Ep #195: How to Show Up in Facebook Groups

Hi docs, welcome to The EntreMD Podcast, where it’s all about helping amazing physicians just like you embrace entrepreneurship so you can have the freedom to live life and practice medicine on your terms. I’m your host, Dr. Una.

Well hello, hello. Welcome back to The EntreMD Podcast. Just want to say, as always, I am super pumped. Super, super pumped. I have the most phenomenal episode that’s going to happen. This is so good. We’re going to be talking about how to show up in Facebook groups. This is so good that if you have a Facebook group you can literally send this episode to people when they want to join and say, “This is everything you need to know about my group.” It’s going to be so good.

Let’s get right into it. Why would I come up with this? Because there’s a lot of conversation around Facebook groups. Now, first of all, in our philosophy when we come up with strategy, one of the strategies for growing your business is where your audience already is, right? Think about it, your audience already exists.

So for instance I do business strategy, business coaching for physician entrepreneurs. So that means these people are already alive, they’re already physicians, they’re already ready to start or scale their businesses. So they already exist. But they exist in different pockets, in different places. So the more I can show up in these spaces, the more people can find out about me. That’s kind of the way entrepreneurship works.

So one of the things we talk about is showing up in Facebook groups. So you can do that if you’re speaking at events, if you’re going to organizations and all that stuff. It’s all about putting yourself in front of your people. So in Facebook groups I talk about it and then sometimes people will tell me, “Well, they don’t let us post anything in that Facebook group.” I’m like, “Oh my goodness, nobody is asking you to go there to go post your stuff and spam and post link fests and stuff like that.”

And it comes up enough that I was like, you know what? Why don’t I talk about a great way to show up in a Facebook group where the owner of the Facebook group is glad you’re there. Fancy that, right? Fancy that, they’re just like, “Let me see your post.” And you’re like, “Oh what a breath of fresh air.”

So let’s talk about them a bit. Now, first of all we’re going to talk about five things, five whats. So what number one, what kind of group? Now, I’m not saying these are the only kinds of groups you can join, but as an entrepreneur if you’re using joining Facebook groups as a business strategy, what kind of groups should you join? And you would be looking at groups that are complimentary.

And let me explain what I mean by this. I’m a business coach, I’m not going to go into some other business coach’s group with the intent of growing my business when that’s what they do. They built that community to support their business. They may have hired a VA, hired a community manager, spent a lot of money, spent equity, all of that to build a Facebook group to support their business.

I am not going in there with the intention of going in there to poach their people and build my own business, right? I’m not going to do that. Now having said that, well what if I was in a community where maybe they do primarily life coaching and they don’t do any business coaching? Where I can go there and serve because this is something that the owner of the group doesn’t necessarily do, probably has no interest whatsoever in doing it, right?

Or I have somebody who does health coaching, like weight loss coaching for physicians, so are they my audience? Yeah, they’re my audience. Does the owner of the group want to do what I do? No. Do you see what I’m saying? Or maybe this person just is a business coach as well, but just helps people get them off the ground, like I just help you start your business. And I’m in there, I help people further along. Well then that’s a little complimentary. Do you see what I mean?

Or that person has this community and I have this software, the person provides the coaching, I do software. So we’re in there but we’re not competing. Does that make sense? And so you’re thinking if the person who owned the community were you, would they like what you’re trying to do?

And I want to clarify this, this is not some mucky, yucky, going and being manipulative thing. You’ll see as we go along. But the point I’m trying to make here is don’t find someone who’s in the same exact thing as you and then go in there with the intention of going in to get the audience that they’ve nurtured and all of that stuff. Not from an intention standpoint.

Now that doesn’t mean if you’re an entrepreneur in your entrepreneur group, you can’t be helpful. Of course you would be, but it’s just that they’re not part of your strategy. Does that make sense? I hope it makes sense, but you want to find groups that are like complementary, congruent, things like that. So that’s number one.

Number two, what intention? Now this is going to sound very counterintuitive, but your intention when you go into somebody else’s audience is to serve. Okay, your intention is to serve. You’re not leading with selling. Okay, you’re going there to serve.

Let me tell you something about serving, serving is kind of like if you’re the kind who shops in Costco, for instance, and they have all these samples and stuff like that, and people can taste them and go, “I like it,” “I don’t like it.” “Oh, I like it, I’m going to buy it,” right? When you serve, you’re giving people a sample of what it’s like to work with you. Giving people an experience, right?

