I’m homeschooling my 12-year-old again this fall, and I still don’t know if I’m doing it right.
I don’t think that ever fully goes away. I work. I homeschool. My house and my schedule don’t stop needing things just because we chose this. I can find plenty of advice about which curriculum to use or how to structure a day. What I actually want — what I can’t find enough of — is perspective from people who are on the other side of this. The ones who can look back after 5, 10, 20 years and tell me what actually mattered, and what turned out not to be the catastrophe it felt like at 2 a.m. on a Tuesday.
So I built it. Because that’s what I do.
Who I Am to Say Any of This
It’s easy to look like an expert right now. Buy some followers, fast-track visibility with Meta ads, ride a viral niche with content that’s good enough, and within a year you have a digital footprint that reads as authority. Most of us are too busy surviving our own lives to check whether there’s anything underneath it.
I’ve spent almost 30 years doing the underneath part.
The first community I ever moderated was a listserv in 1997. I watched Steve Jobs unveil the iPhone at MacWorld in 2007. I piloted a brand MySpace platform in 2006, moved communities off message boards and onto Facebook groups in 2012, livestreamed press conferences on Periscope, and got dragged through more than one online crisis I’d rather not relive. During the pandemic, I ran virtual conferences for organizations that had built their whole model around gathering in person and suddenly couldn’t, while coaching entrepreneurs trying to build expert businesses from scratch, in real time, online. There was one week in 2022 when I moderated 17 two-hour live events in 10 days.
And after all of that? My Facebook group has fewer than 1,000 members. My podcast gets about 200 downloads a month. My social following across every platform combined is under 10,000.
I say that not to be modest. I say it because it’s the actual point: the people who know where all the bodies are buried in an industry are usually too busy doing the work to build a following around it. That’s true in my industry. It’s just as true in homeschooling.
Last year, at Mary Williams’ CEO Summer Rebellion, a room full of us — people who’ve been at this grind for decades — sat on something called the Dino Club Panel, comparing notes on how our success for other businesses came at the expense of our visibility. That’s where this started.
My own 12-year-old, Abbie, put it more bluntly than I would have: “Mom… you never talk about homeschooling online; you’re gonna mess up your algo.” She’s not wrong. And I don’t care.
Before You Take Homeschool Advice, Ask One Question
How old are their kids?
You can’t tell me what got a family through a resistant 12-year-old if your oldest is 8. You can’t tell me which elementary-school worries turned out to matter if you haven’t reached high school yet. You can’t tell me what homeschooling did for a child’s future if yours all still live at home.
That doesn’t make newer homeschoolers wrong, or their ideas worthless. It means experience has a timeline, and a lot of the loudest voices in this space right now haven’t reached the chapters they’re giving advice about. When I’m scared I’m getting something wrong, I want to hear from someone who’s already lived the part I haven’t gotten to.
I found my way into this world years ago through Jen MacKinnon, founder of Practical by Default and the Working Homeschool Mom Club — a community with more than 30,000 members. Jen’s the reason I believed working full time and homeschooling weren’t mutually exclusive. My girls eventually went back to traditional school, but this spring I’m homeschooling the youngest again, and I went straight back to the people I trusted the first time — including Dachelle McVey, whose language arts curriculum is one of the most effective and engaging I’ve ever seen (especially for my reluctant reader).
Introducing Been There, Homeschooled That
Together with Jen and Dachelle, I designed a homeschool summit with one non-negotiable rule: Every speaker has to have actually launched at least one homeschooled child into adulthood.
And it turns out, we aren’t the only ones hungry for this sort of event. We have 18 speakers participating in a mix of themed live and recorded sessions with a few panel discussions thrown in for variety:
Sept. 1 — The Practical Side addresses the logistics nobody warns you about. You know, curriculum that doesn’t fit, schedules that fall apart, and the systems veteran homeschoolers actually use to keep the wheels on the proverbial bus.
Sept. 2 — The Human Side covers the identity shift, the isolation, the guilt, and the relationships that change when you wear the hats of teacher, parent, spouse and individual.
