The Fitness Business School – Discussing Facebook with Scott Rawcliffe

Full Transcript

Welcome to the fitness business school with Pat Rigsby, the podcast for fitness entrepreneurs who want to make more income, have greater impact, and enjoy more freedom in their ideal business. If you’d like an accelerated route to these goals, email me at [email protected] and put BGA in the subject line and I’ll get you all the details about our business growth accelerator program.

Today we want to talk about all the happenings with Facebook, there have been some changes, uh, with Facebook and kind of the next evolution, the platform and how to best use the platform to grow your business. So you’re kind of my default go-to Facebook guy. So what do you got for us?

So just a few weeks ago the Epic think conference. So that’s a conference – just so you guys know, every year they really announce all the kind of initiatives and stuff they’re going to be bringing forward over the next 12 months. And you know, there’s tons of people there and usually people get scared, like it’s a time of panic as well about lots of changes, but I’m just going to cover the stuff that actually makes sense to you guys. Cause a lot of stuff that make sense, like this is the most random one that I heard of was you can, it’s coming out where you can like tell one of your friends that you have a crush on them. There’s like a button you’ll be able to press and you can tell them you have a crush on them and if they have a crush on you and do it as well, then you’ll both be notified. So there’s a lot of useless stuff like that. It’s kind of changing. So we’re going to focus on the stuff that actually matters. And it comes down to two big things. And then kind of one stat to think about.

So I’ll start with the stat just to kind of get your brain going. They kind of project that this year at some point relatively soon that the amount spent on Instagram ads is actually going to surpass Facebook ads. And I mean 12 months ago, there’s still a lot of people not even using Instagram ads in their businesses. So you can see how such a drastic increase of people using that which is a great indicator for you that they actually work. What we’re seeing a lot with a lot of our clients is, is we’re still getting more leads from the Facebook newsfeed, but the Instagram feed and Instagram stories, it’s creeping up. It’s getting a lot closer. But just knowing that, you know, they’re expecting that more money’s going to be spent on Instagram ads. You can see where, you know, maybe we’re more people’s attention is actually going. So if you’re not, if you’re not kind of using Instagram, I mean, unless you’re going for like the 50 and older crowd right now, um, but if they’re under 50, they are on Instagram. You need to start to think about, you know, what am I going to do there? Because if people are spending money there, that means people’s attention is there. So what are you doing on Instagram to start to generate leads, to build up awareness to, to get people to, to know who you are. Because you know, if we, you pay attention, you can kind of where things are going with, with uh, with Facebook and where they’re going to put their initiative. Cause Facebook and Instagram are basically the same business.

So that’s one just kind of from a, a big overall standpoint on the other two are the importance they’re going to put on Facebook groups. And then messenger and messenger is probably the biggest of all of it as far as like an opportunity and, and shift, um, in general, but also just for us. But I’ll start with groups because a while back and I would say this is maybe like 18 months, two years ago, you know, when we started to get less of our people to see our business post, people would go, I’m going to start a group because everyone will see my group stuff and we kind of use that. Um, or people use that anyways as like a hack. They’re like, I’m just going to be like my little hack that I’ll use. So people, people will see my stuff. But then over time that decreased as well. And especially, um, back at the end of last year, Facebook made a change to the algorithm that affected everything including groups. So people were like, Oh, groups are dead, groups suck. But it comes back to the same thing as always Facebook is going to show, or Instagram they’re going to show the content from pages or groups that get more interaction. They announced at the end of last year that they want more meaningful conversations or interactions with people on the platform. Hence why they’re going to be kind of pushing groups into the news feed a lot more. So you’re going to see a lot more posts from your groups showing up in a news feed as opposed to just even your PR, your friends on there.

So again, they’re trying to, because they see groups as like a collection of people that all have a similar interest that wants to talk about it. So again, leading back to those, those meaningful conversations. So I would take a a good strong look at whether or not you, you know, a group fits into what you’re doing because that’s a great way to communicate with people. And almost in a way, thinking of it as like a, like as a secondary email list or something like that because you don’t want to just rely on that because they could just take it away and you second, I mean, you can siphon people in there, it’s a little less, um, less resistance in the fact that they can just go in there. They don’t have to give you their details yet or anything like that, but you want to capture their details. You want to get everyone’s details out of there. But it’s another way to actually put out your content.

