Guest Post – 7 Steps to Create Your Own Challenge
How can you add hundreds or thousands of new subscribers to your mailing list and community? Try hosting your own challenge!
I’ve successfully co-hosted more than a dozen challenges for bloggers through the Ultimate Blog Challenge and 31 Days Blog Challenge over the last several years and it’s skyrocketed the growth of my community and my visibility.
Here’s how you can swipe this strategy and use it for yourself:
Step One: Identify a Key Struggle
What challenges and struggles stop your community from being able to take action and break through with what you teach?
As an example, one of the key struggles we address in the Ultimate Blog Challenge is how to come up with ideas to help bloggers post consistently.
What’s a key struggle for your people? If you teach video, maybe the hurdle is just getting that first video done. If you’re a business coach, maybe mapping out strategies and breaking down action steps to reach a goal is a frustration for your clients.
Step Two: Indentify the First Step or Big Action
What is the first step you know they need to take to get to their breakthrough? Or, what big action gets a big result for them?
Continuing with the video example, if the first step your people need to take is to get that first video done and published then you could break that down into a weekly challenge:
• Day 1 – brainstorm your video idea
• Day 2 – write your script
• Day 3 – record your video
• Day 4 – upload your video to YouTube
• Day 5 – write an email to your list to share your video
• Day 6 – post your video on your blog
• Day 7 – kick back and celebrate
Step Three: Plan Your Support Strategy
What kind of support does your community need to be able to take the action you’re challenging them to take?
Figure out what you can offer to support them in completing your challenge. Maybe it’s ideas, templates, step by step directions, or creating a support group for interaction on Facebook. Make that happen.
Step Four: Create Your Opt-In Page and Thank You Page
The next step is to create your opt-in page. It can be something simple: here’s the challenge, here’s why you need to do it, here’s what you get to support you. This is where people join the challenge by signing up for your list.
You’ll also need to create a thank you page that tells your challenge participants what their next steps are and what to expect. The key to this page is to get them excited about the challenge and encourage them to share it with their friends. When they share, not only do you grow your list faster, but they’re more committed and likely to complete the challenge you’ve created because they have more accountability.
Step Five: Get Results
Your community needs to get results from the challenge you host (assuming they follow through and take action!). When they see results, that’s when they fall in love with you.
It’s their action that got the results, they created it, but you provided the energy, support, and guidance to help them make it happen.
They’ll want to tell their friends about you and share you.
Step Six: Adapt as Needed
Ask for feedback. Keep in mind that there’s always room for improvement.
When you accept feedback graciously and implement what makes sense, you give your community ownership in what you’re creating and they’re even more engaged. Plus you’ll find some of the BEST ideas for expanding your challenge and more come from the community.
Asking for feedback also allows you to gather fantastic testimonials to share.
Step Seven: Repeat!
It worked once, so run it again! The first blog challenge I co-hosted several years ago added around 150 people to my list. The most recent hit nearly 1,000. It gets easier every time because the main pieces are already in place and it’s just promotion and little tweaks.
Over the past couple of years I’ve added more than 5,000 to my list using this strategy and you can do it, too!
Michelle Shaeffer is a trainer and consultant, showing online business owners step by step to harness the power of technology and internet marketing to build successful businesses. She teaches her clients how to save hours and hours of frustration and shows them how to make their online presence work quickly to attract traffic, generate leads, and build authority. Get your free checklist to make your blog more awesome at http://michelleshaeffer.com/51
