AP 0799: Should I Spend Time in a Competitor’s Facebook Group?

AskPat 799 Episode Transcript

Pat Flynn: Hey, what's up everybody? Pat Flynn here, and welcome to Episode 799 of AskPat. Thank you so much for joining me today and for helping us get to almost episode 800 here, which you'll see next week. But man, this is crazy. Thank you so much.

We have a great question today from Mike, but before we get to that I do want to thank today's sponsor, which is BambooHR. Hey, really quick, if you are a small to medium sized business and you have employees, you know it can be very overwhelming at times to keep track of all the paperwork and the HR stuff related to that, like salary info, benefits, vacation days, and all those kinds of things. But there is a solution out there for you: BambooHR, a very easy to use, centralized system for keeping track of all those things. And best of all, it's accessible through the cloud from any location at any time. So if you want to try this out, you can try it for 14 days for free. This is a limited time offer. Just go to BambooHR.com, click the mic at the top-right corner, and enter the offer code “Pat.” It's P-A-T. So give it a shot. BambooHR.com, enter code “Pat” for a free 14-day trial.

All right, here is today's question from Mike.

Mike: Hi, Pat. This is Mike from Fermentingfood.uk. To start getting an audience for my niche, I set up an open Facebook group, and slowly it has been attracting members. There are forty so far, including a couple of friends who are quite active on it, and the group is linked to my website. But while working through Will It Fly? and the places searched for the market map, I discovered another group that covers exactly the same niche but has thousands of members, is well-established, very active, and growing.

This would be a great source of info for my potential market's problems, its needs, and ideas for potential products. But my question is, which one to be more active in? Because I only have so much time. With my own group, it's linked to my site, I have a high profile, but it's tiny. The other group is much bigger and more active, but it's not mine. I'm just another regular member. So if you've got any thoughts on that I'd really appreciate your feedback. Thanks, Pat, and thanks for all the helpful info you're putting out there all the time.

Pat Flynn: Hey, Mike, thank you so much for the question. Super cool niche that you're in, and really great to hear that, through the research that you've done and Will It Fly?, you've found these resources for yourself and your niche, which is amazing. That's exactly why I put them in there. And I understand the dilemma now. You have your own Facebook group, you found this other one, what can you do, where do you spend your time?

My answer would be, spend your time in both. There's no reason why you cannot do that, whether that's dividing your time between both. And I'll tell you why that's my answer in just a moment. But I really feel like you have more time than you do. We all have more time than we think we do. There are other things that are in our lives that we could do more efficiently, for one. If you're like, oh, well I already do everything that I can and I have no extra time, well there are ways that you can optimize the things that you are doing right now. But also, I'm kind of pulling out my inner Gary Vee now. There are probably television shows or other things that you do that you may not necessarily need. That next week you might not miss so much, for example. So think of those things and determine where you can cut out even just ten additional minutes into this brand new Facebook group that you found.

It can be completely useful, because in there, not only would you be able to use it for research, which is why I feel like it's really important, but also because you'd be able to establish yourself as an expert there, too. And that way you're able to answer questions and be there and interact and participate, just to get people to know you exist. And naturally, some people are going to find you really interesting enough to go and find this other group that you have. Even without you promoting it people are going to find it, because they're going to click on your link, they're going to see all the groups that you're involved with. You may be even able to cross-promote both of them and be able to have both of them grow together.

I would also reach out to the admin and build a relationship with that person as well, the admin. So you can actually go into the members section of that new Facebook group, and then find the admin directly from that particular page. So I would go there, reach out to that person, introduce yourself, and see if there's anything that you can do to serve their audience. Because I'm sure there are things that they wish they can do to better add value to that community. And maybe there's some infographic that you can create, and you can maybe ask permission to put it up on there. And just mention that you also have this other Facebook page that you could potentially drive traffic to from that page.

So there's a lot of things you can do there, but there's no reason why you can't do both. I still think it's important to have your own, because that's going to be sort of your hub and where you can actually interact with your people specifically. And think about it. If there are thousands of people in the other group, the interactions are going to be less and less personalized as they were in the beginning, like you have with your group now. So people naturally will start to drop out of those larger groups because it just becomes too overwhelming, and they're going to be looking for other places, as well. And if they understand that there's this other expert that's on there who's also talking about the same topic, who has maybe a more quality-driven Facebook page with a lot more discussions that are more relevant, well then it's going to be great. So I would spend time on both. Grow your own, but establish yourself as somebody who is in this space as well, on the other one as well. That's my answer.

So, Mike, thank you so much for the question, best of luck to you, and I want to send you an AskPat t-shirt for having your question featured here on the show. Find that time, make it happen. That's going to be an incredible resource for you as you move forward. And, yeah, for anybody else out there who has a question that you'd like potentially featured here on the show, just head on over to AskPat.com. You could ask right there on that page.

Thank you so much, I appreciate you. Thanks again for all of you for listening in, whether this is your first episode or your 799th episode, thank you so much. Please head on over to AskPat on iTunes. Just look up “AskPat” in the iTunes search and leave a review for AskPat. That would be super helpful. And then finally, as always, here's a quote to finish off the day. And this is from Albert Camus. “The struggle to the top in itself is enough to fill the human heart. Sisyphus should be regarded as happy.”

Take care guys, thanks again, and I'll see you in the next episode, the 800th episode of AskPat. Bye.