So if you’re sending, you know, if you’re a Pat and you’re sending 17 emails a day, you can put all that content in there. If you’re a normal human being, you know, you might only be sending, you know, three or four a week, but you can also put that in there and think about distributing your content elsewhere. But if you don’t have the time in, in that group to actually nurture conversations and try to make sure there’s some engagement, then I would say even though there that’s an opportunity and that’s where Facebook is going, it’s not going to be an opportunity for you because no one’s good, no one’s going to see your stuff because no interaction happening there. I know for you, Pat, like you have, you have a few groups as well. So I mean you probably see, you know, how that affects, you know, kinda the, the engagement in that group. Yeah. So, so I would tell anybody listening, the Facebook group in my mind is kind of the way that we can use it now and who’s to know what it will be a year from now or whatever else. But the way that we can use it now is kind of like a combination of a media channel that you have a deal of control, a great deal of control over like an email list, but then also a virtual networking opportunities.

So what’s cool about this for you is if you can create a Facebook group where you are the the lead influence or you’re the one basically distributing your content, be it video, email, whatever else. But then also you have the opportunity to network and it’s like the most convenient networking that you can do, right? So we understand the power of going to a networking event, having a conversation with somebody. But most of the time that means we’ve got to leave our facility, we’ve got to do it at times that are convenient to that event, not necessarily times that are convenient to us. So now you can do the same thing. You can have this networking opportunity and be involved in conversations, answer questions, engage and move conversations. Basically from one way where we’re sending content, we’re posting information to two way conversations where it’s interactive, but we’re able to do it maybe during our downtime without having to leave the facility. So it’s a great way to take one way conversations tournament in two way conversations, build relationships that ultimately lead to somebody being more likely to come into your business. And I, and I think one mistake or one kind of thought that, that I think people need to move away from as far as growing their group is don’t think about how many people you can get in your group. Think about how many engaged people you get in your group because you never, only if it only has a couple hundred people, but they’re communicating with you. Again, like you said, it’s about starting a conversation with someone. So, um, and it’s interesting cause I had a similar conversation earlier this week with someone about, they’re like, I need to get 10,000 people on my Instagram. And I said why this is so I can do a swipe up. I’m like, why? Like well cause there’s not stuff you can do. I’m like, like what? Like I don’t know, just lot of stuff. I should have 10,000 right? I’m like, or maybe just a thousand people that actually watch all your stuff and look at it like, yeah, I never thought of that. So it’s like we get kind of trapped with that. More is better. Where it’s like, no, like more conversations is better.

Not just more random people but we sometimes get caught up on like it looks better or that’s what we’re check kind of chasing where it’s like just, and I, and I don’t want to, I’m listening to some stuff cause Oh what’s his name? The membership guy. Membership site guy. What’s his name? Um, yeah Steve McClaren. So Steve McClaren was doing something with someone else. I forget her name, Rachel something. And they were talking about kind of that sort of thing. Cause she’s really good with groups and saying how it’s like just get people to engage and they’re like get a hundred people in a group that are really hyper engaged and just like, and it grow from there. But just worry about how many people are interacting in there as opposed to trying to get more people in there. So I think that’s another thing that you know, just to, to caution you against is not trying to just bring in a bunch of people in a group and just kind of let them do their own thing is just bring in people that will have a conversation and really, you know, value those. Because it’s not easy to say, you know, if you think of your email list, it’s not easy to get someone to start a conversation with that, with you for, right. So there’s another opportunity there, but thinking, not thinking bigger is better, just thinking better is better. Right? Yeah.

