The Future of Growing Online Communities
Welcome to the UnCloned® Insider Audio newsletter. My name is Audria Richmond, and I am your marketing and launch strategist. I work directly with my clients to show them how to build unclown brands and launch profitable marketing campaigns. We are the brand that you come to, when you want to become, or remain the obvious choice of your industry. Hey, y'all.
Audria Richmond®:What's going on? I'm excited today to talk about the future of growing online communities. And if you are a person that has a community, you're going to love this episode. If you're someone who haven't thought much about it, you're gonna also love this episode. And if you've been on the fence around creating or making a, community, you're going to enjoy this.
Audria Richmond®:And if you are a community member, meaning you are a part of communities, you're also going to enjoy today's audio newsletter. So let's let's just go ahead and dive right on in. And so the reason I wanted to have this conversation is because community has been top of mind for me for the past 60 days. I've been really thinking a lot about communities and what they mean, and, you know, what is the the state of communities? Like, what's going on with communities?
Audria Richmond®:Like, should we still be trying to grow them? Should we still try to be a part of them? So on and so forth. And so one thing that I have learned about fostering community is that you really don't know what a good community is until you've been a part of a community and you're able to witness the the beauty in being a part of a community. Right?
Audria Richmond®:And so I got a few community stories I wanna tell, that I think will really kinda illustrate this point, and then we're gonna get into those talking points that I have, outlined here. So when I first came online in 2013, late 2013, early 2014, when I was bringing my business online, one of the things I noticed online was that if you were going to learn something online, the best way to learn is through someone's community. Right? And every course don't always come with the community, but luckily for me, a lot of the communities I joined early on had, like, a Facebook group or some type of online community where we can interact with each other. For me, a lot of the programs that I was joining at the time, was was on Facebook.
Audria Richmond®:Right? And so whenever I would consider joining a program, that was the first thing I looked for. Was it going to have a Facebook community? And it wasn't so much about it being on Facebook. It what I was really looking for was, are is there a place for us to gather and hang out with each other and get to know each other?
Audria Richmond®:And so the reason that, you know, I started to to look and search for community is because when I was joining communities online and I was a part of that very first community, that was the first time where I felt like I belonged. Right? That was the first time I felt like people got me. Like, oh, these are my people. But it makes sense because the people who are in the community are invested.
Audria Richmond®:All of us had paid money to be in this group. So by default, that made that community a very high value community because everyone that that was in that group paid to be there. It wasn't like a free group. Right? Because I would just tell you straight up, there are a lot of free Facebook groups.
Audria Richmond®:I'm not there are a lot of free Facebook groups and I tell you a lot of Facebook free Facebook groups. Nothing beats paid community, especially if the community is lit. Right? Now everybody who has a Facebook group for their program are not good stewards of their communities. And so that's something to be mindful of, but you won't really know that until you join the community.
Audria Richmond®:And so when you are in a community, what are some of those benefits and some of those perks that you get? Now for me at the time, it was important for me to get to know people online and foster a relationship with them. And so when you join a community, you don't know these people. Right? And so it's important for you to be a really good community member and ask questions and show up and support other people and like their comments and engage with them.
Audria Richmond®:And so whenever I would join these communities, I would always try to get through as much of the content as possible so I could be a part of the discussion. Because if someone is in the group asking a question or saying something about something that I may be interested in, it becomes one of those things where I can't really be a part of the conversation if I have not consumed the content or if I haven't watched anything. And so for me, I knew it was important to consume the content, come in a group, ask my questions, let other people help me that have been there before me, and just really embrace what what it is. And so a lot of the times when people join communities, they go into a community and they hide. And that's the worst thing to do when you're trying to foster relationships and connections and possible collaborations and or friendships.
Audria Richmond®:And you can't do that if you're hiding, if don't nobody know who you are and you're not introducing yourself and, you know, don't nobody know what you do and how you do it or there's no way for us to get to know each other. And I feel like a lot of the communities that I was a part of online initially were all about everybody getting to know each other and just being really cool. Right? But then, you know, over time, community starts to get weird when the leader gets weird. And one of the communities that I was a part of, one of the leaders basically got thrown under the bus doing the doing a lot of the the crises that was happening in the black communities.
Audria Richmond®:And one of the things that leaders don't understand, especially when it comes to community, If you don't do right by your people, they will revolt against you. And so if you're not really good at fostering community and respecting everybody in your community and having equal rights and equal understanding for people, then you probably shouldn't be a community owner. Right? And so one of the reasons why we have community, I was one of those people who would create a Facebook group, close it. Facebook, create a Facebook group, close it.
