In this episode of Business Minded Mama Podcast, Stephanie sheds light on the best practices to build an online community from scratch. She understands the power of communities and how a tribe can provide you with intimate insights that will support your ideas and shine clarity upon your business.    

Today, Stephanie shares three powerful ways to grow your community for free and how mom influencers can leverage communities to grow their business.

Tune in to learn more insights on how to grow an authentic community online and scale your impact.

TimeStamps:

[1:29] What inspired me to start my Instagram community

[2:50] First powerful way to grow your community

[4:42] Second powerful way to grow your community

[6:36] Final piece of advice for growing your community

[8:07] The beauty of online connections

[9:07] Closing Remarks

Quotes:

“The beauty of online is that you don’t have to be face-to-face.”

Connect with Stephanie :

Facebook: https://web.facebook.com/businessmindedmama

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/stephanieparenza/

  

full transcription below

Hey, yeah, I’m happy to be back here this week with some more amazing content for you. And today’s podcast is going to focus more on the community aspect of this podcast. And I want to give you three ways to grow your community for free. Now, when I’m talking community friends, peers, potential clients, customers, any, and everyone who can be a part of your business, your influencer business, or, or small business or life.

These are all important. And for me, this goes back to one of the main reasons why I started my Instagram and blog, because I had a need for community. I was in a town that I didn’t know very many people while this was once home to me. It was many, many years ago. So I had some family, but I didn’t really have the connection of friends or, um, you know, just those personal needs that I need, which in turn are also amazing for one as a business owner. So I think to start off with ask yourself, are you, are you a need for a community? If you’re trying to build a business, most likely now you can determine, do you need this personally, just solely for business or both. And these three ways will help you to grow that community. You don’t have to do all three of them.

There are options. You get to determine how you want to build your community. Like I said, come back to what you need personally, if anything at all, if it’s merely business and you are running an online business, you may not need to do one of these. And you’ll see why as I go through them. The first one is to connect locally. This was big for me. I wanted that because I didn’t know anyone. So what I suggest to do to connect locally is to, to find other likeminded individuals in your area, whether that be through Instagram net is how I connected first and foremost, start there, but also think about, uh, the small businesses in your local community. Go there, visit with them, introduce yourself, share their products or services on your blog or Instagram page. Make that connection there. As they see you support them, they are in turn going to support you.

And that’s not to say they’re doing that only because, but that’s how you get known. That’s how they see you. That’s how you become visible. So the more you connect in that way by either sharing their product, assuming you love it, of course, or just going face to face or sending a DM to those local businesses or other local influencers. This will help you create that community. The other way to connect locally is find events or workshops with other local influencers. This was big for me. I went to as many of these events as I could to meet as many people as I could. And I have gained friendships in this way. I have gained support system this way, and I highly recommend it. If you have a community that already has these functions in place, go find the time to go. And if you don’t, perhaps maybe that’s something you want to consider starting. The next one I suggest would be to connect and engage on Instagram. This was vital and the beginning, um, like times of my influencing

Business and it has paid off,

Maybe not financially, but the support that you get and the connections that you make, it’s just, it’s so amazing to see. And it’s also how I think you can grow on Instagram. So what I mean by engage on Instagram as find other influencers on Instagram, whose content you enjoy and comment on their post, send them messages through stories or DMS, follow them each day, or at least each week, and start to gain that or start to make that relationship between you and that person and hopefully many others. Um, what you will see is that over time, there will be groups of you that all kind of follow each other because you’re all like the same thing. And those sometimes can turn into, um, accountability groups or just, uh, you know, DM groups where you guys just check on each other each day and you really just, uh, start to, to cheer each other on.

And it really Buttes, uh, builds a beautiful community and, and you build friendships. I have friends on Instagram that I’ve never actually met in person, but I can go to them and I can ask questions. They can come to me and ask questions. So as soon as you start connecting in that way, just talking through comments or DDMs, you really can build up that Instagram community, the last place to really start to build your community as Facebook groups and kind of on the same page, the path or the mindset of Instagram is that you can use these Facebook groups, joining Facebook groups of, of likeminded people. Of course, you can use these to ask questions and really start to find people who are doing things, um, in the same realm as you in the same niche as you and you guys can connect there and you can, you can be accountable to each other.

You can brainstorm together, or, um, really Facebook groups are wonderful because, um, it’s a central location and there are so many times that I can even go and just type in the search. You know, a question I may have, and I can go and see if someone has asked that already. And so while Facebook groups are amazing for building a community, they’re also a great source of information. So you kind of get twofold there. Um, but Facebook groups connect with people there, post a question. And when someone answers, connect back with them to build the relationship that way, uh, same as if someone posts a question and you happen to know the answer, talk to them, let them know, be open to that communication. And if you do any and all of these things, I think you’ll slowly start to see your online or local community grow.

That the beauty of online is that you, you don’t have, I have to have that face to face in. Some people need that the hint they are shy and they, um, you know, don’t want to take that step because they’re scared, but I’m fine. You can connect by just typing. And so, uh, if you are one of those shy people, I highly suggest starting there and now I love face-to-face. So that’s why growing my local community was one of my, um, priorities, but I love all of these ways to grow your community and, uh, go into it, not thinking about a business and making money. That would be one of my suggestions, I think, going to, um, this just wanting and needing that community and that support. Um, and I think from there, you’ll see that, you know, you can start to build that business side more anyways.

I hope you all find this helpful. I hope you guys are on the path to building your community. I think it is so important for us as mothers to have people to talk to. And even if you are connecting on an influencing level, most likely at some point, you guys can start talking personal and it is so amazing to have support, not only professionally, but personally. So I highly encourage you to step out of your box today and at least go do one of these things, connect with one person, just one person today, connect with them and see how that feels. I hope to hear from you. Please let me know. Um, come connect with me. If you are scared to take these steps, just come connect with me. I will gladly, uh, chat with you via DM or email. And I look forward to being back here later this week.