Why Your Membership Site Needs A Community + An Honest Kajabi Community Review

Having a private, Members-Only Community as part of your membership is crucial for many reasons. (Which we discuss in this video...)

Along with:

1. Why you want a community in your membership
   
   
2. How to decide between a free Facebook group vs a dedicated forum you control (pros and cons of each)
   
   
3. Why the Kajabi community forum won out in the end for my newest membership, how I'm using it, what I like about it, and a tour inside to show you what it looks like (Because who doesn't like a good product review?)
   
   

Enjoy!!
XX - Andrea

Links mentioned in this video:

👉  Kajabi Free Trial HERE

👉  Membership Magic Signature Program HERE

👉  "Create Consistent Income w/out Social Media" Free Masterclass HERE

Video transcription: 

Hello friend, it's Andrea Nordling from BuildAProfitablePractice.com chatting with you today about all things community and recurring revenue in your membership business.

Of course, this is my favorite topic, but today's video is also an in depth conversation basically about using a Facebook community versus an external forum. Specifically, we're gonna be talking about the Kajabi Community product.

I'm to give you my honest feedback and walk you through the considerations along the way for when you are deciding what type of community to offer in your membership. 

I'll also reveal what we ended up going with in my newest membership, which was different than anything I've done before, and show you what that looks like. 

So if we have not met before, again, my name is Andrea and I help health and wellness professionals and nutritionists to grow and scale their practices online with memberships.

It is my love because I know how powerful recurring revenue could be and keeping those same clients paying month after month and getting great results over time is where it's at, Instead of the super outdated business model of one-on-one consultations, that doesn't help anyone get results and is a really grueling grind for us as practitioners. So, anyway, that's a little about me.

In addition to memberships, I talk a lot about the software platform I use, Kajabi, because I it has totally simplified my business. It makes running an online business so easy and takes out a lot of the headache.

Learn all about what I love about Kajabi HERE

But up until now, I had never used the Kajabi community product, which is a built-in forum or private community feature that can easily be included in your membership site experience when you host it on Kajabi. I can't wait to tell you all about how we set that up, but first:

Why do you want a community in your membership?

Number one is because it really increases the retention in your membership.

A community helps your members to engage with each other, and to have a supportive place to land, right? And then what happens is that actually makes it less effort for you in the long run because your members are supporting each other.

They're giving each other feedback and accountability and growing their bonds internally without the constant pressure for you as a membership site owner to always be facilitating that conversation and to be answering questions.

This is what makes a membership scaleable! (Meaning you can keep adding members without creating more work for yourself and a ceiling where you can't possibly be answering more questions or taking on new members because you're burned out.)

That's the goal, my friend. A scaleable membership that grows and grows, gets fabulous results for your members, and feeds your soul purpose of impacting the health and wellness of this planet.

And when you do it right, your members are going to be coming to your membership for the content and what they think that you're going to provide for them, but they will be staying for the community, which makes your membership very sticky; very valuable in an intangible way that has nothing to do with you because its value is greater than the sum of all parts. 

All that to say, you definitely want a community aspect in your membership, but not all communities are created equal, which brings us to number two:

The second thing we wanted to chat about, which was choosing a Facebook Community, aka a closed Facebook group, versus external forum.

Now here are the considerations with this and I've done it both ways, so I'm going to give you the pros and cons of each option.

The pros of running a Facebook group as your membership community is that everybody pretty much is on Facebook and knows how Facebook groups work at this point. The negative of that is that people are getting really sick of Facebook and sick of being in a thousand Facebook groups.

So, pros and cons to the private Facebook group community option, but a lot of us end up starting our memberships running a closed Facebook group as our community because: it's easy, it's free, people understand how to use it.

Another reason some people like this is option is because you're likely going to get higher engagement as a rule, because people are already on the Facebook platform everyday, so they will see in their newsfeed as they're scrolling.  They will see the content going on to the membership and be reminded and brought back to it, so you will inherently get more engagement on Facebook unless you're really intentional about it.

And certainly there are ways to improve engagement off of Facebook, which is a huge topic I teach on in my Membership Magic program, but you will just get people tuning in more because they're already on the Facebook platform, right? So this is a big plus for Facebook groups.

Now, one of the cons of running a Facebook group, of which there are actually many, is that you don't own Facebook. I repeat: You don't own Facebook.

You don't own the decisions, or the algorithm that controls who sees your stuff; one little algorithm change with Facebook and all of a sudden your members don't see any content in your group anymore, and you're not getting engagement. (Totally outside your control.)

You also aren't in charge of what gets censored on Facebook. So as health and wellness professionals, we know censorship is alive and well, and that can be a factor depending on what your niche is and what you're talking about, because censorship is huge on Facebook.

So depending on what you talk about, if it's something controversial, which I won't even say any of those words, cause I don't want to get this video to get censored right now. That's another big consideration. Okay. So owning versus renting: basically when you are running your community for your membership on Facebook, you are renting, you don't have a lot of say about what happens in that group.

If you are starting your membership with a community that is off of Facebook in a forum that you own, and you control, you have a lot more flexibility in terms of what you put there, but the con is that your members are going to have to work a little bit harder to stay engaged because they're not already spending time on the platform. So pros and cons for both.

I have done this both ways.  (Community hosted on Facebook and privately.) I started with my first two memberships, which were very profitable, with a Facebook group community. Okay. So this is absolutely possible. And I don't want to give the impression that a Facebook group is a terrible thing.