Audria Richmond®:Create a Facebook group, close it. And it wasn't that I was opening and closing because I didn't want to. I just felt like the vibes of the community wasn't there, and I didn't really have a system, for really indoctrinating and onboarding people early on. Knowing what I know now, I believe because, you know, we recently reopened our community 2 years ago, and I feel like this run with the community has been way better. And I also believe that when we move to this new platform, that's gonna be a game changer.
Audria Richmond®:I'm a talk about that in a moment. But I believe that when we move to this new platform, we're gonna be able to really manage the community at a greater level than we have been able to do on Facebook. And so why communities? Right? We already talked about why communities are important and why you wanna be around 1.
Audria Richmond®:But just to reflect just to to to recap really quick before we dive into these other talking points, community is about just gathering. People of shared interests and interacting and providing value and just being a really good community member. Right? And so in order to be a person who fosters and create a good community, you gotta know how to be a good community member to begin with. So we talked about why community is important.
Audria Richmond®:Number 2, I wanna talk about what makes a community great. Because, you know, it's one thing to to join these programs and join these communities, but what what should you be looking for? Right? Like, how do you know you're in a community, a good community? 1, is it engaged?
Audria Richmond®:Right? Are people in the group leaving comments, sharing posts, so on and so forth? We actually turn on post approval in our group because people on Facebook are just weird. Like, there's a lot of people who just wanna join other people's Facebook group and, you know, pitch in the group and not add value and just extracted take. And you can see those people from a mile away because they leave these long as stories type post.
Audria Richmond®:And then with a quick little slick thing, if you need help, DM me this, that, and the third. Since you didn't build your own community, you haven't even put up your own advertising, and you're in here forming, forming leads and and people without actually providing value. And so we just started to see so much of that that we just turned on post approval. And I feel like I don't want a community where I can't allow the people that's in the community to post unless everything has to be reviewed. And so as we transition from Facebook to this new platform, we're gonna be spending a lot of time, fostering and indoctrinating from the start what this community is about and removing people who are not a part of it as opposed to just putting on post approval.
Audria Richmond®:If you were that person that just keep, you know, coming in a group and doing crazy stuff, we're just gonna remove you. Right? Instead of putting on post approval and this and the third. Because, you know, people are just hard headed. They're gonna do what they wanna do.
Audria Richmond®:They're not gonna read. And so as when you are a person that is over a community, it's your job to keep that fostered. Right? Okay. So what makes a community great?
Audria Richmond®:Number 1, a great community leader. I believe that some of the communities that I've been a part of had community managers, they had community people that was in the community, The leader of the community was great. They were active in there. I'm not talking about the communities where the leader is nowhere to be found and, you know, you only dealing with the community manager. I'm not saying that.
Audria Richmond®:Right? I'm saying the community leader, the one who created the community is an active participant as well inside of the community because, you know, I'm a part of a community that I just recently joined and it reminded me of what communities used to be before it became what it is now. Right? And so a great community leader. Another thing, set the culture and the expectations.
Audria Richmond®:Like, what is the the community language? What do we say? How do we communicate with each other? What are some of those, things that we that we say to each other that is like, oh, if you heard it outside of this group, you wouldn't know what it means. So, like, what's the culture?
Audria Richmond®:Also, what are the expectations of the members? Right? With our new community, this is not gonna be a community where you just sit and lurk and just look around. Like, if you're not providing value and you're not an active participant, you're gonna get removed. Because if we're providing you with, like, nothing but free resources and things that's gonna help you grow and expand your business and you're not taking it seriously, you can literally just be outside of our community and go not be serious with yourself somewhere else by yourself.
Audria Richmond®:Because I just feel like, you know, I've been I've been running this I've been running an online business for 10 years. And one of the things that I noticed is that you're either gonna make some shake or you're just going to quit and go back and get a job. Right? And that's fine if that's something that you wanna do, but don't be don't be in spaces taking up space if you're not going to act be an active active participant. It is so important that when you join these communities that you are active.
Audria Richmond®:You know, and people always say, well, I can't find community and I can't I can't I don't know anybody who can help me and support me. Go add value. Go join communities. Go support other people. You can't get what you don't give.