Sept. 3 — The Long Game addresses what actually matters by the time you’re standing at graduation — transcripts, college, trades, and the choices that turned out to count for more than you thought at the time.
You don’t need to attend all of it. Seriously. If you’re already homeschooling, feeding people, keeping up with laundry, working, and trying to remember what you meant to order three days ago, the last thing I want to hand you is 20 more things you “should” be doing. Pick the conversations that solve your actual problem this week. Skip the rest. Recordings stay up through Sept. 8, so you don’t have to rearrange your life around three specific days.
Homeschool Planet is our presenting sponsor, and everyone who registers gets a full 30-day free trial, no credit/debit card required. It’s the kind of tool that keeps your home, school, and work calendars in one place and lets you drop in lesson plans from popular curriculum companies instead of building your own from scratch. Start with the planner itself, or jump to whatever solves your current headache.
You don’t need a homeschooler in your house right now for any of this to be useful. If you’ve ever had to figure out who to trust when everyone sounds equally confident, that’s really what Been There, Homeschooled That is all about.
If you’re staring down a dozen Black Friday offers and not sure what’s worth it, this is your best friend. It helps you figure out whether something is actually right for you right now, instead of getting swept up in urgency or “but it’s on sale…” feelings.
I recommend everyone use this — even when evaluating the offers I list below.
If you’re looking ahead to 2026 and want clarity, strategy, or support you can bank now and use later, this is the one offer I can guarantee will make a difference in your business.
Through Dec. 1, 2025, you can purchase a bundle of consulting hours at $100/hour. You can use these hours anytime between now and December 31, 2026.
If you know who Elizabeth Goddard is, this offer will be exciting. If not, let me give you some insight. Originally a ConvertKit tech VA, Lizzy is a multipassionate course creator. She doesn’t do done-for-you services. Instead she focuses on helping fellow big-idea biz owners develop and market offers that make sense based on their time, energy and interests. The Everything Offer is a one-year pass to all of her existing courses (there are 100s) and any new offers she launches. Check it out here.
I’ve hosted all my courses in MemberVault since 2019. What I love most? Erin and Mike Kelly still show up, still improve the platform, and still care about the people who use it.
The deal includes:
50% off the 5-Product Plan (first year)
Make Back Your $$ in 30 Days playbook
January Take-Action Week
If you’ve been wanting to simplify your course setup, this is the moment.
If you want to build sustainable, repeatable income streams, this is a strong bundle.
Other Offers I Love
Great deals that I might not personally use (or be the ideal client for) but that I still stand behind.
Ultimate Black Friday Bundle for Authors
Shelby Leigh is an indie author who leverages her years of marketing experience to sell books at a rate that would make traditionally published authors drool. And right now, you can get her ultimate marketing bundle for almost half off. Check out the deal and other offers here.
CEO Winter Rebellion
Mary Williams is my biz bestie and fellow “Internet Dinosaur” – Her CEO Rebellion events are always filled with action-focused nuggets for creators and business owners. Sign up for the free challenge here.
A Note on These Offers
Most links shared above are what we call “affiliate links,” meaning that if you make a purchase after clicking the link, I will earn a commission of some sort. It could be a credit toward the service mentioned, or actual payment.
Affiliate income is historically less than 5% of my annual revenue because it’s not the focus of my business. I only share tools I trust, use now or have in the past or have direct experience using (like in the case of tools used by clients).
Before You Buy Anything…
Black Friday is loud.
A deal doesn’t automatically make something right for you.
A great online community manager can transform your business, creating a thriving space where your audience connects, engages, and ultimately becomes loyal customers.
Or, it can be a complete waste of your time and money.
I say this as an online community strategist myself, and I’m fully aware this post may seem like a counterintuitive career move. But too many business owners hire community managers who don’t deliver meaningful results, and I’d like to help you avoid that mistake.
What Is An Online Community Manager?
The first thing to understand is that a community manager’s job probably isn’t what you think it is.
An online community isn’t just a group of people who follow you online. It’s not about accumulating members or generating constant activity. Those are tactics, not goals.
