MBA1746 Slack vs. Facebook Groups

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Hey oh. Welcome to the Hundred Doll RMBA show. No fluff, just the good stuff every single day with our daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of Webunder Ninja, an independent software company I started with my partner back in 2014. And in today's lesson we're going to discuss Slack versus Facebook groups. Which one's better to run your conversations and communities for your online courses and training. For a very long time, Facebook Groups was the default option when it came to carrying conversations that correlated with your courses with your training. It was a good way to get people in one place that they can all access to post their questions, to give feedback to help each other out. But in recent years, Slack has become an option. Why would you use one over the other? And what's my recommendation? When it comes to paid or free groups, they both have their positives and their negatives, but one of them really shines in a big way in certain uses in certain situations. I want to highlight all this and more in today's lesson so you know exactly which tool to use to run your conversations for your communities. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business. Okay?

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Want to start today's lesson by mentioning that both Slack and Facebook are free options. Slack does have a paid plan, but you don't need to use the paid plan to your communities. There are other options out there that are not free that I'm not including in today's conversation because we just want to focus on a free platform for now because sometimes that's just the barrier of entry that allows us just to get going and get conversations going for our communities. There are other ones that will cost you money more full fledged forums and communities. One that I recommend is Palapa Palapa Co relatively new but I've used it in different communities and it's really, really cool. But it's a paid option so we' not going to cover it. Today let's focus on Slack and Facebook. First let's highlight the differences. Of course Facebook is the go to when it comes to groups. Why? Well, because most people are already on Facebook. They don't need to install Facebook on their phone because it's probably already there. They already have an account for most people. Let's start with Facebook and Facebook as we know is the go to option for groups and forums, so to speak, to carry conversations. And now when I say carry conversations I'm talking about you may want to include some sort of group where people can ask questions and get feedback when you're offering an online course or some sort of training or maybe group coaching. Now why has Facebook been the go to? Well, people are already on Facebook. That's just the easiest thing to get people to go to because there's no learning curve. They already have the app on their phone and they're just used to the ui. It's just a very simple, familiar app. Slack on the other hand, might be a tool that some people already have or are using on their phone, but not as much as Facebook of course. So there is a learning curve. There is an installation process or an accepting of being part of a Slack channel process so that they can be a part of your community. The other thing to Remember is that Slack for the most part is best used using either their desktop or their mobile app. And it's not really very friendly on the web as much as Facebook is if I'm just using a browser on my computer. Now, I've used Slack and Facebook groups for my different communities, for different purposes and even outside my online courses. I actually think Slack is a fantastic tool in person events or trips. So say, for example, you're running a two day event and you want to communicate with everybody who's a part of the event. You can invite people that are part of that event to a Slack group. Now why is Slack so great for in person events? Because it's dedicated to that event. It's easy to communicate. It's a lot faster in terms of messaging. The nature of the app allows you to know what's going on quickly. So if people are meeting up for lunch somewhere, you can get a Slack message really quickly and see that and be part of that conversation. So it's got a little bit of a WhatsApp DNA in it as well. Facebook, on the other hand, most people that I speak to have their Facebook notifications off because you get so many notifications on Facebook. Friends posting things, people liking things, you know, groups, people are mentioning things in groups. It would be very distracting. You'd be getting a notification every five minutes. So most people have their notifications off and they periodically check Facebook or their Facebook group on the Facebook app to see what's going on, if there's a question posted, if there is something for them to respond to. So it's not as notification friendly as Slack is in that regard. And that's why I think in live events or smaller private groups, Slack really wins. Now, having said all that, I do believe Slack is more responsibility, more work on the moderator, on the person who's running the course that might be you. In terms of responding, the nature of a Facebook group is people don't expect a response right away because it's like they're posting to Facebook and they'll probably expect a response, you know, within 24 hours or so. Slack on the other hand, is like a notification message service. So people feel like it should be happening in real time and responses are kind of needed or expected a lot more quickly. So there's a little bit more responsibility on the moderator of the group. If you're on Slack versus Facebook now because of this, it's sort of a catch 22. Okay, so Facebook is easier to moderate, but the interaction and the engagement is not as lively as Slack because people are constantly messaging back and forth or feel the need to post or respond quickly. But again, the responsibility on the monitor is much higher on a Slack channel. So what are my recommendations? Well, I really think if you're selling a high ticket item like say for example, a course or some group training, that's $2,000 a month, let's say it's more value to be part of a smaller, more intimate, more responsive Slack group. That price justifies that cost on your end in terms of time and response. If you're selling something less than $2,000, a Facebook group will do. And people don't have the highest expectation in terms of quick return time on response. So you know your response time is not going to be as fast and that's accepted because you know they didn't pay for that type of quick response or intimate coaching. Another reason why I recommend Slack for smaller groups, more intimate groups, even in person live events, because you can have side conversations and direct conversations with people. With Slack you can direct message people. You can create smaller groups and smaller channels where people can talk about certain things if they have certain interests. You can reply in threads. It's a little bit more dynamic than Facebook. Facebook is basically a thread and people can comment on comments and that's pretty much it. You can't direct message somebody unless they're your friend. And as a member, you can't really form groups or form, you know, direct messages with many people at one time without knowing them or friending them on Facebook. So a little less dynamic there. So just keep in mind that Slack, it will require a little bit of hand holding for those who are not on Slack before to get them on board or maybe just a page with some instructions or an email. There's a little bit of investment up front to get them onboarded, but once they're there, there's a lot more communication, a lot more interaction. Facebook, very low barrier of entry. People can jump in easily. But at the same time, the Facebook group is kind of buried in their account. They don't really access it quickly on their phone. They have to kind of go through the app and then find the group and then, you know, post versus Slack. It's right there on their phone, on the app and it's easy for them to find. Now Facebook used to have a separate groups app, meaning you can just have an app to access just your groups separate from your Facebook profile. But they removed it, this is about two years ago, and they just combined it with the Facebook app, probably because they want to drive more traffic to ads and they want people to be on Facebook for longer. So that was a little bit of a bummer. I liked that group app. It kept things separate and a little bit more focused. But that's a little bit of a negative for Facebook groups.