Audria Richmond®:And I think that's the whole point of community that I don't think people get. Right? And so when you're when you're creating, when you're inside of a community, you wanna look at the culture, you wanna look at how people are interacting with each other, you wanna see the expectations that has been set. Like this new community I'm a part of, like, in 14 days, if I didn't get busy or get jiggy with it, they could tell by their data and they were gonna remove me. Guess what that did?
Audria Richmond®:That made me get in, get active, and start engaging. And now it's already became a habit for me to be in the community and engage and interact with other people. And so what are the expectations that you're setting? And this is what I've learned from the community that I just joined. I feel so proud about being in this community because the leader has expectations.
Audria Richmond®:I think there are so many spaces where no one there's no accountability, there's no expectation, and there's there's no one to hold people accountable to what they say they wanna do. Because if I'm joining a community saying that I have x y z goal, but I'm not showing up for it, I'm not asking questions, I'm not consuming the content, why the hell did I join in the 1st place? And I think that a lot of people are kinda like in zombie mode. They're buying a lot of things, they're investing in a lot of things, but they're not doing a lot of work. And so it's like you wanna do the work so you won't just be, you know, wasting money.
Audria Richmond®:Right? So culture and expectations. The next thing is providing and receiving support. So I'm one of those people that like to help people and support people if I can, but it don't hurt to have that same thing reciprocated. Right?
Audria Richmond®:And like I said earlier, if you can't give what you don't you can't get what you don't give. Right? And so I make sure that when I'm a part of communities that I try to add as much values that value as I can especially if I enjoy and love the community. And then the next thing is fostering new connections and possibly new friendships. I can honestly say that majority of the people that I, you know, consider my best friends currently are literally people I met online.
Audria Richmond®:I don't I didn't know about them before online. I didn't know them beforehand. We interacted, We socialized at some point. We maybe have done business with each other, and we established a relationship. And that can't happen if you don't if you not known, if people don't see your name, if they don't remember you, if they can't put, if they think of something that you sell, but your name is not attached to that thing and they can't refer you business.
Audria Richmond®:Right? And people keep saying I want better relationships. I want healthier relationships. I want relationships where people get me and we have shared interests. Invest in these communities where those people exist.
Audria Richmond®:People who are serious, invest. You're not gonna find a lot of serious people that are like your people in a lot of free communities. Right? Can you like some people online and kiki and this and the third? Yeah.
Audria Richmond®:Absolutely. But some of my best best best friendships have come from some type of monetary exchange between both of us where we've done business with each other or we're in a group where we all spent money to be there. And so you definitely wanna be thinking about how you can foster, you know, new connections and possibly new friendships. And in my opinion, that's what makes communities great. Right?
Audria Richmond®:Now we have made the executive decision to move our community off of Facebook onto a platform called School. And so if you all are interested in requesting to join, I'll be sure to put the link in the comment section wherever you may be listening to this audio newsletter. But we are moving to school for so many reasons. But the primary reason is we want people to see our content. We wanna be able to engage with our members.
Audria Richmond®:We wanna be able to foster connection and friendships and relationships. We want to be able to support people who want additional support. And, unfortunately, Facebook algorithm is trash. It doesn't allow for us to really connect with the people who wanna hear from us. I think 14% of my audience in inside of my Facebook group is seeing my content.
Audria Richmond®:That's unacceptable, especially when I spend 1,000 of dollars on marketing campaigns to get people to learn and be a part of our community, and it's kinda like throwing money in the trash. And so I don't wanna be on a platform where I'm spending money and the people who pay you know, the people I paid to acquire to be a part of our community can't even be a part of our community. Like, they're in our community, but they're not seeing the post. They're not seeing the content. They're not seeing, you know, people interacting with each other.
Audria Richmond®:And I'm just like, I'm over it. I told my husband, I was like, I wanna detox our community. And, you know, we've had made the decision to move to school, and so so far, at least at the time of me recording this audio newsletter, which is Monday, November 11th, we have, a 164 people that requested to join us on school out of 4,000 and something people on Facebook. I knew that we were gonna have some people who don't come over and I'm cool with that because I'm praying that God has sent the the right people to be a part of this community to be active participants. I don't want a community where, you know, we have the community, but people are not interacting with each other.
Audria Richmond®:They're not talking to each other. They're not supporting each other. They're not helping each other out. And so I wanna make sure that as we are fostering community, that we are we we are creating culture, strong culture from the start. We're getting people to engage and interact from the start.
