Ep. 13: How can I create and grow an online community?
About this Episode
Ring riiing! ☎️ In this episode of 1800HEYPUNO, Margaret Royena, founder of design studio Pop Brand Co., asks the question: “How can I create and grow an online community?” Her client, The Well Collaborative, is a safe space and community where women can connect and support each other. Puno guides her through some simple tips she can implement, through Squarespace and Instagram, to promote their events and help their members unite.
Also, get an inside look at how Puno uses Squarespace blog posts for so much more than blogging (Ads! Events! Creative Profiles!). Your brain is about to EXPLODE, YO.
⭐️ Don’t forget to check out our Squarespace Design Course⭐️
Transcript
Intro
Puno: 📞 Hello?
Margaret: Hi.
Puno: Hi, who is this?
Margaret: It's Margaret from Pop Brand & Co.
Puno: Hi, how are you Margaret?
Margaret: Good. How are you Puno?
Puno: I'm super good. I'd love to hear a little bit about yourself, and what's your question?
Margaret: Yeah, so I'm a freelance website graphic designer running my own design studio called Pop Brand Co.
Puno: And what's that URL?
Margaret: popbrand.co.
Puno: Nice.
Margaret: I have this client called the Well Collaborative, and they are a membership-based community of women here in Saskatoon. So they gather, we support each other. and rise together. They're wanting to grow their online communities through Squarespace.
Puno: It looks great by the way. I see how you're utilizing the events, and you have a membership directory. So how do you want to build it?
Margaret: I want to focus on the Well Women directory. Would it be possible to develop a forum on Squarespace for people to chat about topics and events and networking.... communicate with each other?
🎵Music 🎵
Puno: Yeah. The way that we do this, and I actually do it for my Instagram course, is I have a blog that I use for each of the chapters. You could do the same thing with your events, in addition to hosting your events on their own events page. You could also, when you view the event, you could have a link on here that's like, "Start the Discussion."
Margaret: Ooh, I like that.
Puno: Yeah. Another option, and I do this all the time, is I don't necessarily use product pages, and I don't always use event pages.
Margaret: Okay.
Puno: But I'll create them, and then I'll link them as blocks within blog posts.
Margaret: Oh?
Puno: Let me give you an example. Under the Squarespace online course, I have all these "Join the Wait List" buttons, and the way that I created this Squarespace online course page, was as an index with multiple pages. You know, I don't have enrollment all the time, so we'll put right here and enrollment deposit link. That link will go straight to the enrollment page where you can pay.
Puno: Likewise, I could just do this. I could put products like that, and then I could say, "Squarespace"... I've got a couple of these different ones. Here we go, we can do that, and I could show the image if I want to or just keep the title, show the price, maybe have the "Add to Cart" button.
Margaret: Oh sweet.
Puno: Enable quick view if you have something that you want to show there, and then you could do it like that. You can really start customizing what a product page could look like, what an events page could look like. I believe you're using the Brine family, and it's got that sidebar for the event. I'm just like... I don't really want that. I want to change that. I'm like, I kind of want to put it on the right. Or in the middle. Even with like product pages, you can really customize the crap out of it. I can create an entire product page and that's just the back end of it. You don't have to ever go to the product page if I put it as a block right here.
Margaret: Yeah.
Puno: Which reminds me, I should just do that.
Margaret: Yeah.
Puno: I'm going to remove the title. There you go. From $250, there you go. Add to show, add to cart button and yeah.
Puno: Oh my gosh, that's so funny. I think what I'm going to do, though, is "Enrolled Today," "Save your Spot...". I feel like I have to say something like "Enrollment Deposit," you know, because it looks like it's like.... Why is it $250, but then that's $899...
Margaret: Yeah.
Puno: "Deposit full-price." Oh No, I think that's fine. Okay, that's fine. Does that make sense?
Margaret: Yeah, no, totally.
Puno: I want to do 1-800-HEY-MARGARET. Does that make sense?
Margaret: I think so. I have another question.....
Puno: What's up girl?
