IDEAS for Running your Own Business
Many people have seen the popular 30 Day List Building Challenge that we’ve been running for the past few years… some people say it’s the best training on list building, and even better than many paid trainings they’ve purchased.
That warms my heart.
I’ve also noticed that many people who take the challenge decide they want to start their own “many day challenge” around their topic of expertise.
Maybe it’s a self-love challenge, a meditation challenge, a fitness challenge, or even a bust through your blocks challenge.
I’m all for it – and today I’m going to share with you exactly how we created our challenge, and how you can learn from our mistakes along the way… so that your challenge can help you build your email list with engaged participants and potentially help you sell more of your programs and offerings, too.
Decide On The Purpose Of Your Online Challenge
The first thing I recommend you get clear on is the purpose of your social media challenge. Is it to grow your email list or to grow your social media following?
In my case, it was for list building. You’ll be able to use the tips I’m offering in this post whether you want to grow your social media following or your email list, but how you’ll go about it might differ.
If you plan to use the challenge to grow your email list, then you’ll want to make the content of the challenge mostly email based. In our case, we used our AccessAlly membership plugin for WordPress to build our a members area where people could go back and access previous days of the challenge, too.
But you might also decide that the challenge will take place mainly on social media. If that’s the case, then you can still have a way for your audience to opt-in to an email list and join the challenge officially…
Or, you make the call to action to share the challenge on social media. More on that in a moment.
How many days should your social media challenge be?
This is a big decision, especially if you plan to use the challenge to connect with people and motivate them to sign up for a paid program down the line.
When I set out to create the 30 Day List Building Challenge, I picked 30 days because it was a challenge I was issuing to myself to double my list in 30 days… and I figured that I could make a big push toward my goal in that amount of time.
However, having had thousands of people go through my 30 day challenge, I’ve noticed a trend.
It’s actually really hard for people to “stay on the wagon” of your challenge much longer than 10 days. Yes, some people will happily be able to complete every single day of your challenge… but others will fall behind and feel overwhelmed if your challenge is much longer.
That’s why I recommend putting together a challenge that’s between 7 to 14 days. You could even do a 5 day challenge, because sometimes less is more.
What you don’t want to happen is have a lot of excitement and connection that fizzles out after awhile… especially before the end of the challenge, when you’ll likely be opening up registration for a paid program.
So my advice? Keep it shorter, or be ready to “sell” something sooner rather than at the end of your challenge.
Social Media Challenge Ideas To Spread The Word
One of the benefits of orchestrating an online challenge is that it gets people on board, and usually with their friends, too.
Think about it: when you find something cool, you just want to share it with your friends and family, don’t you?
That’s exactly the type of feeling you want to create for your challenge participants.
This works whether you’re creating a challenge in the B2B space or not, and in fact it works even better when it’s not in the business space because most of the time people are connected with their friends and family on social media… and not everyone has a business.