Audria Richmond®:We're showing people how to not be full of themselves and and get over the fact of putting themselves out there. Like, when I tell you, like, being a part of our community coming into 2025, it's gonna you're it's nothing like you've seen us do before. Like, we're holding every, every member to a high level of accountability, and we're if you say you were CEO, we're gonna treat you like 1. If you say you wanna boss up, we're gonna make sure you boss up like 1. And so if you haven't joined requested to join our community, make sure you go ahead and do that because we plan to open up late December, early January, but at the rate I'm going, we might be opening up early.
Audria Richmond®:So if you wanna be in and you wanna be a part of the community, the new community that's not on Facebook, that we're moving over to school, you can go to school, which is sk0ol.com backslash uncloned. Okay? U n c l o n e d. Eventually, I'm gonna create the redirect and just have a dedicated website. But as of now, it's school, s k o o l dot com, uncloned, uncloned.
Audria Richmond®:So school.com backslash, uncloned. Okay? So hopefully, you all will be joining us over there in that community if you plan on being an active participant and you wanna build a uncloned brand and you wanna be able to foster new relationships and connections and community with like minded individuals. Okay? So that's why we're moving over moving our community off of Facebook.
Audria Richmond®:Now here are some of the goals that we have as we're moving the community off of Facebook onto school. Number 1, we wanna foster more connections and relationships between members. I just feel like a lot of people join communities and it's just like nobody ain't checking in on me, so guess what? I ain't gonna check-in either. And so I wanna make sure we have a strong engagement system for getting people to engage and interact and get to know each other, which ultimately will foster connections and relationships.
Audria Richmond®:The second thing is I wanna hang out with my people more. Right? But I don't wanna hang out with a bunch of people who are just lurking or looking to steal or just not add any value. And so for us, I wanna have fun with my people, but I wanna feel like we fostered a really good relationship and interaction with each other, and we know each other names, we know each other businesses, and we're just having a good time. Like, I wanna have a good time.
Audria Richmond®:Alright? And then the next thing is collaborate and go to and grow together. How do we build brands that are, you know, built for collaboration that is collaborate collaboration worthy? Because I see a lot of people who are like, hey, let's collaborate, let's collaborate, and it's like, you don't have a website, you're not spending money on marketing, you don't have an email list, Like you're not doing things to make yourself collaboration worthy. And so we wanna make sure that we're helping our clients and our community members really get to a place where they can cultivate and collaborate because they're growing together.
Audria Richmond®:So hopefully, that makes sense. Now you may be thinking, okay, should I have a community or not? And I will tell you as a person who initially had a love hate relationship with community, I will tell you if you are not going to show up and be an active community leader, meaning coming in a group, making posts every day, engaging every day, you know, acknowledging other members and answering their questions and showing up for them, then no. Do not start a community. You'll be better off being a community member.
Audria Richmond®:When a community member, you're not you just gotta keep up with the culture of the community and value extra questions and just be an active participant. But if you plan on being a community leader, it is your job to lead the community, to foster connection, to foster relationships, to foster and create a culture and a vision for the community. Right? And so it's important that if you are going to create a community that you're going to be all in and you're not treated like something you're going to outsource to someone to manage. Because the communities that I have absolutely loved, the leader understands that their presence is needed and required and they show up accordingly.
Audria Richmond®:And so that's my thoughts on whether or not you should create a community. And then the last thing I was gonna recommend here is to get this book called Get Together, How to Build a Community with Your People. It's an amazing book. It's a quick read. You would thoroughly enjoy, this book.
Audria Richmond®:So I believe that is the future of growing online communities. I believe that communities is still the lifeblood of any business. And the quicker you can foster community and lead a community and have a really good vision for your community and be there and to support your people inside of your community, is definitely something that you may should consider, especially as a brand owner. So I wanna thank you so much for taking the time to listen to this audio newsletter this week. Please let me know your biggest takeaway in the Unclown Marketing free Facebook group.
Audria Richmond®:If you are not a member yet, please visit the description section of this audio newsletter to join our free Facebook group. And just know that the call to action on these audio newsletters are gonna start changing and I'm gonna start wanting to see your feedback on school. Right? Not now, so you can still come inside the free Facebook group as as of now, but that's going to obviously change as we transition over to school. So until next time y'all, let's go live an UnCloned® life and build an UnCloned® brand.
Audria Richmond®:Bye y'all.
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