There’s a LOT of hype around online communities, and it’s easy to convince yourself you need one to succeed. It’s tempting to compare your membership numbers, engagement rates, and activity levels to competitors and believe your community strategy is failing.
But unless your community exists as a public service, your true goal isn’t community success for its own sake. It’s to build relationships that support your business objectives, whether that’s selling products, creating opportunities, or furthering a cause.
A good community manager knows the point of an online community is to accomplish a real business goal, not just to be “good” at managing a group.
So before you hire a community manager, make sure they can explain how their approach will help you accomplish your actual goals and not just improve your community metrics.
Community Metrics Don’t Always Matter
Once you recognize that the community itself isn’t the goal, you’ll discover that many community metrics are often misleading vanity metrics.
If your goal is to sell more courses, then it’s not your community size that matters. The true measure of success lies in how many courses you sell through that community.
Some community metrics correlate to business outcomes that actually matter, but often they don’t. You can triple your group membership, but if those members don’t convert into customers, then who cares?
That’s not a community success story, but too often it’s presented like it is by community managers who don’t actually know how to use communities to drive truly meaningful results for your business.
Community Strategy Is More Valuable Than Community Management
Most people overpay for community management and underpay for community strategy.
I’ve seen countless proposals from agencies offering to manage a business owner’s online community. These proposals typically include detailed plans about content posting schedules, welcome messages for new members, and comment moderation guidelines.
You know what’s often missing from these proposals?
An explanation of the strategic approach to the community, how it will help the business accomplish specific goals, who the target audience is, and how this investment will further the business’s objectives. The proposals lack any real strategic vision. This is true of most community management proposals I’ve seen.
And if all you are paying for is the proper care and feeding of your people, where is the strategy driving how the community is cared for coming from? If it’s not the community manager you’ve hired, then it’s either you or it’s non-existent.
Community managers often sell you on lightening your load by taking over the day-to-day tasks that drain you. But in doing so, they ignore the importance of community strategy. While posting content and moderating comments in volume can be time consuming, it’s not a complicated set of tasks.
What’s hard is developing a community strategy that uses that engagement to accomplish your actual business goals. Make sure you don’t pay for community management without a clear strategy behind it.
Hire A Community Manager Who’s More Than Just A Community Expert
Non-community experience is as important as community experience.
Since the strategy piece is more crucial than the management piece, look for someone who understands your industry as well as they understand community-building. Just because a community manager knows the latest Facebook Groups features or Circle platform updates doesn’t mean they understand how your industry works and what your customers are looking for.
The latter is just as important — maybe more so — than the former. The community manager you hire can only be as good as their understanding of your business.
A Community Manager Is An Amplifier, Not A Magician
If your product, service, or creation doesn’t provide actual value, the best community manager in the world won’t be able to help you.
Online communities aren’t shortcuts to success — they are a vehicle to amplify things that deserve amplification and deepen relationships with people who already see your value. So if you hire a community expert to help you, make sure what you give them to work with is worth people’s time and attention.
Your Community Manager Should Give You A Conversion Strategy
A community strategy without a conversion strategy is incomplete.
Your online community is an entry point or a nurturing ground. It’s the beginning — or continuation — of a relationship with your customer and audience. But that relationship has to ultimately lead somewhere. To a purchase or an action. To a conversion that supports your business. A community strategy that doesn’t include a conversion strategy is a beginning without an end.
The greatest community in the world is meaningless to your business if it doesn’t lead to anything tangible.
So make sure you hire a community manager who can not only tell you how to create engagement in your community, but also has a plan to convert that engagement into business results. Or, at the very least, is forthright about the limitations to their scope of service.
In case you think otherwise, I believe online communities are incredibly valuable tools when used the right way.
Since 2007, I’ve specialized in online community design and development. People hire me and my team to design strategies for their free and paid groups and — when it makes sense — to manage the proper care and feeding of their members, so they can focus on other aspects of their business.
If what I’ve said above resonates with you and you’d like help approaching online community building in an effective way, there are three ways I can help:
Get a community strategy designed specifically for your business goals. We’ll work together to create a strategic plan that aligns your community with your business objectives.