And you know, I’m, I’m a big fan obviously of having a channel that you, you can control. So having a, a Facebook group is a lot like having an email list. It’s just you have more control ultimately over the email list. Um, because obviously Facebook changes their algorithms very regularly. They, they throttle the volume of posts that your people will see of yours and, and all these different things. But I think that if you understand that, Hey, I have this opportunity to create this kind of little networking group on Facebook where I can be the leader, I can be the person kind of steering the direction and you know, I can post and maybe recycle some of the other things that I’m distributing in other ways, but it’s a lot more than like motivation Monday, Monday, and we’re going to have recipes on Thursday and whatever else. It’s not just this calendar. Have you posting things that frankly, most of them aren’t going to find important. It’s you engaging you answering their questions. I mean if it were me, I would probably be spending time answering every question I ever hear from people who are interested in hiring a trainer, hiring a coach, wanting to lose weight, wanting to get in better shape, wanting to alleviate back pain. Think about all the questions they would type into Google, all the questions they would ask somebody if they could do a quick video or do a post over questions and then when they have a follow up engage in that conversation. Now you’re the expert, but you’re having a networking conversation.

That would be the type of conversation you would be really excited about if you were at a networking event. But you get to do it from the comfort of your own office. And, um, and just like you’re saying like that, that two way conversation, just, it’s, that’s like mean that’s what you’re after is you’d want to start a conversation with somebody cause that can lead to having them come in or are making that sale. And something else you said was about like, you know, Facebook changing the algorithm and, and I just hear people all the time like complaining about like, they like complain about it, but like, so reframing that at the end of the day, um, you know, if you were doing this like 10, 15 years ago, like there is nothing where you could just put your message out there and 10 people could see it for free. So even 10 people is 10 people. Right? And if it just affects one person, like that could be a client. And all these changes Facebook makes is because they, uh, they realize like that what they have, like their currency is people’s attention and if people are leaving the platform, then Facebook is going to no longer be around.

So they’re trying to do whatever they can to try to keep people on there and having a good experience. Because if, you know, if they just let, they just let us run wild, like how many spammy scammy like weight loss things would be on there. Right. So they, it is a good thing because they’re trying to keep people there. They’re trying to make sure that it’s a good, you know, a good experience for them. And I, and I think, you know, also again, 10, 10 people seeing your stuff for free, it’s still 10 people seeing your stuff for free. Like I’m sure you wouldn’t be upset if you did a workshop and 10 people showed up. You’re pretty happy for the Timmy, we’re going to be there to listen. So it’s just sometimes because we, we got lucky or we, we got spoiled a little bit, um, that we kind of forget. Um, you know, not so long ago what you know that this is still, it is still a good opportunity. Well and you get the luxury of like people think I get the, the word freedom thrown at me a lot from people saying, well I want a business that gives me more freedom. And in reality, businesses are not designed for freedom. They’re, they can be designed for flexibility. You still have a responsibility to those people that, that are giving you their attention and ultimately their money in their trucks. So this gives you probably more flexibility as a marketer of your business than most anything else because you don’t have to answer a question at a certain time.

You don’t have to go to a certain place. You can interact with somebody from your smart phone, from your laptop, wherever you want to do this stuff if you want to do it because maybe your business is slower at two in the afternoon. It is actually an environment where you can get maximum bang for your buck doing your marketing work at your slowest possible hour. Whereas you wouldn’t have that luxury to say, well, I’m only going to go to a BNI meeting if it’s a two in the afternoon, like so. So there are a lot of cool things that we have here kind of at our disposal, but we can’t just kind of set it and forget it. Marketing always needs to at least evolve into an interactive thing if we’re going to maximize the results.

Totally. Totally. So, I mean, and that’s it. I mean, if you have the time, which you can make some time and you’re going to put in, you’re going to put the effort in, then groups is something that you’re going to want to maybe take a look at as something to invest in there and you know, move some people over, um, from your, from your, you know, your Facebook page, from your personal profile, from your email list. Invite them in and just again, think about, you know, less but better people is going to be the kind of better option there. Um, and talking about like more communication. We move into messenger. So, um, what a lot of people don’t maybe don’t know or some people do or some people you know don’t, is that when someone messages your page, you can actually set something up using different, there’s different tools. Um, one is the one that we use a lot. It kind of, it’s the industry standard is many chat. So like there’s many people in this room right now and then chat as in me and Pat are chatting right now. So when someone messages your page, you should to build up a list. So again, it’s a, it’s almost like a bit like as an email list again, but again, you don’t have their, their email content and you can actually send up broadcast to them. So almost, you know, similar to what you would do with email but a little bit different. But it’s as if we start to think about it, this is another way to kind of be a little bit more seamless with, with, you know, having a conversations with people and then also, you know, starting a conversation or bringing someone in to, um, to kind of capture the detail if they’re interested in something.