Margaret: Can you add like comments and view what people commented with those blocks? Or would that be something else?
Puno: Oh my gosh. Yeah. Unfortunately there are not comment blocks, but there are comments that you can add. Let me do an example of one on the creative profile that we have. There's multiple places where you can add comments, but the place that I think it makes the most sense is right here. So you click on settings and the blog and then you can turn comments on right there. There's a way that you can add, Disqus comments, but I'm not really the biggest fan of Disqus..... It's just like another login that you have to do, you know.
Margaret: Yeah.
Puno: So there's that. Let me show you what it looks like below...
Margaret: Oh sweet.
Puno: I mean you can add something up here too, like if you had an event and you're like, okay guys, I really want you guys to talk about x. Tell us about this. Or it's like, Margaret is leading this discussion. What questions do you have for her?
Margaret: Oh, that would be awesome and change the game. Essentially, we host an event called Coffee and Connection and well-spoken topics that we discuss are self care, mental health, relationships and how to grow your business. But, a lot of people share their stories and their experiences, and sometimes you just kind of want to let it sink in. Having a digital place where people can discuss just makes it easier.
Puno: Yeah. Also, it's a way you can extend the conversation any archive it. You can style it however you want. If you know a little bit of CSS, you can add something before the comments right here using colon before (CHECK). You guys don't use Facebook groups or Slack...?
Margaret: When you mentioned that, I was like, oh. Slack channels. I never thought of that. That's pretty clever.
Puno: When we were emailing, you brought up Hivebrite, and I looked at the screen of it and for me it looks like a Facebook group.
Margaret: Yeah, it kind of drives people off of the website too, and I didn't really like that.
Puno: Same. Facebook is okay, but to be honest, I really don't like going on Facebook anymore. Then we've got Slack, which is basically chat, but with channels and... I love slack. We use it for our Squarespace online course, and I think it's helpful just because there's lots of conversation that needs to happen, and I need to organize it and star it for myself because there's a lot of tasks that I have to do based on the questions. In terms of my Instagram marketing course, because it's not as critique heavy, we do a lot of design critique in there. I just use the blogs with the comments. Then there's Discord app. It's for the gaming community ,and it's just like Slack. It does have audio chats in here, which is really interesting to have that, but it made me think about.... Where else is the Well Community, like is is the Well Community just on Squarespace or are you guys on any other social platforms like YouTube or Instagram?
Margaret: Instagram for sure. A lot of us just like DM each other.
Puno: Oh, you know, so I was thinking, what if you guys had a private Instagram account, and you treated posts like events?
Margaret: Oh. Hey, that's cool.
Puno: And they're like in that world, well I'm already dming you. They've got that built in notification system. Everybody gets Instagram.
Margaret: Yeah. Whoa, whoa, my mind is blown.
Puno: That could be really interesting.
Margaret: Oh totally.
Puno: And then you can do live Instagram videos of the events.
Margaret: Oh yeah, we should be doing that!
Puno: Yeah, I'm going to implement it right now. There needs to be a safe place.
Margaret: No, totally.
Puno: Dude, if you do that, you should write some articles about creating a community using private Instagram accounts.
Margaret: Girl, you like co-founded this, so I'm giving you credit. Like that's genius.
Puno: Okay, sweet. Is that all the questions you've got?
Margaret: Yeah, I think so. You giving me a lot to work with so I have my work cut out for me.
Puno: Well, love what you're doing and I think that for someone who's only made two Squarespace websites, you're really doing a great job at utilizing all of the features. And I feel like a big project like this, because that's what ilovecreatives was for me. It was just a very big project that I got to dive into all of the features because I was like, I want to build a community.
Margaret: Thank you so much.
Puno: If you have any other questions, you know where to find me. All right, well have a wonderful rest of your weekend, and I'll talk to you later.
Outro
Puno: Well thanks for watching. Type it in. Just be like ilovecreatives.com/1-800-HEY-PUNO So you want to binge some videos? These are good. After you click subscribe, you should probably click that one. That one's really sick. That's sick! Sick!
