The Power Of Challenges In Building Community

Building a community is the best way to make an impact and spread the word quickly about your mission.

Newsletter Highlights:

1) Recent Poll Findings

2) What Is A Challenge

3) My Personal Story With Challenges

4) What To Expect From A Challenge

4) LinkedIn Live Recap Link

5) What's Next?

Recent Poll Findings

A few weeks ago, a LinkedIn poll was about community-building challenges. This revealed to me that the biggest obstacle most face is scaling to help more people. The second biggest obstacle was client acquisition.

Both of these obstacles have been part of my personal journey also. So the answers did not shock me and there is great news!

There is a fun, engaging solution to both of these problems!

One that will grow your community, keep your existing audience engaged, and become a funnel for your brand!

The solution is running a challenge.

What Is A Challenge?

A few simple answers for you:

• A challenge is a process you take people through on something that is confusing to make it very clear.
• Take something you understand well and have mastered and explain it in bite-sized pieces for others to gain a better understanding. Literally taking people through your content and showing you are the authority they are seeking. 
• A step-by-step journey where you get to serve your ideal audience in short bursts. To bring them into your world, where they actually digest your content, implement components of it. And are in an ideal position to work with when the challenge is complete.

My Personal Story With Challenges

Being an endurance cyclist, the word challenge has always been part of my DNA. However, it was as the world changed right after my birthday in March of 2020, I knew it was a time to make a shift for the people group that I was serving. To bring them something that would help them stand out and have fun doing it. It was then that I worked with a mentor and developed a framework for challenges in early-2020. It became apparent this was a great way for me to stand out from the crowd on LinkedIn.

I began doing challenges monthly for 9 months straight. Learning from each one, attracting amazing people, and implementing new tools along the way. Then after one of my challenges, a few attendees asked me to build challenges for them. And the process has only accelerated from there. Where now I work with mission-driven subject matter experts to help them build a thriving community with challenges.

Over the last 20 months, have personally completed over 30 challenges between myself and clients. And what I come to realize is one of the biggest parts of a challenge.

Is how organically a community of like-minded individuals forms.

It's quite amazing to see the dynamic come together.

What To Expect From A Challenge

A well-designed & executed challenge will provide:

• The ability to serve others and showcase yourself as an authority.
• Attendees that get to know each other and want to be part of something much bigger than themselves.
• Build your confidence in what you are doing.
• Allow you to add value to others' lives.
• Build trust with your audience.

The great thing about trust comes from confidence and that leads to new clients.

Additionally, challenges are the best way to convert new clients at mass!

When I look at the ultimate results of challenges they help you serve, add value, build confidence, build your list, build your community.

All in a very short burst of time!

Clients use them to grow, engage and nurture their audience while building their communities.

LinkedIn Live Recap

The other day, I did a LinkedIn Live discussing this in more detail, if you would like to watch that here:

LinkedIn Live Replay

For those looking to build an online community. Grab the free step-by-step guide to start, launch, and scale a thriving online community here:

Download Here

What's Next?

Over the next few weeks, there are great opportunities for you to learn more about how we are using challenges to build community.

The first is this upcoming Masterclass on the 17th of February at 12 PM EST.

Register Here

Where I will share:

The 5 Proven Elements Of Running A Successful Challenge.

The next one is the upcoming Community Builder Mastery Challenge where I reveal how Subject Matter Experts create a thriving community so well-designed it essentially runs itself with challenges!

There will be two guest speakers Jason Van Camp & Ellen Melko Moore to share their experiences with building communities.

Register Here

#community #onlinecommunity #marketingstrategy

Thank you for taking the time to read this article. It is part of my monthly newsletter series, The Community Accelerator, where I cover discussions on the power of community building. If you like this article, please consider subscribing here!