You've probably heard me talk about this on my podcast, on Episode #69 : Facebook Group or Forum? (listen via the player below). I've moved away from Facebook Groups for my own community.
I've also been using Slack with my Private Coaching Clients, and I've been studying a few other Slack groups that are trying to use Slack like a forum. But I see them mostly failing at creating the right kind of forum-like, "community" environment.
Slack is really a chat app at its core - it's meant for quick interactions, and the emphasis is on the main "Feed", which is a scrolling list of messages, and once it's gone, it's usually not searched for, or missed. This format works for both small and medium sized teams, and even a team of 2 (like with my coaching clients - me, and them).
With Slack, you're able to use channels and threaded conversations for keeping things a bit more organized - but at the end of the day, they're all still chat messages, and not long-standing pieces of content that need to be easily searchable, archived, organized and categorized and quick and easy to sort through and access.
That's where, when it comes to an actual online community, an actual Online Forum platform totally kicks-the-behinds of both Facebook- and Slack groups.
I've already had an online forum for a while - just haven't been promoting it much. And it's been open for anyone to register, this whole time, because I figured the SEO benefits would be worth keeping it open to the outside world.
After a recent surge in private coaching clients and Academy members, I've finally decided that scarcity, urgency and exclusivity (by being a closed group only accessible by a select few) is way more important to me than the occasional long-tail search benefit from SEO, and way more powerful than having a huge forum where most members simply lurk and never participate anyway.
So I've already shut down the doors to new members to my online forum and making it a private, paid forum.
Access to this private community at Forum.SubscribeMe.fm is available for free only to the following groups...
- My Private Coaching Clients
- Digital Creators Academy Members
- Friends
If you are in any of the above groups, just send me an email and I'll get you hooked up with a free account.
I'm hoping to build one of the greatest communities for digital marketers and creators.
In this forum, there will be....
* NO politics, religion, spam, time-pass, pet videos, photos of food or vacation
* NO junk like-bait posts that simply add more noise - like asking people to post Gifs, or "8th photo from your camera roll", or guessing about concerts, posting links to their podcast episodes or YouTube channels, etc
* You may post about yourself in the "Introduction" post
* If you want to pass time and post warm-and-fuzzy-and-cute stuff, do it on Facebook
* It's ONLY about providing value to each other by answering questions, asking questions, solving problems, and offering your knowledge, perspective and opinion
* Topics are going to revolve around solving business-, tech-, mindset and personal development issues and topics.
Problem Solving, Focus and Execution: All business, all the time.
If you're not in any of the above groups, and wish to join the community, you have a few ways to get access for free:
1. Sign up for Business Coaching
3. Become a Digital Creators Academy Platinum Member or higher
That's it... Those are your 3 options.
Check out my podcast SubscribeMe.fm below.