5 minute read
Creating an online challenge
Community Models – The Rise of the “Pop Up” Community
By Emily Brounger
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In the last 6 months we’ve seen a rapid rise in the amount of entrepreneurs and businesses creating communities to bolster their value and engagement and to act as a marketing vehicle.
This is particularly true of coaches, consultancies and membership businesses who are charging members a subscription and feel pressure to add a community element to increase engagement and stickiness of their offer and add value to members.
But 6 months after launching the community component of their offer, they’ve often found the peer-to-peer connectivity is relatively limited and they’re exhausted from constantly trying to “make” members return and maintain the energy of the community. This is particularly true of facebook groups in recent months, where facebook’s algorithm shows the content to less and less people as engagement drops off.
Enter: “Pop-up communities” or “Online Challenges”
A pop-up community is one established for a time-limited or goal-specific purpose. They’re growing in popularity as both a networking area which sits alongside a time-limited virtual or physical event, giving attendees the opportunity to connect and get to know each other, and perhaps arrange IRL meet-ups, and also in the form of an “Online Challenge”.
An online challenge is an experience where you challenge your audience to do something each day, with the intention of helping them achieve a goal, get better at something or solve a problem – which often in turn builds value, authority and goodwill and leads members to a specific product or service you offer.
The advantage of an Online Challenge is that it’s time-limited so it’s much easier to create immediate impact because everyone joins within a short period of time and are engaged and excited to get started. It can also be easier to manage because of the short but intensely active time-frame
Design your own online challenge
Follow our 3 step guide to designing an online challenge for your community
1CHOOSING A CHALLENGE TOPIC 2 DESIGNING YOUR CHALLENGE 3 CREATING YOUR CHALLENGE
1Choosing a challenge topic
Challenges need to be worthy of your ideal audience’s time. Your challenge needs to be a PRAT! • Solves a Problem • Delivers Results – progress or clarity or completion of a specific piece of work • Be in Alignment (ie lead naturally to your offer, products or services) • Be achievable within the Time-frame you’ve set
People often dream up a challenge idea without thinking carefully about the end goal, which means the challenge lacks alignment and doesn’t drive participants toward an action which returns value to you.
Successful challenges reverse engineer the process and start with the action you want people to take at the
end of the challenge. Take your end action and brainstorm ideas on some of the components, the questions and challenges people face around the issue your product or service is solving, to come up with a challenge that gives them value and progress whilst showcasing your expertise and credibility to help them further.
2Designing your challenge
Answer these questions to define the objectives and outline of your challenge
1. What measurable results are you
hoping to achieve (number of challenge participants, number of conversions to your offer at the end of the challenge)
2. What is the theme/goal of your
challenge (e.g. teach people to build their community in 10 days)
3. What is the offer you’re making at the end of the challenge – and how neatly does it align with the goal of the challenge itself? 4. How long will your challenge be?
Day and 90 Day challenges can also be a good fit if your offer is helping create habitual change – but you’re more likely to want to charge for this length of challenge)
5. Who is your challenge for?
(e.g. Piano players, new entrepreneurs, parents to newborn babies)
6. What problem does your challenge help solve?
3Creating your challenge
Now you know the topic and the who, what and how of your challenge, you need to consider the best way to deliver it. The most common format is a pop-up FB group specifically for the challenge, with live sessions where you set a daily task and follow-up with Q&As or Ask-me-Anythings to help participants progress.
But here’s the secret - less is more when it comes to content.
Nothing turns people away from challenges more than a feeling of overwhelm and failure. If they miss a day, and feel like there’s no hope of catching up, they won’t attempt to.
Each day should consist of one single task that can be completed by your participant in 20 minutes.
Draw a table with each of your challenge days down one side, add a column for Lesson and a column for Homework.
Now plot out your challenge and decide what each daily lesson will deliver and the piece of homework you will ask them to complete.
Keep it simple, don’t overwhelm – this is why so many challenges are 5 rather than 3 days, because – when chunking up the work appropriately - it can be difficult to complete enough “action” in 3 days to add value and create that sense of achievement and progress that makes your challenge so valuable.
As you plot out your daily lesson and homework, think about how it connects to the offer, product or service you’re promoting through the challenge, and weave that in accordingly.
Our top challenge tips
•Make your challenge stand out – in name and design. It should be immediately recognisable and easy to find at a glance.
•Set a realistic goal within the time period set.
•Be clear about the structure and timetable – and repeat it across all channels.
•Collect emails (challenges are a powerful lead magnet) and notify participants when the challenge is starting AND before any live daily sessions
•Create accountability - set participants a progress task each day
•Create incentives –you can incentivize members for completing homework, inviting a friend, showing up each day, to keep the energy of the group
•Keep content available for a few days post-challenge for people from different time-zones
•Plug your product or service throughout – lightly in day 1 and 2 and in more detail on subsequent days (but be respectful of people’s time, short and sweet is best)
