#144: Building an Online Community with Shana Bresnahan, Community & Retention Strategist
Now that social media has become such a integral part of our lives, it's no surprise that more and more businesses are looking to harness its power to build online communities. Today my guest was my very best friend, Shana Bresnahan, Community & Retention Strategist. She helps people with online programs, courses, memberships, group programs to enhance experience.
By creating a space for customers and fans to interact with each other, businesses can create a deeper connection with their audience and foster a sense of loyalty and brand advocacy. But how do you go about building an online community? Here are 6 steps you can follow:
Step 1: Define your purpose for creating an online community.
Every online community has a purpose and the one I'm creating is no different. As a professional online marketer, my goal is to provide a space for like-minded individuals to network, connect, and exchange ideas about digital marketing. By building relationships with my online community, I hope to curate an environment where members can continually engage in meaningful conversations while helping each other grow and learn. Through this online platform I'm building, I aim to create real connections among members and promote valuable digital marketing resources that can help everyone achieve their goals.
Step 2: Identify your target audience and what they want to get out of the community.
At the heart of building a strong and engaging community is understanding your target avatar—who they are, what interests them, and why they want to connect with your brand. We strive to identify our audience in order to craft relevant content that speaks directly to them and provides an optimal experience. By understanding what our avatar desires from the community, we can build an ecosystem that offers value beyond mere information; a platform for dialogues, sharing knowledge, debating ideas, and making meaningful connections. Our aim is to make sure that our avatar finds exactly what they need when they chose to unite with us!
Step 3: Create a safe and welcoming space for all members of the community.
We believe in the importance of a safe and welcoming space for everyone in our community. We strive to create a safe community that helps its members thrive and lift each other up. It is all about taking proactive steps to ensure everyone feels safe, both physically and emotionally. That means no one should feel afraid or unwelcome in our shared space. Our safe and inclusive community is open to all.
Step 4: Encourage participation by asking questions, starting discussions, and sharing content regularly.
Engagement is an important part of any online community. To keep engagement up:
Ask Questions: Helps to get the conversation going and encourages members of the community to chime in with their own opinions and experiences.
Start Discussions: Lets others weigh in on topics that matter to them and provides a platform to build discussion on any new ideas.
Share content regularly: Helps keep members coming back for more - while also giving those who can't be active all the time a glimpse of what they have missed.
Step 5: Be responsive to feedback and suggestions from members of the community.
As digital engagement continues to become more and more integrated into our day-to-day lives, it’s absolutely essential for individuals and businesses alike to remain responsive to feedback and suggestions from members of the community. From addressing product complaints in a timely manner, to responding positively to user engagement with your content – paying attention to what others have to say is key! Not only will replying quickly foster customer engagement, but it’ll also help you keep up with the always-evolving digital climate. So be sure to listen closely and take any feedback given seriously whenever someone wants to reach out.
Step 6: Celebrate successes and accomplishments with the community members.
We all need a little pat on the back every now and then, and no one knows this better than members of our community. Celebrating successes and accomplishments with others is a great way to keep engagement high and morale high. When we take the time to celebrate each others' successes, both in-person and digitally, it serves as a great reminder that we’re all in it together. Let's continue to recognize each other's wins big or small, because that’s how we build bridges for success across many fields and industries!
Learn more about Shana:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/shanaspeaks
Website: https://www.shanalynn.com
Listen to the Show:
Laura 00:01
Welcome to the Next Level Leap podcast. I'm your host, Laura Meyer top growth strategist to some of the country's fastest growing brands, and mentor to consultants. My signature leap methodology has changed the way 1000s of companies look at growth strategy, and this podcast shares, best practices, and inspirational interviews to help you make that next level leap in your business. Stick around and join me as I share the journey of how we as founders can multiply our income impact and influence by landing on the other side of our next big leap. Let's go!
