How To Launch Successfully & Use A Facebook Group for you Podcast with Katie Krimitsos

On this episode of Rhodes to Success I interview Katie Krimitsos, who runs The Tampa Bay Business Owners group and is the host of Biz Women Rock, which is an amazing podcast that features business and entrepreneurial women. Katie’s team did everything right in launching her podcast and today we talk about leveraging the power of a Facebook group for fans. In this podcast find out how Facebook groups can help you engage with your listeners.   Main Questions Asked Tell us about the Biz Women Rock podcast and why you’re passionate about it.  Talk about your Facebook marketing efforts. What was the investment in your Facebook ad campaign? Talk about your Facebook group and how you’ve grown it.  Talk about building your list by having people opt in so they could join the Facebook group.  What is the purpose of your group and how do you make sure people know and understand what is and isn’t appropriate to post? Talk about how you used the group to promote the podcast.    Key Lessons Learned Biz Women Rock Podcast  Facebook pages allow your listeners to interact with you. Groups allow your listeners to interact with each other.  The Biz Women Rock podcast is an opportunity for savvy businesswomen to share their journey. This isn’t topic specific show but rather is story related.  Katie wanted to build a solid community rather than a high number of listeners.    Facebook Marketing  Katie paid for adverts and started a page before the podcast launched.  Within two weeks of advertising she had 2,000 likes on the Biz Women Rock page.  Katie was spending $300-$500 per month.  You need to spend money on Facebook ads so you can get your page in front of the right people but you need to be active in order for this to work  If you have 100,00 people on your page but no one is engaging then the high number doesn’t mean anything.  Katie’s Facebook content strategy was to post 3-5 times per day.  Quotes with a photo of person’s face get a lot of engagement than just the text on its own.   The majority of what Katie posts is curation and not just her own podcast content.    Facebook Groups  This is an opportunity to talk to the whole group and the members get to talk back and forth to each other.  Katie marketed the group to the page, and created a specific graphic for the group.  Katie personally reached out to 10-15 people on the Biz Women Rock Facebook page and invited them to brand ambassadors within the group.  The ambassador role was to ask questions, respond to posts, making their own posts.   There was a general Facebook ad for the group as well one that specifically targeted people who already like the page.  Always provide different content or messages to the group than you would provide on the page.  Anytime an individual in a group feels like you are talking to them directly, your group will multiply and engage more because they will feel like you really care about them.  If you can make 2,500 people feel like they are the most important person in the group then you have done your job well.     Facebook Online Group Culture  The more structure you give the group better behaved people will be and the better the outcome you want to create will happen.  The guidelines (rules) of the BWR group were posted in the group description as well as in the form of a graphic.   The idea of the rules is the keep the group spam free as a way to retain members.  In the beginning the rules graphic was posted weekly or kept as a pinned post.   If someone goes against the rules Katie will contact them personally and if they continue with rogue posts Katie will delete from the group.    Building Your List Via Facebook Groups  Instead of the opt-in on the website, Katie changed it to ‘join our private community,’ which takes them to a button to join the group.   The music in today's episode was written by The Danger Os and produced by Nick Palmer. Check them out at https://www.facebook.com/thedangerosmakemusic    Links to Resources Mentioned Biz Women Rock  BWR Connect (Facebook group) Tampa Bay Business Owners  Entrepreneur Support Services  Interview Connections TV