by Halina Oleskowska
Wayshowers College Consultant and Instructor in Australia
Facebook and social media platforms enable you to reach people worldwide. For practical reasons, it is best to focus locally.
However, local, is not just limited to where you live or physically offer your services, where you offer your events (intros, workshops, courses, etc.) It is fluid because you may feel inspired to do what we used to call a “Clover Leaf Tour” which means you will be creating pivots of energy in say three towns or suburbs around where you currently live. What this looks like is that you pivot from where you live and then offer an event in town or suburb one, then come back home. (This could be something that you do once a month) Then the next month, depending on what you sense you may choose to go back and consolidate what you started or venture out to an new town or suburb, then come back home. A Clover Leaf is to have home to pivot from but to move in and out to a new point of reference ie town or suburb.
FYI Note: The original concept was that a leader would select a group of towns, suburbs that they would circle consistently in rotation.
Another way to look at this energetically is currently you are an energy ripple where you live of offer your services but when you offer them in another town or suburb you are creating another energy ripple. The more ripples you have going consistently and solidly is your physical spiritual reach and the more solid you will appear to people, the more trustworthy, the more authentic.
The ripples will crossover and people will feel that ripple even more. This is because they get to see that you have a wider audience, they get to meet people from other areas and feel comfortable and confident in recommending you to their family and friends in other areas. Some of these areas may be outside of your current ripples but may be the next clover leaf of potential.
You can build up communities of followers, contacts, participants etc. by suburb, by city or town. (“tribes” is a popular term on Facebook),
When you think and act local, social media allows you to be seen and act/reach globally.
I will not go into what that means for you as a business this time round.
What is really important for you as a business right about now, is connection. Helping the people that you have touched and worked with to feel connected and part of your tribe, a part of a national tribe, even an international tribe of like-minded people just like them. To feel that they matter and are important to you and the group/tribe.
How do you do that?
- You keep them informed – that can be challenging because some people flat out don’t like Facebook because of privacy issues etc. They may be on other social media platforms or alternatives to Facebook, so you need to find out where they do socialise and plug into them. You need to be proactive in finding out where your potential tribe hangs out, what platforms if any. Then evaluate if is in your best interest to list yourself ie create an account on those sites at this time or put it on the project board for later.
- You need to collect data at your events – I have put together a generic questionnaire that I am still refining but is easy and fast to fill out – the majority of it is check marking from a selection of options. Included is a section where they can share what they are getting out of the event – I tell them about the importance of regrouping and run them through a simple version of it so that they have something organised when they have the opportunity to fill the questionnaire/survey in. This document gives me valuable information and permissions – ie. contact email and mobile numbers, permission to publish their sharing or regrouping. The latter for testimonials and also newsletters, your own as well as publications that other organisations already have in place, ie. the Expression Magazine.
- Keep them interested and involved by your consistency in filling their needs, by sharing, by offering services that appeal to a wide range of interests while you focus on finding the ones who want to go faster, further, who want more, who want to do what you do.
- Follow up people you have profiled, personally with true concern to find out how they are doing. That will alert you to what services you may need to add to your schedule or products to promote. Follow up random people in groups that you start so that they feel your interest and concern directly. Touch base with the Group Shepherd regularly and make sure they have everything the need and are regrouped about their opportunity, to get needed feedback about how they feel each member in their group is doing and to identify who is strong and who is struggling for some reason. This may alert you that they need to be informed about the blockage or glandular profiles or about trance tables or healing circles. This is an opportunity to work with your guidance to sense the needs and pull together solutions and options for people to take.
- The college has manuals to help you work with group shepherds or group facilitators. The not for profit Inner Peace Movement International in the States offers a service to help you support and consolidate group shepherds – go to their website for more information. The Australian and New Zealand IPMI is still emerging so does not have this facility just yet. If any Australian reading this wants this, needs this, and it interested in establishing this service here, contact IPMI Australia.
- Post regularly on your Facebook page, add photos etc. Add video sharings – I still have to try that one myself. On the project board along with a few Blockage profiles and Trance Tables – urgh!! Take video clips at your events and share them. Be as interactive as you can when you can. Post your events. IPMI Australia Platinum Subscribing Members can log in and create their events which will then be listed on the website as well as the public Facebook page (the Facebook events worldwide schedule of events) if appropriate. These events if they are courses will also appear on the Wayshowers College website and when they are live, the community program websites – New Spiritual Horizons website is already up so if you are offering any courses related to this program, the intention is that your event will populate there as well. Wayshowers has created on online family of connections that includes all the Not For Profit organizations as well so if appropriate, your event may appear on their sites as well. Once the event has been created and posted on the IPMI Australia page, you will be able to share that to your page. Once you have done that you can invite your followers on Facebook to the event.
- Facebook is not enough. You need to create mailing lists. Mailchimp is a popular choice and it is free to a certain point – they have tutorials to help you set up your account with them and good old Youtube has additional how to’s. Your mailing list will enable you to send out newsletters etc. There are others offering this service you just have to do a google search.
- You can add a tab that asks people to sign up to your newsletter or to join your mailing list. This tab adds people to your Mailchimp account automatically. It is another way of people to connect with you.
- You can create lists either manually or using software depending on what you need to know – find useful. You may want to have a list of the people you profiled and what profiles. You may want to know who has attended and completed what groupwork, or perhaps what courses or training they have had. You may need to have mailing lists organized by location so that you can be more precise who you communicate or promote an event. Your mailing lists are your customers and will help you identify what needs they may have or who can help you when you need assistance. Who is potentially ready for opportunity or who is at the beginning of their journey and has yet to take a leap and to discern what you can offer. The lists by location can also highlight where there is a lot of interest outside of your current area of activity. It is up to you how you create your lists. You can do it manually, use Word, Excel (this allows you to search in various combinations of the data you have entered into the “cells”, Mailchimp allows you to create lists as well but read up about these first to make sure that you don’t breach the Free option cap of services.
Being a Spiritual Entrepreneur is so much easier these days if you know how to work with Social Media energy. Marry this to websites that specialise in posting events on the worldwide web like Eventbrite, Evensi and others and you don’t have to depend on editors of newspapers to publish your articles or pay for expensive display ads. You can now plug yourself into and use Social Media and web ripples. You can surf the wave.
Start simply and take advantage of the services already available to you either through the college or through the not for profits. Educate yourself on what is being offered now and what is coming up. Engage organizations or people to help you but also don’t discount your ability to learn how to do things for yourself as there is so much help online to teach you what you need to know to get started and upgrade as your confidence and skills grow and expand. Lead yourself into your own success and abundance.