Laura 00:46
Hi, everybody, I have a really special guest for you today. This is one of my very best friends, Shana Bresnahan. I kind of can't believe that you haven't been on this podcast yet.
Shana 00:56
I'm a little shocked, too. But we're finally doing it.
Laura 00:58
I I know actually probably is an indication of our friendship, where it's not based on what we can do for one another in business. It's built based on like a really true genuine connection. But you aren't just like one of my very best friends and favorite people in the whole entire world. But you're also a community genius, which is what we're going to be talking about today. And we're kind of a ying yang, like I handle the front end, you handle the back end, we're always brainstorming or coming up with solutions together. But why don't you share with everybody who's listening before we get into it a little bit more about what you do, how you help companies and what got you today?
Shana 01:34
Yeah, so I am a community and retention strategist. So basically, like Laura was saying, I help people with online programs, courses, memberships, group programs, create better experiences for the people inside of those programs, so that they stay longer. They never want to leave, and they want to tell everybody about your program. That's really what I do. I mainly do that through one on one consulting. But I also have a community training program as well for business owners or their community managers.
Laura 02:02
Love it. Okay, so much goodness here. And it's so interesting, because I've watched your company just completely take off, like your consulting company has gotten such rave reviews, and you're in such high demand. And it's funny, because not a lot of people like think about that they don't really worry so much about like the leaky back end, a lot of the internet marketing folks that we tend to hang out with are hyper focused on the front end.
Shana 02:25
Yes, exactly. Until they get to a certain point where they realize that they're filling this bucket, and then all of the water is just pouring out of the bottom. And they start going wait, we're getting all these people in. But why are we not making any more money. And usually that happens after you cross the six figure mark, especially when you start to get into the seven figure world, you start to realize that your member numbers are plateauing. Your revenue is plateauing. You've seen this Laura, and you have more team to help manage that program. So your profitability inevitably starts going down. And then the question is, how do I fix that? And that's usually where people end up in my world where they go, Oh, wait, we have problems in our community, or we don't really have a community manager that's helping support in the facilitation of this program, Or what's the retention rate, or we have a terrible retention rate? And we start really going, okay, yeah, you have a really great offer that converts, you have solid deliverables and you have a plan. But what are you doing to help activate people into that program, check in on their satisfaction and making sure that the right fit people are getting what they need and staying.
Laura 03:33
I love that. So what are you have a certain philosophy that I think is really powerful and unique, that you've built your whole business around when it comes to retention, and it comes to keeping people engaged and making them feel seen and heard and valued within any type of program container, whether it's like a membership, whether it's a coaching program, share a little bit more about like your, your, your system, your philosophy about that?
Shana 03:59
Yeah, so I call it the community cultivated framework, because everything is supposed to have a name, like any Laura knows this, right? She's marketing and branding. She's like, just name it name, the framework. But really, it it's nothing that I have created. I will say it's just true of communities. And Laura knows this about me, because we've been friends for so many years. But I am not somebody who just came in one day and said, hey, wow, this community thing is getting really popular. This has been something that I have worked in for over a decade, I was speaking on communities more than 10 years ago. So I have studied communities of old communities before there was internet and really researched what worked for those communities. And it led me to four foundational pillars, and they're pretty simple. When I say them, you're going to be like, well, da, but obviously there's a lot of nuances of how you implement these inside of your community. But the first one is cause and that's really having a clearly identified purpose that people can unite around. The second one is culture which is really understanding beliefs, the behaviors and the boundary is what makes us as a community. The third one is communication, which most of us think about one way communication us to our audience, if you will. But this is really looking at that, that us to them,
them to us, how are we listening to what they're saying? And then how are we facilitating communication among our members. And then the fourth, and probably the most important, and the one that most people come my way for is connection. And really, connection is the thing that people want a strategy for. But it's so much deeper, it's really psychological, it comes down to the safety within your community.