Maybe you are a private practice owner and you are part of a local Facebook group where all your people are. And you’re there, you’re helping, you’re answering questions, you immediately position yourself as the go-to person. It’s like, well, that other person has a fancy website, but this is the person we know, this person answers our questions and all that stuff. So it does wonders.

So you can actually go with an intent to serve, right? And you don’t get booted per se for serving, right? It’s not like someone asks a question and you’re like, “Go make an appointment with me.” No, answer the question already.

Now, I will say this, one of the ways you can capitalize on that is, and you’ll probably acknowledge this for yourself, when somebody answers a question and you’re like, “That is brilliant, oh my goodness.” I don’t know about you, but many people, what they do is they then click on the name to go see who is this person, right?

And so you want to make sure that your house has all your data, has where people can find you, where they can schedule appointments and all of that stuff. So people have the choice, right? You’re not going in to take over someone’s group and do a spam fest or anything, but people will find you fascinating, and they will check you out.

And it should be easy for them to then say, “Oh, wow, this is where this person is, let me check them out.” Or if you then have a YouTube channel or podcast, then they can binge on your stuff for a little bit, because this is a binge economy and stuff like that. So you want to serve. The intention is to serve. Okay? The intention is to serve, that’s like you giving people a taste of your stuff. And if they want to work with you, then that’s their call. You want to serve.

All right, number three, the third what. What attitude? Okay, what attitude? The attitude you show up with is respect for someone else’s community. Please understand they did not build the community for you. They did not build the community for it to be your marketing space, right? Respect for their community.

So this is what this person built. They want to provide this kind of environment for their audience. You go serve, you go support, you go help in the way that you can. You’re showing up with that attitude of respect for the community. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve seen people join a Facebook group and they’re like, “Hi, this is my name, go here to schedule a discovery call with me,” and all this stuff. I’m like, why would you do that?

First of all, nobody likes that. You doing it, you don’t like that, right? And so you go in, find out what are the problems they have? This is what businesses do. Businesses solve problems and they get a thank you note called money, right? So you go in, respect the community.

Now, while we’re here, I know some people are like, “Well, the person in charge of this Facebook group, they don’t let anybody do this. They don’t let anybody do that. I don’t like the way they act,” and all this stuff. The truth of the matter is, I mean, it’s their group, it’s their home, it’s their shop. And you may want to control what they do but really we can’t control what anybody does.

If you want to group run the way you want to group run, then you need to run your own group. Right? And that’s the bottom line. And you have to realize that different sizes and kinds of groups require different kinds of things. So for instance, you can have a group, that’s 400,000 people and there are group’s like that, right? 400,000 people, 500,000 people. Well, they may need to do different kinds of censoring. They may need to charge for some things because they have a team running it.

There’s so many reasons why people have to do things that people do. And so I’m not in the habit of complaining and whining and all that. I may go like, “Well, that’s interesting,” and then walk away, right? Because if I want a group run the way I want a group run, I should go run my own group.

And we have a group. And if you’re not part of the group, come on, come join us. All right, it’s called EntreMD, so just search bar EntreMD. There’s some questions for you to answer, answer the questions, some on in. Okay? So that’s the attitude, respect the community. Okay? All right.

What not to do, let’s talk about that. What not to do. I’ve already alluded to that a little bit. Don’t be the leader of a spam fest. You come in, your intent is like, “Wow, there are 2,000 people in this group. I can get this number of clients. I’m here to get clients, and patients, whichever.” And you just start posting links, like completely disconnected with the group, right?

You don’t answer any questions. You don’t post anything that’s helpful. You don’t do any of that, you just post links and links and links. Oh, someone asked questions, this is what I do, go here or stuff like that. Don’t do that. Think about it, you don’t like when people do that. You don’t. So nobody else does. Nobody likes it, okay? So don’t do a spam fest. Don’t do it.

The second thing not to do is don’t friend everybody then spam them, right? Like you get into the group, you send friend requests to everybody and start spamming them, this is what I do and come work with me, and stuff like that. People will be drawn to you. You serve. You show your expertise by serving. You show you’re the man or woman for the job by serving, not by spamming. Okay?

The third thing not to do, don’t DM everybody, right? Like DM everybody, send them links. DM everybody tell them, “Oh, this is what I do. Come work with me.” I cannot tell you how many Facebook groups I have joined, I join the group and then I get like 10 DMs.

And some of them are really hilarious, “Oh, I’m a business coach. I help people start businesses and all of these things. You can go here to schedule an appointment with me.” I’m like, I mean, if you look to my bio, maybe you know that maybe you needed another pitch. Maybe not that pitch, right? Oh, if you want to lose 15 pounds, do this. I mean, what in the world, right? So don’t DM everybody. Don’t do that. That is not a winning strategy. It feels icky, everybody hates it, you hate it. Okay?