So you can set up all these kind of amazing like, like flows I think of like a flow chart or you can capture people’s details, um, by, you know, running, running some ads or creating some posts that are talking about maybe it’s your six week transformation program or maybe you want to give them a download of your, your, you know, your recipe book or even another thing is you could use it to like drip feed out something. So maybe you want it to give them like your, the um, spring break, like AB challenge or something. And you could deliver content every day through messenger. Just send them a video or send them, you know, an image or just a download them something to, you know, here’s your five minute AB workout for today. I mean there’s just kind of so many different applications for it. But the nice thing is that it’s staying within Facebook and most people, it’s kind of like you’re, you’re texting when you get texts, like you answer those, you see them cause they’re, they get forced into your, into your phone.

And so people, you know, answer those a lot more and, and open them because I think last time I heard, which was like maybe two months ago, like roughly, cause no one really has like the exact answer but it’s around 80% open rate. I’m on a lot of those. Um, a lot of the messages that get sent out as a broadcast and there’s like people were talking about like 20 to 40% click through rates. I think the forties a little bit high from what I’ve seen, but still like 20% click through like email, like you get like one or 2%, you’re like, yes, I got a 1% click through rate on my email. So I’m not saying it’s something that you know, you’re going to want to abandon email even though people are, I mean, how many times you hear emails dead like once a week at least. Um, but it’s not going anywhere. And you usually, you hear emails dead in an email, right? Um, but we can take that content. So you can think about, um, taking some of that content and actually sharing it, um, through messenger again, because you spend so much time creating good content. And if we only put it out through one channel, I then it can get frustrating sometimes because majority of your people are never going to get to see it or read it or watch it.

But if we have these multiple channels and put it through, and this is another channel that, you know, Facebook’s putting a lot of effort and emphasis on that, we can start to use that. But when we use it, we need to think of it a little bit differently. I’m thinking of it more like how you would text someone. So you look at an email and if it’s like, you know, like 300 words, when would you ever send that 300 word text message? If you did, you probably whoever you set that to is probably not reading any more of your texts ever again. So almost like asking for permission, like, Hey, I just filmed this new video on my three favorite AB exercise. Would you like to see it? And they can have a yes, no button. And then when they hit yes, then you’re kind of, you can give them a little bit more, you can kind of send them more texts or more stuff there because they’ve kind of said like, yes, I would like this now. So we can, we can kind of send that out. Um, but it’s interesting because if people don’t know, uh, Facebook actually owns WhatsApp as well. So they’re looking at, um, again, try to combine like WhatsApp, um, or Instagram, DMS and Facebook messenger, like trying to figure out a way to kind of combine all three of those. Uh, because one thing that Facebook is looking to do, and this is a lot of people’s speculation and just the things that they’ve been moving towards or what Mark Zuckerberg has been doing is there’s an app called WeChat in China and it’s like this app that you can do, like everything you can do your banking, you can like pay for stuff. Literally everything you’d ever want to do, you can do on this app.

So Facebook’s like, like watch your, Mark’s watching that and just seeing like, can you try to figure out how can you do that and bring more things into, um, into just into that one app. And again, at the start I made a joke about the whole, like, you can tell people you like each other. Like there’s, there’s a dating component within Facebook where it just kind of like Tinder or Bumble. So that’s like a good example of how they’re trying to bring in these other things. Think about like the marketplace they’re bringing in, all these things. So like, I know here we have something called Kijiji. What do you guys have in the U S that’s like, you can sell your own stuff and people pick it up. Craigslist, that’s the one, I’m just trying to think what it’s called. So they’re trying to bring in like their own version of it within Facebook. Cause again, if they have people’s attention, they can keep them on there with these different like types of apps or places other people are going, that’s kind of where they’re going. But they’re trying to make from kind of what they were talking about. They’re trying to make messenger. It’s like the key way to, for people to communicate within that.

