How to Host an Online Challenge to Grow Your Community With Ease {Video Inside

Mar 29

How to Host an Online Challenge to Grow Your Community With Ease | Branding and Business Coach | Brandmerry by Michelle Knight

The reason I love challenges is because it allows you to give massive value to your community in a shorter time frame.

They can follow your challenge and already see results in such a short time, which builds connection and trust.

It's an amazing strategy and tool to not only grow your community, but also nurture and develop your community so they are ready to invest.

The first challenge I did was a 7-day video challenge.

Everyday I would post a video and ask my small, but mighty community a question. If they participated every day in the video and the questions, I offered free calls.

Now at the time I had about 10 people in my community and only half were participating in the challenge. However, some of those people booked calls and one of them turned into my very first coaching client.

My latest challenge grew my list by 500 people in just a two week promo period. Challenges work so well because they address a need of your audience, usually the most pressing, and solve a problem quickly.

I’ve broken down 5 Must-Haves to Host a Challenge With Ease.

If you prefer to watch the video training, just scroll to the boom and hit play.

1. dECIDE ON YOUR CHALLENGE TOPIC

The first thing to do is write down the main problems your audience is facing and how you can support them. From this list, choose the topics you’re most excited about addressing.

You need to come up with a topic that you're freaking excited about because it’s going to require a lot of your time and energy to execute. It doesn't matter if someone else just did a challenge on a similar topic, you will present it in a different way for your community.

If you're not excited about it, the challenge isn't going to perform as well as it could.

Once you have a list of three possible topics, ask your audience with a poll which topic they would like the most.

This will not only create buzz around your challenge, but help you finalize your topic. Then you can even go back to the people who voted and invite them to the challenge. My best performing challenges always came from:

Pinpointing the problem
Deciding which topics excited me most
Polling my audience

2. Be specific with your challenge topic

The more specific you are with the title, benefits and outcome for your audience the better.

If I see a challenge, and I think they are going to cover way too much, I won't sign up. Same when it's a 40-50 day challenge. I'm a mom, I know I can't commit to a challenge that long so I just won't signup.

I recommend getting specific in a few areas so you can keep your challenge to a maximum of 7 days (although my personal favorite is 5).

Get specific on:

The problem you solve. This will help you title your challenge and promote it.
The title. This needs to be clear. Many people will decide if your challenge is for them or not based on your title. Remember you’re solving a problem, tell them the problem and what they will get from the challenge in a single sentence.
List out the benefits. Each of the days of the challenge you should be focusing on one small thing. The more specific you are with the lessons each day, the faster your audience will get results. Get clear on the benefit each day to help you plan your content.

3. planning your content for an online challenge

This is the biggest piece of the puzzle. I go through the list below when I'm planning out all of my challenges.

1. Topic. What is your topic, what problem do you solve and why do they care? This will be your title.

2. Map out your challenge and break down your days. Is it 5 days? 3 days? I typically do 5 days. Once you decide how many days the challenge will be, write down what you're going to talk about each day. This is important because it helps you when you're promoting. It also sets your bullets up for your landing page which is important because people want to know why they should sign up. Then fill in the gaps. What pieces do you need to fill in? Is there an emotional component? Do you need a guest speaker? How can you make this a memorable experience for your audience?

3. Create a landing page/opt-in page. The purpose of your challenge should be to grow your list and gauge the interest of your existing community in the topic. You can create landing pages in Convertkit**, Mailchimp or Flodesk.

4. Create a Thank You Page. You can host this page on your website or another landing page. The goal for this page is to invite them where the challenge is taking place, possibly a Facebook Group or Instagram. You can also use Manychat to send them free reminders and this can be a great place to give them that option.

5. Welcome email. This can be really simple, you just need to send them an email when they sign up to give them the logistics of the challenge. Another thing to include is how you will deliver the content, so people know where to show up for the challenge. I also suggest reminder emails of some kind either the day of the challenge or 24 hours before.

6. Promote your challenge. Give yourself about 2 weeks before the challenge starts to promote your challenge. People need time. You need time. This is so important. Give yourself at least two weeks - no less and focus on how the challenge is going to solve their problem.

4. deliver your online challenge

This is easy. Show up and do it. I love live video, but you can also record video in advance and post it. You could also do an email challenge, but I’ve found video always performs better in converting clients.

You can do videos on your Facebook business page, in your Facebook group, on Instagram live, etc. You can also do a pop-up Facebook group which I do for my challenges.

Make sure your title is really strong every single day and tell them exactly what they're going to learn. I like to leave my content up for a few days after the challenge has ended and then remove it so I can repurpose the content into a paid offer or bonus.

5. How to amp up your challenge

If this is your first challenge, please don't try to incorporate all of this. But the more you can show up and remind them about your challenge, the better.

Host a pop-up group specifically for your challenge. This is a great way to build a community specific for the challenge you’re conducting.
Run Facebook Ads to promote. If you’re running ads be sure to give yourself a few more days to test the ads so they can run a full two weeks.
Boost your videos if public. If you’re doing these videos on Facebook live you can boost your videos to increase views.
Add Manychat Facebook Messenger Reminders. I love this strategy and helps increase the show up rate. Use Manychat to send reminders directly through Facebook when you’re going live.
Add a cool prize component (ex. If they comment everyday, they get a free coaching call at the end of the challenge). If this is your first challenge or you have a small component this can help increase engagement.

You can watch the whole video for a more in-depth version of this and several bonus tips below!

Head over to my Facebook Page and be sure to like and comment on the video while you are over there to help more people see this information ↠ https://www.facebook.com/brandmerrycoaching/videos/1624462124256784/