Have my team manage your community with purpose. We’ll implement your strategy with intentional management that focuses on both engagement and conversion.
Learn how to do it yourself. Through coaching and resources like my Community Content Calendar, I can equip you with the tools to build and grow your own thriving community.
If you’re interested in exploring any of these options,book a call so we can discuss your specific needs and determine the best approach for your business.
Ready for the next step? If you’ve decided hiring a community manager makes sense for your business, read my comprehensive guide:Hiring an Online Community Manager: What You Need to Know. It covers everything from costs and expectations to avoiding common mistakes in the hiring process.
When was the last time you scrolled through Facebook and actually saw posts from your friends?
If you’re like most people, your feed has gradually transformed into a wasteland of random suggested posts, ads for products you don’t need, and content from strangers — with occasional updates from people you actually care about.
This isn’t an accident or a personal attack. It’s by design.
Social media platforms use sophisticated algorithms designed to maximize the time you spend scrolling. Unfortunately, what keeps you scrolling isn’t necessarily what brings you joy or connection.
The Broken Promise of Social Media
Remember when we all joined Facebook to stay connected with friends and family? To see photos of babies growing up and college friends getting married? To maintain relationships despite distance?
Somewhere along the way, especially for those of us who use these platforms for business, that experience got hijacked. The feed became cluttered with content engineered to keep us engaged — but not necessarily content we value.
As we fell into the habit of passively consuming content (scrolling without interacting), the algorithms interpreted our behavior as disinterest. When you see a friend’s post and think “how cute!” but keep scrolling without a like or comment, Facebook doesn’t know you enjoyed it. It only knows you didn’t take any action on the platform after seeing it.
Over time, the algorithm shows you less of that content in favor of posts that generate reactions, even if they’re from strangers or inciting high conflict.
Taking Back Control of Your Facebook Feed
The good news? You can retrain these algorithms to show you what you actually want to see. It takes a little time and intentional effort, but in about five days of consistent curation, you’ll notice a dramatic difference.
I recorded a step-by-step tutorial showing exactly how to take back control of your feed:
Now, if you want to wipe your feed clean — seeing nothing but a beautifully decluttered landscape — you’ll want to skip the steps below and use something like the News Feed Eradicator Chrome Extension.
The first step is aggressively weeding out unwanted content:
Hide irrelevant ads — Click the three dots in the corner of any ad, select “Hide ad,” and choose “Irrelevant to me” as the reason.
Access your ad preferences — Go to Settings > Ad Preferences to see which topics and advertisers are targeting you.
Opt out of ad topics — Under Ad Topics, select “See less” for categories you don’t want in your feed.
Block specific advertisers — Review the list of advertisers you’ve seen and hide the ones you’re not interested in.
Decline suggested posts — When you see content from accounts you don’t follow, click “Not interested” or “See fewer posts like this.”
Part 2: Show Facebook What You DO Want to See
Just as important as weeding out the unwanted is actively signaling what content matters to you:
Prioritize important connections — Go to Settings > Content Preferences > Favorites and add people whose content you want to see first.
Respond to Facebook’s prompts — When Facebook asks if you’re interested in seeing more from someone, click “Interested” for people you care about.
Engage deliberately — Leave meaningful comments and reactions (especially the “heart” reaction) on posts from people you want to see more from.
Break passive consumption habits — Instead of scrolling past posts you enjoy, take an extra second to like or comment.
Why This Matters for Business Owners
If you run an online community or use social media for business, this matters even more. When your personal feed becomes cluttered, you miss important updates from clients, colleagues, and collaborators. You might even miss mentions of your business or questions from potential customers.
Plus, understanding how these algorithms work helps you create more effective content for your own audience. If your followers aren’t seeing your posts, they can’t engage with them — no matter how brilliant your content or how much they love you.
Give It Five Days
The key to success is consistency. Spend about five minutes daily for the next five days actively curating your feed. Hide what you don’t want, engage with what you do want, and be intentional about how you interact with content.
By the end of the week, you’ll likely notice a significant shift in what appears in your feed. You’ll see more posts from friends you’ve missed, fewer irrelevant suggestions, and a more fulfilling social media experience overall.