If you’re disconnected, where you just show up and you’re either posting a link or you’re posting an event that you’re doing, people should come sign up for, or you’re posting a Facebook Live, you’re sharing it to the group,  but you’re totally disconnected from the group, it’s just not cool, right? The things we do on social media, sometimes we should just think like, “Would I do this in real life?”

You know what I mean? Not talk to anybody, walk up to them and say, “Sign up for my stuff.” You wouldn’t do that in real life. You know what I mean? Sometimes it’s like why don’t we look back to what we would do in real life to determine if that’s appropriate, you know what I mean?

But anyway, so that’s what not to do. So let’s talk about what to do. Okay, what to do. What to do, serve. Serve. Think about it, people will talk about their problems a lot, especially in groups, right? And go in there and help, go be human. Just help, answer questions. Answer questions, give people pointers and all those kinds of stuff. You can do that.

And okay, so this is for every group, you can do this, okay? Even the groups that are like, “We don’t want any links, we don’t want any promotion, we don’t want any solicitation,” all that stuff. They are happy with people who will serve. So for every group you can go in, every group that this is your strategy, you can go in and serve. You can go in and answer questions, you can go in and be supportive, be helpful, right?

Now, remember what I said, you want to optimize your own page and all this stuff so that if somebody is like, “Oh my goodness, who is this person?” They can find out who you are, right? Okay, so let me sit here for a little bit. This is the reason why focus is so critical in your content creation, okay?

And when you’re done listening to this podcast episode I do want you to pull up your Facebook profile. And I want you to scroll for like 30 seconds, and then ask yourself, if I didn’t know me, by scrolling through this would I be able to tell what I do?

If somebody scrolls through my stuff for 30 seconds can they say this person owns this private practice that’s two miles from me? Can they say this person owns a skincare line that I should absolutely check out? Can they say this person hosts a show that I have to watch every week? Can they see this person is the coach I’ve been looking for? “Can they tell what you do?

Because if you’re scattered in what you post online, then while you serve you can’t really get an ROI from it because people just say, “Oh, okay, she has smart answers. But clearly this is not what she does.” Right? So yes, funny cat videos are amazing. Yes, tons of family pictures are amazing. Yes, some random posts that you just share from other people’s stuff, those are all good. But they are cluttering your feed. And so when people go to look, they can’t tell what you do. Right?

And so now, understand this, I’m talking about this if you are using Facebook as a strategy, okay? Of course you can do all the other things you need to do, but as a strategy, all right? Okay. So from your profile picture, from your cover page is it obvious what you do? In your bio that’s there what do you have there? Is your website even listed there? Is it listed there or is your business listed there at all? Okay, so in any group you can serve. Any, you can serve. Okay?

Now, depending on the type of group there’s some other things you can do. For instance, if it is a group where you can offer a lot of expertise and stuff like that, you can ask the admin, “Is it okay if I do a Facebook Live once a week, once a month? I can talk about this.” And if it’s a group where they say no pitches, you can say I’m not pitching, I’m not doing, I just noticed people are asking a lot of questions about this. I want to answer them, right?

And if they say yes, wonderful. If they say no, remember, if you want to group run the way you want it, go on run your own group, right? So if they say no, no harm, no foul, it’s okay. But if they say yes, what an amazing opportunity.

And when you go there, of course, you’re going to introduce yourself, this is who I am, this is what I do. I’ve noticed you guys have asked these questions, I want to come answer them. It’s Costco, they are tasting. Okay? They’re tasting and if is yummy, they’ll come work with you. Okay? So you can do that. Many people in private practice do this from the EntreMD Business School, a number of them who are coaches, all this stuff, they do this stuff, okay? Okay.

Call to actions as appropriate. So for instance, if it is a group where, you know, some groups it’s like no links whatsoever. Don’t ever mention what you do, right? And you’re like, I don’t know why they would do that. Again, if you want it run a different way, go run your own group. Okay? But let’s say they’re okay with some things here and there.

One of the things I used to do, there will be a group and people ask questions and it’s a long answer, and it’s a repetitive question. I will go record a video for it, put it on YouTube. I’m like, “Hey, heard your question, it’s really too long to explain in a text, so here is this video. I hope it helps you.” Right?

It’s not a sales pitch video. It’s this and then I tell them, of course, to subscribe to the channel and all that, which is standard for a YouTube video. And then people would like my channel, follow me, all that kind of stuff from there. But I’m serving, right? But that’s in a group where it’s allowed. Okay? So the serving part, you can do that anywhere. But the call to action, if they let you do that, then you go for it.

