144. Baking it Down - Community Groups 101

📍 Community Groups 101 - Creating Your Greatest Lead SourceCommunity groups - you love them, you hate them, you love to hate them, you hate to love them - but they are a lead source powerhouse, and we're not ones to sit on the sidelines when it comes to making that dough (baking and monetary types). So what happens when you get banned from a community group? Or when your community group doesn't allow sales? Or if your community group is a dead group plagued by mobile detailing duct cleaners? Well - you make your own community group.And that's easier said (on the podcast) than done, but here's some tips to get you started in crafting a value-added community group from scratch.📑 1. Branding📌 Group Name should be Brand + Location + State📌 Create a Page + Group📌 Branded Graphics (Cohesive across Page + Group)📌 Comprehensive About Section📌 Group Settings (Private / Visible / Discoverable) 📌 Add Secdonary Admin + Page as AdminYou'll want your community group to include both your city and state (this will vary depending on the population of your locality), but we need to optimize for Facebook Search (a version of SEO) - so include the city and state (unlike Corrie who has now found how just how many "Lake Ridges" there are in the US). Create a corresponding business page - yes, you'll have to run another page, but pages allow for more flexibility in ads and you can also set the page as the group owner, cross-link the page and the group, and run ads as the page (group ads are slowly rolling out). Regarding branding - update the group's cover to match the page's cover - pro-tip: find a photo (or go out and take a photo) of a recognizable fixture in your community - it'll resonate with your audience when they see it and think "hey, I live there! I'll join this group!" Write a few paragraphs as your About Section. About sections are SEO real estate but they also help your audience know what the group is about. Answer "who, what, where, when, why" to cover all your "about section" basics. Your group is discoverable, but we don't want a free-for-all. Set your group to private (this will force people to answer the entry questions - more on that later), visible (hidden groups are invite only and not our goal), and discoverable (Facebook will recommend your group to others). Facebook groups no longer allow admins to boot primary admins (awesome), so add one as a back-up (make sure it's someone you trust with strong passwords). You can also set your page as an admin. Any content managers should be set as mods.📑 2. Content Strategy is a Growth Strategy📌 Create Value-Added Content📌 You'll be Talking to Yourself on Posts📌 Go out and Make Local Videos (About Town) 📌 Create Resource Lists📌 Create Weekly Content Buckets 📌 Post Consistently!!!📌 Hyper Local - Memes / Videos📌 It'll Require Monetary Investment The hard part of making a valuable group is coming up with the valuable content. It's work - and it's hard work, consistently, over a long period of time, with very little thanks. Trust the process. Build it and they will come... to find out where the local splash pads are. For a bit, you're going to be talking to yourself, and it'll feel weird. Get a family member to start a dialogue in the comments (this helps with the group's engagement and the post's reach). Hit the pavement and record local about-town videos! Again - no one will watch them at first. Trust 👏 the 👏 process. 

Om Podcasten

👋 Hey - Heather and Corrie here with the Baking it Down Podcast with Sugar Cookie Marketing (a group on Facebook full of sugar cookiers turned business owners). 🍪 We're here to help you rise with your reach, flood with new followers, bake up new ideas, and make that all-important dough (while makin' that dough - see the pun there?) 🤑. What’s it about? We’re a Facebook Group turned Podcast, Membership, Book Club, and Baking 101 that’s dedicated to assisting bakers in effectively marketing online to generate more sales and better manage their businesses. 🧠 With free Facebook Live classes, hundreds of resources, and thousands of like-minded bakers, there’s a lot to learn in "SCM" (aka Sugar Cookie Marketing). ️🎧 As an extension of our Facebook group, this podcast is here to let you learn by listening. 📈 We'll cover group topics, marketing trends, and more (leaving this wide open in case Corrie wants to start singing). 💸 We take the sweet art of selling online to the cottage bakery world with marketing methods that move products (and pastries).👂 So open up those glorious ear canals because we have a podcast! Just when you’ve thought you’ve “heard” it all with those marketing "miracle" twins (that's our last name - not a proclamation), we’ve got something just for you each week! 🥣 As a baker, you don't always have the luxury of two hands needed to scroll in Sugar Cookie Marketing Group or crack open a book in Sugar Cookie Bookies, but what you can do is listen (unless you're my kid asking “what’s for dinner” for the millionth time). 👐 Hands full of flour? No problem! 👍 18 dozen iced cookies due tomorrow? Let’s do this. The Baking it Down Podcast by Sugar Cookie Marketing is a weekly podcast geared toward helping you grow your bakery business - dropping (almost) every Tuesday. 📅 We choose a topic each week that's either something new and emerging in the world of social media or something that we saw in "The Group" that was a hot topic and we bake it down... I mean, "break" it down for you. 🗯️ What you can expect in the podcast is about an hour of chit-chat with the meat and potatoes right at the beginning of the episode. 🥔 That’s when we dive into the marketing topic of the week! 📞 Oh yeah, folks can call / text / email in with their questions too - a fun way to hear from other bakers out there. Our promises to you: 1️⃣ We always make it clean = no cursing. We understand that you are busy and could be around little ones while also trying to get your weekly dose of business growth so we make sure that each episode would make our grandma proud and keep it clean so you can listen while also living your life. 2️⃣ We always make it fun. There’s a lot of negativity in the world so we try and make the podcast an upbeat and fun learning experience for you. I mean, we try to make the Instagram updates and changes as happy as we can, but come on Instagram! Give it a rest! No more changes! 3️⃣ Other than that, we take a positive approach to marketing We are also *not* professional podcasters. I feel like we need to say this because, hey, sometimes we get giggles! We do our best to extend our marketing knowledge to you all free of charge each week at the cost of listening to our higher-than-normal pitched voices and the occasional giggle spree. 4️⃣ You can find the podcast on all the major platforms and you can typically expect a new episode each Tuesday afternoon (unless life happens). We invite everyone to listen. Either start from the beginning or work backward! The episodes don’t build off themselves so you won’t be confused hearing one before the other. You just might miss new Lives we mention but you can always catch the replay in the Sugar Cookie Marketing Group on Facebook!