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Both Slack and Facebook are great tools, but I highly recommend if you have a high paying course, you want more interaction, you want more direct coaching, you want to have more conversations to go with Slack. If you just want to have a place for people to meet each other to ask questions and it's not really urgent to get an answer, Facebook is a great option because again, people are already on Facebook. And I highly recommend Slack for a supplement, a community, a way to communicate with your attendees on a live event. So a live in person event, a conference, a meetup, even a trip, it's a great option. We used Slack for our team retreat at Webinar Ninja and the $100 MBA when we went to Bali and it was a great way for us to all communicate and figure out, okay, hey, this is where we're meeting for dinner. This is the time everybody gets a message. People shared pictures via Slack. It was a great way to collaborate with everybody on that trip. Thanks so much for listening to the $100 MBA show. Hope today's episode was helpful and useful. If it was leave us an iTunes rating and review. Just head on over to Apple Podcasts and leave us a review. By doing so, you enter our weekly random draw we call Free Ride Friday. Just sit on Friday to see if you won one of our programs access to a program like easy course or $500 course on how to build your own online course. And all you got to do is just drop us an Apple Podcast rating and review. It's our way to say thanks for showing us love on Apple Podcasts. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. If you have a smaller group, it's like 3, 4, 5, 10, 20 people. You're gonna have to do a lot of posting, a lot of questions, a lot of prompting to get conversations going. The onus is gonna be on you. The larger the group, the more participation you're gonna have. I always say there's a 8020 rule. 20% of the group will do 80% of all the talking, but obviously 20% of 10 people is two people. So you need a larger group to get a critical mass of communication. So if you had a hundred people that's participating, pushing the group forward, encouraging other people. So you have to really push the conversation and the interaction in the beginning as your as your group is small and as it gets larger, you can start relying on the members and encouraging other people to, you know, go ahead and engage. Thanks so much for listening to the Hundred Dollar MBA show. I'll check you in tomorrow's episode Free Art Friday, where I Share with you 4 free business tools you can use to manage your finances. Can't wait for that one. I'll see you then. Take care.

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