I moved my private mastermind off of Facebook groups. It had nothing to do with the Cambridge Analytica scandal or the fact that Facebook has been mining and storing our data for years.
Let me back up … for a long while, I’ve been contemplating how to streamline my offers in such a way that I could serve more authors and online business owners while also creating more room for me to take off on an adventure when time and space permitted.
I was mulling this over when I was introduced to Tara Gentile by way of an article she published on Medium. Impressed with her writing and ideas, I continued following and reading her work. I noticed in Tara’s bio that she was the Founder of CoCommercial, “the fluff-free social network for small business owners on a mission.” That was intriguing.
One day I clicked over to CoCommercial and decided to join so I could see what it was all about. I instinctively knew that this community was a model for what I was trying to articulate in my mullings about the change I wanted to make.
Not long after I joined, Tara announced she was doing a two-day workshop at Creative Live in San Francisco. It was about building community and integrating it into your business growth strategy. I booked my hotel and ticket immediately.
Fast forward… four weeks after attending Tara Gentile’s community building workshop, I launched my own community… Marketing Trailblazers.
Why the change?
To be honest, I’d wanted to get the Visibility Mastery Lab off of Facebook for a while, but wasn’t sure where to put it – what platform to use. I want members to feel buoyed up by visiting the Lab, not bogged down by Comparison Fatigue and zoned out!
Facebook groups are terrible for archiving and searching for information.You may have used the “search” function, but you may have also noticed that it doesn’t actually work very well!
There are minimal if any privacy and control issues for members of a Facebook group. Facebook can do whatever Facebook wants with the images and text that members upload. Not to mention that you don’t have much control over what it shows in your stream and who will or won’t get notifications about the posts.
In general, Facebook promotes shallow, often meaningless exchanges over deep, meaningful discussions. This isn’t the kind of culture I want to promote.
I want our Visibility Mastery Lab to be a space for meaningful conversations, and sharing of our vulnerable selves and the challenges we face to get our messages out to the world. But I like Facebook! And I’m already ON Facebook!
Change is challenging. And, as we all know, it’s inevitable.
- Events are shown in YOUR time zone! No more having to scramble your brain to figure out what time the event is! And, if you have a global community, this is important.
- You can find other members based on their “specialty” (i.e., their primary business niche)
- You can find people based on their physical proximity to you, wherever you happen to be in the world (so if you’re traveling, and another member is nearby, the mobile app will tell you! As we grow, this will be super-cool!)
- You can write “Articles” with as many embedded images and videos as you want! (“Posts” are shorter messages; “Articles” are longer ones)
- You can include images and/or videos in your comments on other people’s (or your own) Posts and Articles, too!
- You can send private messages to other members, just like on Facebook
- There’s a fabulous mobile app, that makes it really easy to use on-the-go!
- The content is easy to organize and find via the search function with various filters. You can hone in on exactly what you’re looking for
- It’s a distraction-free zone, solely focused on supporting the members on their marketing journey
What is Marketing Trailblazers all about?
Marketing Trailblazers is a support and social community for adventurous business owners seeking to master online marketing.
Marketing Trailblazers is a community of marketers, coaches, consultants, authors, artists and other creative business owners on the journey to grow our businesses with smart marketing.
The community is designed as a safe and supportive space to ask questions, get real-world, real experience answers, meet your peers, share stories and most importantly grow your business.
Nice writin’ Denise! I really appreciate your thoughts on what you want for your community. I will check out both of the platforms that you’ve mentioned. They seem really interesting.
Hey Wil, thanks for stopping by! Are you contemplating creating a new community for Smart Simple Marketing?
Hey Denise,
Sorry for the late reply. We are not looking to create a new community just yet.
Denise, I have to say that you have hit this solidly on the head, This is the same reasons I had set up my own blog/membership/Forum sites Social media is ok for the purpose it serves but for creatives and artists a whole different world. You have explained this so much better than I could and was probably why people were not “hearing” me
Thank you for this insightful post, Denise. I’m so glad you took this step. I had used Ning years back for my membership group, but I caved when the members said they preferred to stay on Facebook.
My motto for social media has always been “Get in, get out, and get back to work!” and I spend a maximum of fifteen minutes a day on all social media platforms combined. With your new virtual location I am more focused and feel no need to put time restrictions on what I am doing there. Perhaps you have begun a trend, but you have always been a trendsetter.
Hey Connie, thank’s for popping by. I’m looking forward to seeing how things unfold with the community model. I appreciate you being part of the group.
Interesting! Thank you so much for sharing. Looking forward to hearing how things go for your new venture!
This is crazy fascinating, Denise. I’m looking into this so I can create a community of podcasters based off my YouTube channel.
Hi Shan! Thanks for popping over to the blog. I’m happy to chat with you about my experience if you’d like to sometime.
This is a very strong statement for the change you made. Clear and compelling reasons and a real motivator for a business idea I have been working on. Mighty Networks looks fantastic and I am exploring it. Thank you for so often leading the way!
Thanks for stopping by, Tassey. I’m just starting out and love the possibilities so far. If you have questions about my experience with Mighty Networks, feel free to reach out.