How To Create a Community That RUNS ITSELF? 🤔

It's not about consumption. It is about how do you encourage and motivate your members to contribute their stories, their ideas, and their experiences. Woo! This is Module 5 of People Magic Profit. I am going to show you how to turn your community into a habit in your members' lives. They're called weekly calendars, and you are not going to want to miss it. In the last module, I introduced monthly themes, which is designed to bring novelty to your community. In this module, I want to talk about how you can make your community a habit for your members. It's called the weekly calendar, and I'm going to show you exactly how to set it up, so that it essentially runs itself. Are you ready? Let's dive in. A good weekly calendar has 3 things. Number 1, it focuses in on member contributions. This is not, let me repeat, this is not about having more of your content unless your content is there to encourage your members to contribute. Number 2, The whole point of a weekly calendar is to create consistency. So what does this mean? It means that there is more value for you to do just one post a week if it is about how you attract and encourage member contributions, but you do it on the same day at the same time every week. Now, why is this? Because once you start to set up in someone's brain That on Tuesday mornings at 9:00 AM Pacific time, they are going to have something to do in the community or that they're going to see a notification from you about that thing in the community, they are going to start to make it a habit. Even if they don't come back to your community right away, they still know about you. You are still in their brain. And now all of a sudden, because of that consistency, consistency, they are able to remember and participate in what you're building. Third, really important piece of your weekly calendar, do not blow yourself out. Meaning it is better for you to have 1 or 2 consistent things that you offer your members every week for them to contribute than it is for you to have something 7 days a week that takes a ton of time and effort from you to set up and to run. Because here's what's going to happen. You're not going to be able to maintain that. And if you don't maintain it, you get none of the credit for all of those 2 weeks that you kind of blew yourself out building content, trying to get people to talk. It is so much better for you to basically make the decision to say every Tuesday at 9:00 AM, for the next 6 weeks, I'm gonna do this one thing. Now, I recognize that this is a very different way of how you create a community because in social media, we have all been taught that the way you create a community, which is really an audience, is to produce a lot of content. You are trying to actually accomplish something different, which is you are setting this up to run itself. What that means is that you want to do things that are manageable over 4, 6, 8 weeks, and then you can stop and reassess. So let me show you some examples of what you can create for your weekly calendar. And again, just 1 or 2 things from this list is all you need to get started. To create a habit amongst your ideal members. These are some of my favorite weekly calendar events. You have office hours, totally straightforward. Spin up a livestream that's native to your Mighty Network, or you can use our Zoom integration. Both work beautifully. And you have an hour of Q&A. You have an hour of conversation where potentially an ideal member can share their challenge and other members can help them. Give and ask, it is actually organized very intentionally where a member is profiled around what they can give the community and then what they have as an ask for the community. It is a cultural ethos of so many of our communities that members are asked to give and then they have an ask. So what's beautiful about give and ask is that as an ideal member, give and ask change pretty regularly. So this is something that can create weekly interactions and habits that can be built by your ideal members. Another example that I love is what I like to call Dream Bigger. Let's say it's Wednesdays at 10:00 AM, and this is either a live session or just a post so that a member can offer Something that they're navigating or something they're excited about, and other members can creatively show up with, here's how you might be able to dream bigger. Here's how I might be able to help you dream bigger and accomplish more. Another weekly calendar event is the challenge of the week. Every week, create a challenge for members where there's a daily check-in or a book or podcast discussion. Now, if you're going to do a book discussion, Unless you're a speed reading community, I suggest breaking the book down into different sections as opposed to trying to read a book every week. A skill of the week. So if you think back to any of the examples that I've shown you in this and other modules, that skill of the week makes a lot of sense. You're essentially breaking down what your members need to learn or to practice to have their best year ever. New member introductions or a new member roundup, a community roundup. So what is the most popular activity happening in that community? You can use on a Mighty Network your Mighty Insights to be able to see