You want to establish yourself as an expert in your field while attracting the right clients and customers to your business. A community is a great way for people to get to know you better before they commit to working 1-on-1 or within a paid group program.

Here are a few ways that you can establish a community on your wellness website. Personally, I wouldn’t recommend jumping into all 6 of these at once. Choose 1-2 of your favorites and commit to building a community within the next 90 days. I promise it will be worth it!

Now, let’s get started!

 

Create a Blog & Post Regularly

One of the best ways to increase your visibility is to create quality content that positions you as an expert in your field. A blog allows people to understand your business better by acting as a nice introduction to who you are and what you do.

Although your blog isn’t the best place to start a full-on community, it is a good starting point. You can simply enable comments on your blog posts to get a conversation going.

The main goal of your blog should be to create content upgrades to get people onto your email list. Once someone is on your list, they are essentially a part of your community. It’s now your job to invite them to connect with you elsewhere through regular emails.

 

Create a Facebook Group

A great way to build a community is through a Facebook Group. As the group owner, you can establish the rules and a regular posting schedule that your audience will absolutely love. You want them to be excited about being a member of your community so make sure to post valuable content that promotes engagement.

In some of my favorite groups, the owner will share their knowledge via Facebook Lives. This is such a great way to share what you know and allows your audience to see the face behind your business – building that like, know, and trust factor so much faster.

A Facebook Group takes a great deal of time to grow and maintain. It definitely helps if you have a little bit of an audience so that you can have some participation in your group. To get started, simply set one up and invite people to join from your email list.

 

Create a Forum

A forum is another excellent way to build a community directly on your website. No need to send people to Facebook or another outside resource to join in on the conversation.

Do you want your forum to be a free or a paid resource? For instance, If you have a premium group nutrition program, then a forum would be an added benefit to the customer so that they can keep themselves accountable. It gives them an easy way to connect with others and stay motivated to keep making healthy eating choices.

A forum is also an option if you want to build a free community on your website. But only if you have a decent amount of traffic and have a way to encourage people to continue to visit the forum. Sending out regular emails can help with this! In general, though, I find that a Facebook Group is a better option for free courses and communities because it requires a lower commitment to sign-up. It’s also easier for users to stay on top of the conversation since it’s a social media site that they visit regularly.

If you have a WordPress website you can use a plugin, like BB Press to create a forum pretty easily. BB Press works really well, right out of the box! But if you want some help setting it up correctly and styling it to match your already existing website then consider hiring a designer to give it a branded touch.

 

Host Webinars

Hosting regular webinars or lunch hour video chats is an excellent way to build a community around your business. Choose a discussion that your clients or customers struggle with and help them to solve this issue.

You can start by inviting your current email list to join. Although, this is also a great opportunity to grow your email list even more! Add an opt-in to the webinar landing page so that anyone who signs up for the webinar will become a part of your community by opting into your list.

At the end of your webinar tell your audience more about how they can connect with you. For example, if you have a free facebook group that you want to grow – mention it. Or, if you have a premium service or offering use the webinar as a way to promote that.

 

Create Videos

You can grow a community much faster by incorporating video into your visibility strategy. It’s something about seeing a person’s face that really makes all the difference. You will establish trust so much quicker, with your audience if you use video vs. just blogging alone.

You can start to incorporate video by doing facebook or Instagram lives. Or, Instagram stories if you don’t want to go live just yet.

You can create more curated content by filming and editing Youtube videos. Youtube is a great next step if you’re only comfortable so far with blogging. Because you can curate and control the content vs. going live…which can seem scary and intimidating. I know it is for me!

If you have a blog already, you can start by using that content for videos. This will give you a chance to practice being on camera while also perfecting your editing skills. Plus, you can upgrade those old blog posts by embedding a youtube video in them. Pro tip: Google loves when your website has both copy and video all inside one post. It’s an amazing combo for SEO!!

Once you feel a little more comfortable filming, start making new videos and incorporate this into your regular content creation schedule. You can share the videos with your community by emailing them out to your list and posting them on your blog. Also make sure to mention them on social media and in your facebook group, if you have one.

 

Membership Community

This kind of community is perfect for the wellness entrepreneur who wants to offer an ongoing membership to their audience. This generally includes a monthly payment that a person makes to remain a member.

Once they join, maybe they will get access to some exclusive content or videos that you’ve created. Or perhaps its a course or group coaching program that they’ve joined. The benefit of a membership community is that they can log in to a portal and everything will be in one place. The content, the access to you, and the conversation with your community – all in one place.

This might mean including a forum (mentioned above) so that users can keep in touch and contact you in a group setting. Or maybe you want to take it up and notch and offer live chats or webinars to members of your paid community. That way, they can ask you questions and discuss things with each other in the chat window.

As you can tell I’m being a little vague here. And that’s on purpose. Because a Membership Community can be anything you want it to be. But, it needs to be streamlined and easy for your members to use. Otherwise, they just won’t use it and will probably cancel their membership.

Looking for a designer to help you build a successful membership community? I can help you choose the right platform and build a community that your audience will love. Inquire here.

Looking for a little extra help with your website?! Grab a copy of my Wellness Website Workbook to become a booked out wellness pro with a website that converts.