Laura 05:42
Yeah. So let's say that the community doesn't have a lot of safety. Let's say that people are, you know, not feeling like they can be authentic or vulnerable with one another. What are some of the other signs of people not feeling safe in a community? Would you say?
Shana 05:57
Yeah, I wouldn't say if your community is really quiet, now, oftentimes, you can say that's just due to lack of engagement. But if there's lots of things for people to engage around, but when you try to get people to be vulnerable, and they won't, and there's just surface level conversation, that doesn't lead to true connection, then there's probably a safety issue there. If you notice that a lot of people are either ghosting, or leaving, and they were really great community members, and you're just not quite sure why they're no longer involved in your community, then chances are there, there could be a safety problem there. Or if you're, if you're just not, if you're not able to see the community grow and its depth of connection, it's really easy for communities to create surface level engagement, and even to sustain that surface level engagement. But if you're trying to really create the kind of community that leads to deep growth for people and leads to relationships, that transcend the community platform that you're leveraging, then you need to have safety in order to do that.
Laura 07:04
Yeah, that's so interesting, because it's what maybe somebody might think of as like the soft side of business, but it's not like it really does impact the numbers quite heavily.
Shana 07:15
Well, you know, I'm a data nerd, just as much as you are like, that's the first thing I do with clients is like, let's look at the data, because I want you to see how this soft side impacts the numbers because of this.
Laura 07:27
Yeah, for sure. Now, I've always struggled with this, I'll say like, as the numbers get bigger in a community, or as the numbers get bigger in a program, actually, I even cap my own programs for this very reason, I find that it loses intimacy. And as somebody who's very relationship motivated, I stopped becoming motivated, like when that relationship starts dissipating. So
what how, like, if somebody has a really big community, like how do you create more of that safety in that connection within a volume container?
Shana 07:59
Yeah, I was actually just diving into this conversation this morning, because there was a forum I'm in where somebody basically said that they were going for a quantity over quality, and they realized how bad that was impacting their community. So now, they have not just opened up, it's a free group, they haven't just left this free group open to everybody there, they're putting parameters in place that qualify you to be a part of this free group. And having a similar conversation, after that was somebody who runs a community that trains people on how to facilitate deeper connections via live in person or virtual events. And in both of those conversations, what it came down to, for me was, Do you have a strong cause and a strong culture in place, because it's like the game of telephone, we have to start with a really tight knit community that is really aligned with the cause and the culture because the more it grows, the more it's going to be like seven degrees of separation, and that message is going to get diluted. So oftentimes, we start a community, and we don't have clarity on the cause. We don't have clarity on the culture. And we try and like patch that in on the back end. And so that can really make it hard to keep that intimacy as you grow.
Shana 09:15
But I will say that there are people who will say, you can have a community of 30,000, or 10,000, or 5000, and you can still have intimacy with them. And yes, you can create an intimate space for them. And you can create opportunities for deeper connection to one another. But you will never be able to have that kind of intimacy with a community of 50 as you will with 5,000 or 50,000. You just can't possibly energetically have the capacity for that. So what becomes really important is having a team alongside you that is aligned very well with that culture in that cause and can facilitate that kind of extension of connection. So I think about it like this and actually create stickier and environments when your team is involved anyways, and I know a lot of business owners are worried about that risk.