So if they’re trying to bring everyone in there and keep them there, we need to start to pay attention to what they’re doing there. Because they’re, they’re putting a lot of effort into like how can they make messenger, um, more prevalent within the actual, you know, Facebook and like I said, an Instagram as well, trying to tie it all together. Well, I mean, for me this is exciting stuff simply because, um, you know, it gives us an opportunity for the people that we work with to kind of give them a leg up and keep them ahead of [inaudible] the masses. And, and obviously we see marketing is kind of the cultivation of our relationship and nurturing of that relationship over time until somebody goes from, Hey, we’re aware of one another to now, Hey, I’m ready for you to help me reach my goals. Um, and so, you know, obviously we’ll be talking more and then coaching our clients up about how to, uh, put that into play with both groups and with messenger. But I think this is a good primer and it’s hopefully getting some people, uh, to pay more attention to both of those, uh, channels or sub channels within Facebook and, you know, ultimately grow their, grow their database of people who potentially can be clients and if they play their cards right, move that relationship along along to a point where somebody actually leaves the platform and actually walks in their door.

Well, here’s an interesting thing. I was on a call yesterday, uh, with, with the guy, there’s, there’s two people, they own, one of the bigger box kind of agencies. So they run like they said the box for like companies like social media marketing, uh, and stuff like that. And he was saying how like, how, cause it was about two years ago when it first kind of like the bot thing or the messenger thing became like a craze and it was like everyone’s going to be doing it. And he was saying how like how he could just imagine in like two years time, like where it was going to be at. And he was just saying like, it’s actually not changed that much. Like not much has happened over that two years because it’s been, it’s been a really slow, like adoption to it. So, um, I just see it as like, cause I remember that, I remember like, I remember, uh, I was in LA at a digital marketer event and that was like the big thing. Everyone’s talking about it, how’s this opportunity? You got to get on it now. And kind of not a lot of people did. And we’re literally still about in the same space as what we were two years ago. So it’s that kind of slow adoption to it. So I think that’s the exciting thing, knowing that Facebook’s going to put more effort into it. And I’m like, sweet. I’m like, now we can start to like, if we can make, you know, a lot of our own clients welcome early adapters too. We can kind of jump on this and hopefully really, you know, use it for it. Use it for good and kind of like you said, like build up those conversations and kind of build up the email list and all that sort of stuff.

But there’s like, you know, lap, because this is like, they will face again, like there’s a huge opportunity. Um, but it is, it is a huge opportunity because, you know, we’ve been very slow as not our industry, but everyone to like start to adapt this and use this. And so I feel like there’s been so many changes like technology wise to make it even easier, um, that this is like the perfect time to start to like implement this and start to use it. Yeah. I think that sometimes us as business owners, we may think something is saturated because we’re seeing the B to B side of it, which always is a little bit faster and further along than the B to C side. So if you’re talking about adoption for a local business, I mean it’s still wide open. Um, it’s probably still wide open for most B to B areas, but in local business, both bots and groups are still huge opportunities. So, uh, good stuff. Good stuff. I’m excited for us to continue to, to uh, share more and more about this, but anything else we want to add before we wrap it up for today? I think, I mean those are the, those are the big things there. So I mean, I don’t want to like clutter it with anything else, but just, yeah, that’s, those are the three big things that you need to know about. You know where Facebook, Instagram, everything is moving towards.

Thanks for listening. I’m giving away a bundle of my bestselling books, the ideal business formula, the fitness entrepreneur handbook in the path. All you have to do is go to patrigsby.com/podgift to get it. Also, make sure to subscribe to The Fitness Business School with Pat Rigsby so you don’t miss an episode and you get yourself on the fast track to creating your ideal business.