Shana Lynn Bresnahan: Cat, is it Katerina?
Katerina: Yes, it's Katerina. Thanks Shana. That was so brilliant. Lots of. Thinking there to do my question is around the sort of the beginning stages when your community is still very small.
So I have a small paid membership about just under 20 people. And obviously the nature of it is that they will be some lurkers anyway, because some people are like that. So if it's just. Th that few people, the sort of active people are not a lot. So what is the best way to, to ask them these questions, to engage them without putting too much responsibility on the shoulders of those six people that you know, consistently engage.
I dunno if that makes sense.
Shana Lynn Bresnahan: No it makes complete sense and it's a very common problem, especially when communities are small. But I'll tell you this, even as communities grow, it's still a small percentage. You hear about that 20%, 80% rule, 20% of the people do 80% of the work. It's the same thing a lot of times in communities.
So going back to the purpose of the community again, like I think sometimes we get. A little bit distracted because we think that engaging in the community is the purpose of the paid program, but it's not. So our goal is to look at that individual and to go. Are they making progress? And are we supporting them as best we can in making progress in the community?
And for some people, that means they need to leverage what's going on in your community platform. For other people, they're gonna show up on live calls, but they're not gonna show up in your community platform. And then there's other people that just want those emails or those handwritten notes in the mail, those check-ins from you.
But we just need to make sure that we can. Clearly identify who is engaged in any way and who's completely disengaged. Now, if you are trying to get people to engage in your community, which I know can be hard, especially when you are not using something like I. Facebook where people just happen to see it in their feed.
Well used to happen to see it in their feed. They don't need more. Trust me. You need to give people a specific reason to go that provides clear value, which means that they're getting to contribute to a valuable conversation or you are offering something of value to them and use the other.
Communication tool you have. So use email to drive them into your heartbeat Community, for example. So we, you may post a post in your Heartbeat community that is like a open coaching session or something like, Hey, today I want us to focus on this. This thing, this piece of content, and we're gonna dive deep.
I want you sharing your examples here, and I'm gonna give you feedback. This is just an example. I could post that and the people engaged in the community will see it, but I could also email that link to that post, to my list, to my email list of people to tell them to go and engage because we have a great conversation going.
So drive people intentionally into your community and give them a reason to show up.
Katerina: Yeah, that's a good idea. And in many ways I already do that because I do a weekly check-in email that is, not automated, but is handwritten where I link to every single interesting post that has happened that week.
So I just find that in the end it's going to be the same six people that will then, use that opportunity, which,
Shana Lynn Bresnahan: yep, which, and I will say this, lean into those six, help those six get amazing results. Because those are the six that are gonna be incredible stories that help you grow that membership.
Yeah, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make 'em drink.
Katerina: Thank you.
Shana Lynn Bresnahan: I do have a couple of ways that you can dive deeper into this. So I have a podcast that's called Community Creators. You can just go to my website, Shana lynn.com. Let me see, I think right here. Yeah. Community Creators is my podcast.
It's linked at on my website. Most of them are short, but I do have some interviews in there that are with other community creators that are a bit longer. I also have a resource for you all. I probably should have put this somewhere. If you go to connection ideas.com. You're gonna get a list of over 77 different ideas for creating more connection in your community.
So connection ideas.com, it's a free list. You're gonna get a ton of ideas. So if you're a little dry, if you're like, man, I don't know what to do next. I'd done a 50,000 engagement post. What else could I do? Give yourself the give. Give yourself the freedom to play, okay? And that connection ideas.com will allow you to do that.
And if you ever decide that you wanna go really deep and you want support in growing your community through any of those channels, you're gonna learn about my community training program. And, but always start with the podcast. Always start with the free guide. And through that, if you wanna go even deeper, you'll have the opportunity to do.
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