Is your Facebook Group dying? Is your online community on life support, barely hanging on by a thread?

Maybe you’ve neglected your group or lost motivation because you got tired of being your own best member.

Either way, the Community CPR Method can bring your group from the brink of death back to the land of the living—and it will only take 30 days.

The Community CPR Method is a three-step system: Check In, Polarize and Resource.

Community CPR Step 1 – Check in With Your Members

The fastest way to get your group out of a coma is to perform mouth-to-mouth. Or, in this case, public check-ins.

🎯 Goal: Make your group members feel seen and valued.

🛑 Limitations: Tagged check-ins are not practical for groups with more than 500 members. Two posts a day, 12 hours apart, tend to work best. And most groups will enjoy these check-in posts for up to five days in a row. More than that feels tedious.

💡 Tactic: Create a series of posts (no more than two per day) with up to 50 members tagged in each that asks members to offer an update. Use a GIF that fits your group personality. The idea here is to be personal, not polished. You want your members to see that you genuinely care about them and their lives or businesses. Watch me debrief this tactic for my private group, The Secret to Thriving Online Communities. The debrief starts at about 9:00 in.

Examples of Check-In Posts:

• First post: I don’t know about you, but I’ve been feeling a little disconnected recently. I miss you! What have you been up to? I’ll be checking in all week to find out what’s new with you. If you’re tagged here, share your latest project. Feel free to drop a link in the comments so I can check it out. I really want to see what you’ve been doing!
• Second post: I’m having so much fun reading everyone’s updates! If you’ve already shared your update, thank you! If you’re tagged in this post, I’m ready to hear from you. 😊 What have you been up to? Let me know in the comments. Add a link or screenshot so everyone here can see it, too!

Community CPR Step 2 – Post Polarizing Questions

Like chest compressions keep a person’s blood moving, polarizing questions strike at the hearts of your members.

🎯 Goal: Give your members the opportunity to express strong opinions or passionate feelings.

🛑 Limitations: The goal here isn’t to tick off your members. Remember, people seek out social media to escape or be entertained. They don’t want their blood boiling. This is also a tactic that you want to use carefully. Too many polarizing posts can backfire.

💡 Tactic: Post a question you know your audience has strong feelings about but won’t put them in direct conflict with one another. For best results, you want a question that is easy to answer. Use either a colored background for the post to draw attention to the question or a photo that’s a natural complement.

Have fun with it!

Example Questions to Consider:

• If you could only use one social media channel for the next year, which would you choose: Instagram or Facebook?
• Cilantro – Love it or hate it?
• Recommendations wanted: Best planner you’ve ever used?
• Coffee or tea?
• eBooks or Print?
• When taking notes, do you prefer pencil or pen?

Community CPR Step 3 – Resource Your Members

Once you have your members talking, you need to give them a reason to keep coming back to the group. Resources are something that bring value to your group and help your members build a closer connection to you as their guide.

🎯 Goal: Give members a reason to visit and establish goodwill by creating a valuable group experience.

🛑 Limitations: The resources need to be low effort on your part and have a high impact on your members.

💡 Tactic: The easiest way to resource your members is by going live in your group every day for a week. Live video tends to be easy to produce and consume. Facebook will notify your members that you’re live in the group, and members will feel comfortable interacting with you through the video. If live video isn’t your thing, or if you live somewhere that lacks the signal strength to support live video, you can upload recorded videos or downloadable resources.

Types of Resource Videos to Add Value to Your Group:

• Live coaching
• Ask Me Anything (AMA) sessions
• Group town halls
• Tutorials/how-tos
• Types of Resource Downloads to Add Value to Your Group:
• Journal pages
• Activity calendars
• Motivational quotes
• Templates

Is your online community on the brink of death? This method can bring it back to life in just 30 days.

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Nurture Your Group to Keep it Going

Now that your group is surviving, it’s time to help it thrive by maintaining the momentum you’ve created for your members. When you’ve brought a group back from the brink of death, it’s going to take a bit of rehab to get it to full strength.

Have an engagement plan in place that will keep your members coming back and connecting with both you and one another. If you need a strategy to get your group to thriving status without leaving you DOA, I’m here to help. Schedule Your Borrow My Brain Session to find out what kind of plan makes sense for your group.