Shana 10:05
But it's important because just like going into a church one Sunday, we've just experienced this with a couple, we invited the church with us. Last Sunday, actually, they typically you would go into a church, and you might meet the greeter at the door. And then you hear the pastor preach, which is kind of the same environment, a lot of people come into our communities, they hear a son alive, or whatever it might be, they hear that preaching, they meet, like a handshake, maybe have somebody around them during the greeting time, and then they often leave. Whereas in this environment, we invited them, we met them inside of the lobby, we introduce them to probably two or three people before they ever got in to hear the pastor preach. I'm not the pastor, right. I'm not the leader here. But I have a similar vision. And then
after the pastor was actually during the greeting time, a teenager came over to their teenager and said, Hey, do you want to go to youth group with us tonight, you look like you're new, we're going to be there. We'd love for you to be there. And then after church, they met so many people, and then they came to our house for lunch, right. And by the time they had left the church, and then gotten to our house, five minutes down the road, they knew that was the church for them. And it had nothing to do with the sermon, right? I'm sure that was part of it had nothing to do with the look of the church, it had everything to do with the fact that they made so many connections. So if we treat our communities the same way, and we go, okay, how can I not just be a leader, but how can I be a leader who is mentoring and leading by example, for how we want to show up for each other in this community, then your team and your community, become facilitators of connection inside of your community, and they become facilitators of safety.
Laura 11:45
I love that, my gosh, that's amazing what incredible experience your friends had. And I am sure for you too, like you felt a sense of pride, bringing them there, having had that experience, and it probably deepened your connection to the church community.
Shana 12:02
And the crazy thing is they were complete strangers, they just moved to our town, day after Christmas, they posted in a Facebook group that I ran, that they were looking for a church and everybody will tell you how awesome their churches, right, but we just said, our church is awesome. And we would love to have you come with us. And this is what happens when we create a community that is so good that people never want to leave. And they want to invite people into, they have this natural extension where it's like, Sally, I want you to come in. Or if Sally was a stranger, when she joined the community, I immediately want her to feel connected and safe here. So we have to we have to model how it's done first, and then your community absolutely becomes an extension of what you're trying to do.
Laura 12:45
It's so good. What are what are the most common mistakes that you see leaders make other than not lean on their team, which is what I'm hearing you say and really empower their team with the culture and the values, right? But what are some of the other mistakes that people make when it comes to creating a community in their business that that you think might be helpful to share?
Shana 13:07
So going back to that core framework, obviously, we need to have clear cause a lot of times we do when we have a program, it's all purpose, right, we're here to make six figures, we're here to like, learn how to run a salon, whatever it might be. But we don't go in establish a
culture, we let the community determine what the culture is going to be. And I really encourage business owners to outline the beliefs, the behaviors and the boundaries of the community. Because those beliefs are really important. Because you're going to come to a point where there's something posted inside of that group that feels off. And you want to be able to communicate why it feels off and help support people and understanding that. And then those beliefs, what behaviors come from that if we believe these things, how do we behave? And then what are the boundaries that we have, and that will help like I kind of said, you know, where if you don't start with that initially, it's like tainted water. If you have clean water, it's really easy to keep contaminants out of the water. But once it's contaminated, purifying, it is so hard.
Shana 14:11
So you can establish that culture from the beginning. It makes a big difference. And then the other thing that I would say is, and I see this all the time, but we make the mistake of trying to automate everything in our business, so much so that we alienate people in our community. And really, automation should create space for more human touch and human connection inside of our business. And then the third thing that I would say is, if you're not familiar with having a community and you're running an online business, chances are you are really used to talking at people. You're used to getting them on a webinar talking at them. And then maybe at the end some q&a in the chat box. You're used to sending emails talking at them, right when you feel facilitated community have to flip your thinking, when we bring people together? It is for the purpose of shared knowledge and wisdom and facilitating conversation. Otherwise, why did we bring them together? Just leave them on your email list. So if you're going to create a community, you need to be thinking about how am I going to make this more about them than it is about me. And if we bring people together, whether it's on Zoom, or whatever it is, how do we give them opportunities to connect with each other during this time, it's not just a lecture, right? That they could just watch a recording of that is actually an experience that you're facilitating that connection among the group.
Laura 15:39
Okay, so, so good. This is amazing advice. And I think it's something that probably a lot of people know. And then they're like, yeah, and then they're not doing it. And then they don't see that huge result in their business that that community tends to develop, when we're looking at, okay, uncertain economy, people might not be buying as much people are going to be more cautious with where they're spending, they're not just going to like, throw 1000s of dollars at something because it feels good. What do you what do you think business owners can be doing to kind of think about how to use this information to create more intimacy in their business?