The algorithm can only learn from your behavior, not your thoughts. You have to show it what matters to you.
Beyond the Basic Cleanup
Once you’ve reclaimed your feed, consider these additional strategies:
Repeat these steps on all devices — If you’re like most people, you have a primary device you use for social media, usually a phone or computer. Once you take these cleanup measures on that device, repeat them on your secondary device because social media web apps are often different from their mobile versions.
Regularly check in on favorite profiles — Visit the pages of people you care about most to catch anything you might have missed.
Use lists or favorites — Create custom friend lists for different groups or mark your closest connections as favorites.
Schedule regular cleanup sessions — Set a calendar reminder to repeat this process every few months to keep your feed from degrading again.
Be mindful of your engagement patterns — Remember that every click teaches the algorithm something about your preferences.
Do this on all social media platforms — Though the specific steps may be different, you can curate your feed on every algorithm-driven social network by taking the two-step approach of telling the platform what you want to see more and less of. This works on Instagram, LinkedIn, X, Pinterest, etc.
Let Me Know How It Goes!
I’d love to hear if these strategies help improve your social media experience. Drop a comment below, or join my community attonya.link/group for more discussions about building meaningful connections online.
If you’d like more community-building tips and resources, you’ll find plenty here in the section marked Guides.
Hiring an online community manager is a big step in your business. And while hiring help isn’t hard, it’s not as easy as some would lead you to believe.
If I had a dollar for every time I heard a coach or consultant tell a community leader to offload the proper care and feeding of their people to a virtual assistant (VA), I’d have vacation property on at least two continents. The reality of building a team to support the management of your online community is nuanced.
As someone who has designed and developed online communities professionally since 2007, I’ve seen firsthand how the wrong hire can actually create more work for you in the long run. But I’ve also witnessed the transformative impact of bringing in the right support at the right time.
The goal of this article is to provide a high-level overview of what it means to hire help, how to know if it makes sense for you, and how to go about it if you are serious about hiring an admin or moderator team.
Online Community Management is More Than Just Time Management
The biggest challenge in community management isn’t just finding time to do it all. It’s navigating the competing priorities of operational efficiency and authentic connection.
You can automate post scheduling or outsource member approvals, but you can’t delegate the heart of your community: the relationships you’ve built with your members. They joined your group for access to you, your resources and your perspective. And while you deserve healthy boundaries between work and life, this creates a paradox that can leave you feeling stuck:
You need help to serve your community better, but you can’t afford to compromise the relationships and connections that make your community special.
And if you’re being honest with yourself, you know you’re overwhelmed but you don’t really know what kind of help you need.
You can hire help for your community whenever you want. There are business owners who hire moderators or teams of moderators before they even build their community. However, most community leaders start their groups as a solo endeavor. And that means they are a one-person show until that approach becomes unsustainable.
Every community leader runs into situations when bringing in support is not just helpful, but necessary. Sometimes, the need is for short-term help. Other times, you need a long-term solution.
Not every problem is permanent, but that doesn’t mean you don’t need support to get yourself to the other side of it. Here are some cases where short-term support makes sense:
You’re dealing with illness or recovery
You’re going on vacation
You need to focus your efforts on a major project or launch
You are managing a personal emergency
For these situations, a professional community manager might not be necessary. A trusted team member or veteran community member can often step in to maintain basic operations until you’re able to resume your normal routine.
Think of this like house-sitting — they keep things running but aren’t making major improvements or decisions.
Not too long ago, a family emergency forced me out of the office for a week without much notice. I reached out to the five most active members in the busiest communities I managed at the time, asking if they could step in to cover for me.
Knowing I didn’t have time to provide formal training, I asked them to handle the proper care and feeding of members by responding to questions, facilitating connections between members, welcoming new members, and alerting me directly if any bad behavior was detected.
Every person enthusiastically agreed to help, feeling privileged to be trusted with the task. And I could focus on my family, confident that the communities were in good hands while I was away.