However, with my third membership, which in the last few months has launched, I opted not to do a community on Facebook. I have a few months of data to go on and I have a little bit more experience with using the Kajabi community for this newest membership, and I will say that I am loving it for a few reasons.

There are a few cons and I'll talk about those too, but here's what I am loving:

First of all, it is amazing to have automation in terms of adding and removing members in a community. And when you're just starting out, I know I certainly didn't think about this, and it didn't seem like it would be a big deal, but I want you to know that this does tend to be kind of an admin nightmare when you are using a Facebook group for your membership;  you have to approve member requests if it's a private closed community. (Which you need it to be for it to not just have every anybody joining, you want it to just be for your members.)

In that scenario, you have to manually approve those member requests. And then you also have to have a system for removing members when they are no longer active members anymore. And as you grow and get a lot more members, you know, adding and removing each month, that tends to be kind of a pain in the butt.

When you are using something external, like for instance a Kajabi community, you can automate that. So in my current membership called UPLEVEL, the Kajabi community, which is the Community forum is just an added Kajabi product. (If you're not a Kajabi user yet, we'll talk about that in a second), but the Community is just completely automated.

So when somebody cancels their membership, they no longer have access. I don't have to do anything; it's fully automated and they also get access obviously as soon as they join without me doing anything. So that automation in and of itself is huge. As a membership site owner, we have to talk about that.

Also, I'm going to show you inside the membership and what it actually looks like in a second. So don't worry, we're getting there.

Another thing that's amazing about Kajabi in particular is that you have a dedicated app. So inside the Kajabi app, your members get access to the community. They can interact in there. They can get notifications depending on how they set that up. Everything's all in one spot.

You also have the ability to broadcast anything to the Community. So as the admin and the owner, when I post something in the UPLEVEL communty, which we call The Lounge, I have the ability to broadcast it to everyone, which means everyone will get a notification. If it's something important, that's awesome. You can't do that with Facebook, right? You can't make sure that everybody sees something in Facebook, but you can do that inside Kajabi, which is fantastic.

And the third thing, which will make much more sense as I show it to you right now, is that inside your Kajabi product, you have full customization. So I set this up, like I said, this is called The Lounge. I set up the colors. I decided what was on this navigation menu. So it goes to frequently asked questions and things that sell other stuff for me. I also have full customization here on this sidebar.

So for us right now, my business partner and I don't have any buttons here that upsell anything, but what you can do, and what many people love to do inside their Kajabi community product is to upsell one-on-one coaching packages or more premium programs or anything that would be the next step for your members, have a button here for them to upgrade with that and kind of cross sell your products makes a ton of sense, right?

But here's what I love about this. You have the feed, which we're all kind of accustomed to, but also topic threads. So this is new for me. Obviously this is a new membership like I was saying, so we've just been kind of experimenting with it. But I am a loving, having a frequently asked question topics that were set up in advance and then having members post inside these actual topics, which is so much easier from an admin perspective to go in and answer questions, but also for the users to know where they can look for answers to their questions, which is amazing.

So hopefully this is helpful for you in terms of what does it actually look like inside there? I know I wanted to see what does it look like?

There are pros and cons to any software that you use, any forum that you decide. But I do think that the Kajabi community is amazing and they are upgrading it constantly. Actually, as a Kajabi partner, I have done some feedback for Kajabi as far as what I like and don't like about this community, and they have said that they are making a lot of upgrades as well, which they are constantly doing.

That's another thing I love about Kajabi is they are always innovating and making it better and better and better. So here is my, my 2 cents here at the end of the day, we really want you to have a community for your membership. It makes your life easier and it makes the experience so much better for your members.

Then you are not the constant dictionary and encyclopedia for all the answers because people are asking each other. So we really want you to have a community, and you need to decide: is it going to be on Facebook or is it going to be something that you start and consciously grow and increase engagement in and, you know, set a culture for your members that they are going off of Facebook.

There's no right or wrong. There's pros and cons to both which we've obviously talked about in this video.

If you do use something external, what are you going to choose? If you are thinking of using Kajabi and your business are already used Kajabi , please just make your life easier and use the Kajabi community product. It's amazing.

If you have not tried Kajabi yet, I am a Kajabi partner and I do have some pretty sweet bonuses that people get when they sign up through my partner link that includes office hours, where we go through strategy, live on zoom, and I help you with all of your questions surrounding how to optimize Kajabi and set it up. Those are super fun.

You also get a full course that shows behind the scenes of my memberships, how I set them up and all of all of these tips and tricks as well as a longer free trial.

👉 TRY KAJABI FOR FREE HERE

So you can go check out the Kajabi free trial here  if you haven't already, but if you're already using Kajabi, you know how amazing it is and how much easier your life is in running your online practice.

I want to highly encourage you to play with the community product. I'm loving it, and I know it's going to just keep getting better and better.

And finally, if you do not have your membership offer solidified yet and figured out I'm going to link below to some resources on my website where I talk all things memberships, because like I said, I think that that is for sure the best way for you to grow and scale online and help people with their health is for a longterm and for you to get paid over and over again.

I have a signature program called Membership Magic, where I teach all of this and tons of resources on my website, like I said, so I will link to that as well.

Thank you, friends and good luck setting up your community!