Shana 16:15
Yeah, it's really important. I love that you're talking about this, because the business owners that I'm seeing that are really smart and savvy business owners that I have the joy of working with, are saying, How can we better serve our existing customers right now? Because that is the game to play in a down economy? It's not necessarily how do we, you know, try and get all these new people in because people aren't buying when they're in this freeze? It's pre fight or flight, it's freeze, which is where many people are right now. So then how do we serve our existing customers and keeping them in our communities or sending them into deeper level products inside of our community? And that's an important question to be asking. And I would say, I wish I could give every business owner a strategy or a framework that they can use to do this. But the best thing that you can do is to listen to them, my husband was just talking to my eight year old at the kitchen table the other day, who kept interrupting me, and he said, Son, God gave you two ears and one mouth for a reason. You should be listening twice as much as you're talking. I don't think it's stuck with him. But hopefully it sticks with you agree listening. And so I would I would survey, I would start having conversations, if it's a smaller community, you can get people on the phone. But if you're not doing surveys, this is the perfect opportunity to survey the people inside of your community, find out what they love the most. If they could change one thing? What would they improve? What are they getting the most value out of? Because then that gives you complete insight into what you really want to double down on and what might be that Achilles heel, that is lurking, that's going to be the straw that breaks the camel's back, when it comes to whether they stay or whether they leave.
Laura 17:58
It's so good. It's such great advice. I know, it's so interesting. I've gone into so many established businesses where I'm like, oh, did you send a survey when they you know, why didn't you buy survey? Or did you know, they'll go from bad launch to bad launch, but never really asked their audience, you know, what's, what their needs are?
Shana 18:18
I am a survey nut. And I will say this, I always look for every opportunity to survey because to me, that is the best way for us to hear from our people, if we can't get them on a call one on one, which I also very much support. But the thing that holds a lot of business owners back is because they don't know what to do with the data. And they've done surveys before, and nobody on the team reads them. And so I always make sure if we're doing this, we're especially if we do a whole member survey, everybody on the team actually becomes responsible for resume reviewing the results. So I have a process for reviewing the results. I just last week, I was having a review meeting with a client. And everybody on the team had 100 survey responses to review because they, you know, had almost 1000 surveys that they got back. So but what it did is the team now has buy in because they're all a part of this conversation. They're seeing firsthand what people are loving what they think needs to change. And then if it's an ongoing survey, having one person that's accountable for not just
reviewing that, like for example, a cancellation survey, reviewing that every week, but then coming back to the team on a regular basis and reporting the insight that they're getting from those surveys.
Laura 19:32
This is so good. So we were talking about you know how to create this community how to create a sticky community, how to make people feel really seen how to leverage your team to extend your culture, how to make sure that you understand why somebody is part of your community or why they would opt out, asking them the right questions and digging in deeper. Is there anything else that you would want to share with our listeners when it comes to how to develop an engaged community whether I know you we do a lot with membership, probably even your specialty. But I think this information can be easily applied to a group program or a mastermind or anything like that. Is there anything else that you just see as a consistent pattern with business owners where they could implement something sooner than later and really see a result from this work?
