How to Use Live Office Hours in Your Facebook Group to Increase Engagement
If you want a fun and easy way to increase interaction in your Facebook group while you also get a deeper understanding of your ideal clients, hosting live office hours is a great option.
Here are just a few benefits of hosting live office hours in your group:
- You get insightful questions from your community which can help you with content ideas, marketing copy, social media posts, and/or program creation, just to name a few.
- You don’t have to come up with a topic for your livestream since you’re answering questions from group members.
- You get to interact with your members which increases engagement, and they appreciate it because you are giving a more detailed answer than you could give if you were typing it out.
In this episode, we are covering how to run your live office hours, the best way to ensure you have questions coming in and how to get people showing up while you’re live.
I recently did my very first live office hours in my Health Coach Biz Support Facebook group and I loved it. I had some questions about how to run a life office hours session, so we thought it would be a good episode for the podcast.
In case you aren’t sure what I’m referring to, you can host live office hours in your group which can be a great way to boost interaction. You can either do this by answering questions by typing your reply or you can make it more fun and engaging by doing it as a livestream which is what I did, and it’s what I recommend you do too. One of the goals for social media and for your group is for people to connect with you and get to know you, and doing live video is one of the best ways to do that.
Here’s what I love about doing live office hours:
- You get insightful questions from your community which can help you with content ideas, marketing copy, social media posts, and/or program creation, just to name a few.
- You don’t have to come up with a topic for your livestream since you’re answering questions.
- You get to interact with your members which increases engagement, and they appreciate it because you are giving a more detailed answer than you could give if you were typing it out.
You may be wondering what to do if you don’t get any questions while you’re live and we are going to cover that too because I have the perfect solution that will eliminate this worry completely.
It’s really very easy, and it’s just a different format of a livestream where you are doing a live Q and A. You can do this in your Facebook group or your page – it’s totally up to you. If you want it to be more exclusive and/or if you want to make it part of a paid program, do it in your group. You can do this on Instagram too if you want.
Here are the 5 steps:
1. Decide on the day and time of your office hours. You may want to allow up to an hour of your time for this, but you can just list the start time.
2. Create a graphic in Canva with text that says something like “Live Office Hours” or “Live Q & A” and include your name at the bottom, under your photo so it reads “with Mary Smith”. Canva has great templates for this that make it easy – just enter “office hours” or “live q and a” in the Canva search bar and you’ll see some templates pop up and you can customize the color and elements on the graphic. You can whip this up in about 2 minutes.
Below is the graphic I created in Canva to give you an idea. If you type in “Office Hours” or “Live Q and A” you’ll find some templates that are super easy to customize.
3. Create a post in your group or on your page that explains how the office hours will work. Let people know about a week ahead of time to allow time to gather questions.
Here’s what I wrote for my post:
I would love to answer any questions you have about running, marketing or building your wellness business, so here’s how it will work:
Post your question below (be as detailed as possible, so I can give you the best feedback/ideas/suggestions).
I will be here in the group on (date/time) to answer the questions and if you can’t join me live, no problem – you can get my detailed response on the replay.
First priority will be given to the written questions, so be sure to post them below. If time permits, I will be happy to answer questions that are posted while I’m here live.
Hope to see you then.
The key to creating this post is to let people know you will be answering questions about a specific topic, so you can keep your questions to a theme if you choose. This can be helpful especially if you have a specific niche, and you want to keep things on topic.
This also allows you get to questions ahead of time which is what you want. This will avoid having to worry that you may not have questions when you are on live. You want to have questions ready to answer to kick off your livestream, so this is the way to do it. Use the link to the live office hours post when you send your email about it, so people know where to go to post their question. They could also reply to the email if they want, and I gave my subscribers that option as well, so they could ask in whatever way was easiest for them at that time.
Also important is to let people know that first priority will go to those who post their questions ahead of time, so you’re creating a little bit of genuine urgency. If you have a bunch of questions come in while you’re live, you may not be able to answer them all, so letting people know this ahead of time sets expectations. If you can’t answer them all while you are live, you can do a part two when you are able to.
You want to have a PLAN B in case you don’t get any questions and that can be having a couple of common ready if you need them. These can be common questions you get or questions you think people may have that are related to your topic. Have 2-3 questions ready to go before you go live. If you don’t get any while you’re live, that’s totally okay because people are going to watch the replay.
4. Spread the word about your office hours. Post about it in your group, on your other social channels (FB page, IG feed and stories, and anywhere else you are). Also, post a reminder about it 30-60 minutes before you go live and also email your subscribers because people are going to forget, and they appreciate a reminder. Reminding people will have more of them showing up while you’re live, and that’s one of your goals too.
5. Have fun with it, and just know that it doesn’t have to be perfect. Test it to see how it goes and if it’s something you enjoy and want to do on a regular basis. I plan to do them most months in my group.
If you have a Facebook group and you are looking for ways to grow it, I have a great free resource for you. It’s a guide called 10 Free Ways to Grow Your Facebook Group. In the guide, I share the strategies Karen and I use all the time to grow our groups and you can put some of them into place very easily right now.
Subscribe and listen to The Wellness Business Podcast on your favorite platform!