what the most popular posts are and be able to share those back in a community roundup. And then I love this example, member profile stories. So this is something we stumbled upon when we were actually starting a community here at Mighty Networks from scratch with a partner. And what we realized is before we had members, we kind of needed to tell people who were our ideal members, who did we want to attract in. So we went out into the world and started reaching out to people that we thought would be the ideal member. And we interviewed them and we created member profile stories so that as the first members started coming in to this small business community, there were incredible stories for them to be able to consume. Now, what was great about this is that then as these new members started to come in, they were interesting, and had phenomenal stories in and of themselves. So what we have done is created a guide that you can access through Your Mighty Network to make your member profile stories a wild success. I love a session you could do called Pain Points. This is a conference I went to for many, many years, did this so successfully, where members can get together on, again, a livestream or a Zoom, And share one pain point they have, and the other members who are a part of this session can help them solve that pain point. And pain points might be big, they might be small, but it is a great way for the community to come together to solve specific problems and navigate specific challenges in ways that really showcase the value of being with people on the same path. Let me show you some examples of weekly calendars. Back to our example that I showed in the last module of Mind Body 1, guests present a webinar on Tuesday guest talks about different business topics like KPIs or member retention. New member showcase highlights new members and encourages founding members to reach out. That is their Welcome Wednesday. And finally, their Big Think Thursdays are week-long discussions about a meaty topic or challenge members are navigating. So again, you don't have to have a lot of days that you are doing something. What is really important in a weekly calendar is consistency because you are trying to build a habit. Another example, Quilty Nook. They have a book club on Monday where they have a live session where they're discussing that book of the month. And on Fridays they have a virtual sewing circle. Here's another example, verbal to visual. So they have Q&A sessions that are live over Zoom on Wednesdays and Saturdays. And then on Thursdays, they actually have a series of member-led events. So this is another way you can start to see that the point of the weekly calendar isn't about your content. It's not about what you are putting out there for your members to consume, but this is about your members Not just contributing, but really driving engagement in your community. Grown Folks Business—they have a fantastic weekly calendar that starts with Monday office hours. On Wednesdays, they have an event called What's Cookin', which is for members to be able to post their latest cooking episodes for encouragement and for feedback. And finally, they have. Friday weekly check-ins that are about discussing progress or blockers members have while working on their businesses. Again, what you can see here is some of the most engaged, successful paid memberships, online courses, challenges, and events are not doing a lot of work. They are setting up a consistent system for members to build a habit around their community. The Morning Meetup. Now, they're doing something a little bit different, which is they have daily check-ins. They're really focused on accountability for very, very good reasons. So they have just a quick check-in in the mornings. They happen at 7:45 Eastern time, and that is a place for members to set their intention for that day. Then on Wednesdays, they have a live book reading, and again, they maintain the daily check-in. And finally, they look at how to prepare for the week ahead on Saturdays with Mindset Saturdays. Final example, the Rock Retirement Club. So this is for recent retirees. On Tuesdays, they have a financial livestream. On Thursdays, they have a health and energy livestream, and Saturday they have a 6-Shot Saturday. This is where the host sends out to members 6 things from the past week that caught their attention and they thought members should pay attention to. That is your weekly calendar. And hopefully you can start to see how consistency, being able to do the same thing On the same day every week really provides that habit-forming system in your community. So we're 2 down, 1 to go in terms of how to set up your community to essentially run itself. In the next module, I am going to talk about daily polls and questions. I hope you'll join me. Woo! Thanks for tuning in to People Magic Profit, a 9-part series where I show you exactly how to build the most profitable digital community membership by creating people magic. And if you want more, I have got a podcast also called People Magic where we do a deep dive of all of the topics I've covered in this masterclass. Head on over to Mighty Networks where we have got a free trial waiting for you. Until next time, I'm Gina Bianchini, and thanks for being a part of People Magic Profit.