Shana 20:22
Yeah, the easiest result with any community is 100%. In your onboarding, always in your onboarding. And it's a missed opportunity for a lot of people. And I think oftentimes, what we forget is that we know where that resources, we know how to submit a q&a. So it feels so obvious to us that we forget that we need to over iterate that for new people coming in. But the first 30 days inside of a program is the most important, right, it's when you're either going to win over that person, or you're going to lose them, because they're confused. So attention is really hard to get when we do this launch, we have their attention. And hopefully, we can hold their attention long enough to get to the offer, right? That's always the biggest challenge, then we get to the offer. And hopefully we can hold their attention long enough to get them to buy. And oftentimes we they buy. And then every all of our marketing strategy goes out the window, somebody else is handling it, we're not thinking about what happens then. But that's just another step in their journey, we have to be thinking, you are still in the creating compelling content game, you are still in the conversion game. It's just now you're not trying to convert them into buyers, you're trying to convert them into activated members. Right? So now it's like, how do I get them to login? Now that they're logged in? How do I get them to complete orientation? And in that orientation? How am I selling them on the belief that this is the right program for them? How do I resell them on the belief that this is possible for them, we have to resell them because buyer's remorse like I'm the queen of buyer's remorse, I buy clothes all the time, and I send back 80% Of what I buy. That's me. But it people do this inside of our programs as well. So we need to be re selling our members all the time, because they will give up on themselves, they will give up on you. And you are the best person to explain to them why this is the right program for them. So for me, it always comes down to that onboarding process.
Laura 22:29
And is such good advice. I love this. And it's so funny, because you're talking about that they fall away. But what I even find in my own programs, as I'm competing gets the other programs, they bought 100 per se. I was coaching somebody in our consulting certification a few weeks ago, and I gave her some really good advice. And she paused and she was like, I'm not going to say anything. And I was like, no, what was it? And she said, Well, I'm part of this other program. And they say that one on one isn't scalable. I was like, I was like, first of all, have you heard of McKinsey, second of all, or Bain or? Yeah, it's just not her path. That doesn't mean it's but then I realized, like in these programs, you might have people in your program that are in multiple other programs, and there may be conflicting advice. And they, they may be worse, I don't advise it. And I can understand why some coaches say, this is the only program you will be spending money on when you're with me. It does, like you're constantly competing to keep them focused on your advice and your in your systems.
Shana 23:34
Exactly, and to get their attention. And that's why, you know, a lot of us, we deliver a lot inside of our programs. And so I wouldn't say you know, 20% of it is amazing. And a good bulk of it is probably mediocre. The reality is, is that we shouldn't be providing mediocre content or mediocre experiences anymore, because people you know, we're in the AI world. Now. That's the hot topic, when we're recording this interview, you know, people are going to be able to learn whatever they want to learn on the internet, however they want to learn it, they will be able to do it for free, pretty soon. So what are you doing inside of your program to help uniquely guide that individual to the end result that they want in a way that is differentiated from what everybody else is doing? That's the important thing to think about. And that requires knowing that individual requires human connection. And that's something that, you know, AI and all of that isn't going to be able to compete with. So for me that that is where you really get to make a difference is the more that you ask questions, the more that you understand the people inside of your programs, what's working what's not, not just what are they consuming, but what is actually helping them get results.
Laura 24:58
Yeah, so good. All right. Well, thank you so much for coming. I could talk to you forever about this. But I'm going to stop here and encourage people to check you out. And where's the best place for them to connect with you? And also, I encourage everyone who's listening to follow you.
Shana 25:14
Yeah. So, if you love podcasts, then I have my own podcast Community Creators with Shana Lyn. You can learn more about that podcast or about how to work with me on my website,
Shanalyn.com. It's s h a n a l y n n.com. And that's the best way to reach out to me and if you just want to talk to me, then send me a message on Instagram at Shana Speaks.
Laura 25:39 Awesome. Thank you.
Laura 25:42
Make sure to visit our website your nextlevelleap.com where you can subscribe to the show in Apple podcasts, Stitcher or RSS. So you never miss a show. And while you're at it, if you found value in what you heard today, we would love a rating on Apple podcast. Or if you simply tell a friend about the show that would help us out too. Thank you so much for listening!
The Next Level Leap podcast dives into the mindset and strategies of scaling your company to the million dollar mark and beyond. Each week, we follow the journeys of innovators, disruptors, experts and leaders - sharing behind the scenes stories of their most challenging moments and greatest lessons learned-all while building their multi-million dollar empires.