The other thing you can do is, so let me go back to let’s say I’m a business coach for physicians. Somebody else has a group and they do health, weight loss coaching for physicians. And I have EntreMD Live, right? I can tell them hey, EntreMD Live is our annual live event. Okay, so happens in June every year, we’re going to be doing our fourth one this year. It’s so crazy. So crazy.

Our first one we had like 47 doctors. This is with all the marketing power I had in the universe. And it was so amazing, so life changing. And last year we had 533 registered, it’s just mind blowing. Look at the reviews, they’re like so what did you learn from EntreMD? And somebody put there, a doc, she was like, “I learned to make sure I take the day off for EntreMD Live,” you know what I mean? Because she was like, “Oh, I missed all this stuff.” But it was really good, right? Really, really good.

Now I can go there and tell them, “Hey, I have this event going on.” Remember, this is complimentary, we’re not competing. And I’m like we have this event, it’s free, this will be so beneficial for your audience because I hear their questions and all this stuff. It will answer a lot of things. I can even throw in a bonus, right? Like some kind of bonus, some free thing that I can give them access to because they’re part of that group. I can ask, right?

So if it’s a group where they don’t do that, then they don’t. If there’s a group where they do, then they do that. If it’s a group where it’s like, oh, well, there’s affiliates and all that stuff, then they do that. It’s their house, it’s their rules. But if it’s something that’s allowed, then that’s something that you can do, right?

So Facebook groups, it’s a really, really powerful way to grow your brand. But it has to be done the right way, okay? So this business building thing you’re doing, you’re going to do it in complementary groups. You’re going to go in with the right intention, which is the intention to serve. You’re going to go in with the right attitude, which is have respect for other people’s community.

You’re going to take note of what not to do, don’t be the leader of a spam fest. Okay? Don’t DM everybody and do all that stuff. And then what you are going to do, you are going to serve. For every group you can serve.

Then in other groups, depending on what their rules are, you can offer to do Facebook Lives where you can go give people a taste of who you are and what you do. You can do calls to action as appropriate. You can ask. You can ask, can I do this offer here? Can I do this offer to an event, or freebie, or whatever?

So what I want you to do, I want you to make a commitment that, one, is that depending on your business you’re going to go like I’m going to leverage I’m going to leverage showing up in places where my audience is already gathered online. I’m going to leverage that, right? And I’m going to show up the right way. I’m going to show up the right way.

Why is this so important? Well, one, is your business can explode from this. Okay? At first, I want to say first 250,000 or so this was the only way I knew because I didn’t really know many people. I’m an introverted introvert, right? I wasn’t talking to people, I was cultivating relationships. So when I started EntreMD it was like starting from scratch, right? And it was in these communities that I learned to build relationships and all of these things.

And I didn’t go in with the intention to take advantage of anybody’s audience, but to really hear what my ideal clients were saying, answer their questions, be there and all of that. And it grew from there, okay? It’s a powerful strategy, but imagine as a physician community, now remember, for EntreMD, what are we trying to do this year?

We’re trying to do the mass business education of physicians. We’re trying to elevate physicians, because 2025, remember, remember those three things. 2025 is going to be the year of the physician. And it’s going to be a time when physicians are the leaders in the healthcare space, when we have unprecedented levels of career satisfaction and we have financial freedom, right?

So imagine we all have these communities, but we learn how to leverage our communities. We learn how to grow, we learn how to have a massive impact because we’re collaborating, not competing. We’re collaborating, not taking advantage of other people’s audiences. We’re collaborating. Imagine what we can build.

There’s a million of us. There’s a million of us, but this is the only way we come together. This is the only way we augment what we’re doing. This is the only way we all rise. Okay? So I want you to embrace this. And if you’re like, “Man, I have questions about this,” come into our own Facebook group, posts your questions, I’ll be happy to answer them. Who knows, I may even do a follow up episode just because of you.

And remember that you’re part of a movement. So I want you to take this episode and I want you to share it to everybody who has a Facebook group, is in Facebook groups and all that, which is like every physician you know. And I will see you, my friend, on the next episode of The EntreMD Podcast.

Hey, if you love listening to The EntreMD Podcast I want to invite you to join EntreMD On Demand. It is my signature subscription program that gives you access to a library of business courses designed to help you do one thing as a physician entrepreneur, and that is to thrive. Just head out to entremd.com/ondemand and I’d love to have you join us. See you on the inside.