When you’re creating your course, you want to offer the best deliverables possible for your students. And even though I know you want the best for your students, you also have to think about what’s best for your business. Do these deliverables work for you and your goals, or do they just not fit into your plan. Let’s look at Facebook Groups, for example. They can be a great addition to your course. They can allow your students to interact, learn from each other, and get more out of the course as a community. But if they don’t fit into your business plan, they may be more work than they’re worth.

There are some pros and cons to Facebook groups, but what we want to focus on today is whether or not a Facebook group fits into your business. Are you debating whether to include your group as one of your course deliverables? Here’s how to know if a group will work for you and your students:

A Facebook Group Might Not Be Ideal If:

Your ideal client doesn’t use Facebook or Facebook Groups regularly

Facebook is more than a social media platform. It has a place in our culture, and if your audience doesn’t resonate with that part of the culture, it might not be a good idea to set up your community group there. 

Depending on your ideal client’s age and interests, Facebook may not be where they like to spend their time. They could be on Instagram, Pinterest, TikTok, or even Discord. There’s a whole new world online and everyone is exploring different parts of it, not just Facebook. Before you consider creating a group, you should figure out where everyone is first. If Facebook isn’t an option, you could try using more direct community platforms like Circle, Slack, or MightyNetworks.

If none of these work, you may even want to consider leaving the community component out altogether. A community is a deliverable included in your course, you don’t necessarily need to include it if it doesn’t fit into your business and your community if it doesn’t work. 

You want your course delivery to be more automated and hands-off for you as the creator. 

Take a look at your course from a student’s perspective. It’s possible that your content alone is more than enough. As long as you’ve delivered enough material so that your clients can achieve their goals with the course alone, you’re good. 

And, if you as the creator don’t have a desire to provide ongoing engagement and additional support for your students, don’t do it! Because it will be you that burns out from interactive work you don’t want to do. Think critically about where you’re putting your energy before you start offering personal interactions, especially with lower-priced programs. You may not want to include any live support at all and that’s perfectly fine. Do what works, don’t force what doesn’t. 

Now let’s say the stars are perfectly aligned, your community is on Facebook already, they want to connect with you and students like them, and you have more than enough energy to spare. Let’s explore some more angles that would mean your course would benefit from a Facebook group.

A Facebook Group Could Be a Great Addition to Your Course If:

You’d like to give your students a container to connect with you and support each other. 

Giving your students a place where they can get encouragement and accountability from their peers, as well as share their wins, can be a really fun and exciting element of a course. It also can be a great place for them to get their ongoing questions answered. Of course, that doesn’t mean you and your courses are obsolete, but there are some things you just can’t learn in a book. 

For example, a common question we get is about our mindset. How we keep going when it starts to get hard. Now we can tell you to keep going in our courses, but it feels a lot more genuine coming from someone who’s currently going through it. With a Facebook Group, clients can feel like they’re all in this together, because they are! 🤝

You are prepared to create posts to encourage activity and inspire your students. 

Having a community group means having an entirely new platform you need to make content for. That’s not to say you can’t reuse content, but this definitely isn’t a place for straight-up promotion. This is your in-crowd, people who are currently in your course, so your content strategy will be different. 

Let’s work smarter, not harder. Think about what you’re currently offering in your course. If you have Q&As or live group trainings built into your course delivery, a private Facebook group can be a great place to host them! 

You’ve decided how LONG you plan to support your students on Facebook. 

If you haven’t already, you should figure out how long you want to provide group content for each course. Will this Facebook group be open forever? Or only for a few short weeks? How long will you be providing support in there? 

Make sure you make a plan and let your students know as they’re going through the course so that they’re aware of the parameters around their access to your support in the group. That way everyone’s on the same page. 

But just because their access to you is limited doesn’t mean their access to their community is limited. By giving them a time frame to work with, your students can make separate connections with their online friends while they’re in the group. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard people make separate group chats so they can keep in touch with their new course friends 👯‍♀️

A Facebook group is just like every other deliverable. So only offer it if it’s worth it. If you think your students can benefit from and you like interacting with your students then go for it! But if it just doesn’t work with your business model, don’t force it. Your well-being is important too, so work smarter, not harder

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Launching is part of the gig, but it’s not everyone’s greatest skill. Nor do they want it to be. They’re working hard on their latest course!

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Call The Launch Guild! ☎️ My team and I are expert launchers with years of experience under our belts. And with our Full Support Launch Services, we’ve facilitated multiple six-figure launches — and even one six-figure cart open DAY!

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