into a question and prompt them to do it.

[49:13] Micah: prompt, not post. Genius. Well, thank you so much, Jade. Uh, again, it's Jade Olivia at jadeolivia.co. We'll put links under this, but for anybody looking to improve their community game, to improve their existing community or build a new one, I'd highly recommend you reach out to Jade. She's awesome. Thank you, Jade. Thanks. Bye. Bye.