Meanwhile, members were none the wiser about my absence. While the communities value my presence and insight when they are stuck, their top priority is getting the help they need in a timely fashion. These veteran members were just as capable as me, and they added even more value since their lived experiences are different from mine. It was beautiful to see how the community flourished under their temporary care.
Long-Term Support (1+ months)
If the problem preventing you from caring for your community like you want to will persist for more than three weeks, you need to consider long-term support. Situations where a semi-permanent or permanent solution is required include:
Your business is growing rapidly, and you’re having a hard time keeping up with the growth
You’re spending more than two hours a week on basic community management tasks (approving member requests, answering questions, enforcing community standards, etc.)
You are unable to show up consistently in your community two to three times per week
The volume of member posts, questions and comments have outpaced your capacity
These scenarios call for professional community management support.
Just like you wouldn’t ask a house-sitter to renovate your kitchen or manage your household operations, you need skilled help to maintain and grow your community’s momentum.
Hiring a volunteer or virtual assistant in these situations will likely only add work to your already-overflowing plate. What you really need is someone who can truly step into your shoes with minimal direction and oversight. Only a trained professional can create strategic initiatives, determine the best tactics to execute those initiatives and analyze results to make data-informed decisions.
What Professional Community Management Actually Involves
Before you hire help, make sure you understand what community management is and is not. Too many people — even so-called experts — confuse social media management and community management. Understanding the difference will help you ask the right questions and set the right expectations in the hiring and training process. Likewise, a true online community specialist does a lot more than approve member requests and celebrate members.
Here’s what comprehensive community management typically covers:
Basic Support
Several virtual assistants who offer community management services provide fundamental support. They will handle the day-to-day operations that keep your community running smoothly.
Think of this like basic housekeeping — they maintain order and cleanliness based on the priorities you set. Your community manager will handle member request approvals, welcome new members into the group, and monitor for questions that need attention. They’ll also handle basic moderation to ensure everyone plays nice and schedule regular content to maintain consistency.
At this level of support, the community manager will expect you to provide the content for them to post, the resources they should reference and the tasks you want them to perform. But within that scope, they should be able to operate with minimal supervision.
Advanced Support
This is where community management transforms from basic maintenance into true cultivation of your community’s growth and development. An advanced community manager is a strategic partner in the design, development and day-to-day management of your group.
As a communities expert, they should be able to create content that specifically addresses member needs and facilitates deeper connections between community members. They can produce and manage live broadcasts, track important metrics, and use that data to make informed strategy adjustments.
They should also be prepared to handle crisis situations and actively work to develop and maintain your community’s culture. Think of this like having a house manager rather than just a housekeeper — they’re actively working to improve and enhance the community experience.
Expectations are a Two-Way Street
Setting clear expectations is crucial when bringing in professional help for your community. You need to be specific about what you want from them, and they need to clearly articulate the scope of service they are able to provide.
The term “community management” means different things to different people. It’s up to you to ensure alignment of expectations so everyone agrees on which results will define success.
What You Can Reasonably Expect from a Community Manager
A professional community manager should become a true advocate for your members, deeply understanding their needs and ensuring those needs are met. They’ll implement your community strategy with expertise and maintain consistent engagement standards that keep your community active and valuable.
They should support your business objectives by creating an environment where members naturally progress toward becoming clients or customers. You can expect them to provide professional insights based on their experience and handle the day-to-day operations that keep your community running smoothly.
What’s Not Reasonable to Expect from a Community Manager
Your community manager won’t be your clone or replacement. In fact, trying to make them act as you can backfire, coming across as inauthentic to your members.
They should be participating in your community under their own name and operating as a bridge between you and your members. Think of them as the collective voice of your members.
Don’t expect a community manager to grow your group externally, either. Their role is to nurture the members you bring in and strengthen the group culture, not to recruit new members. They also won’t design your offers or sales strategy. While they can support your sales process, they can’t create it for you. You still need to be the owner and visionary charting the course for your business. It’s up to you to determine and communicate how the community fits into your overall business model.
It’s also not reasonable to expect a paid community manager to have the same emotional investment in your community as you do. They can care deeply about your members and your mission, but this is still a job for them, not a passion project.
And perhaps most importantly, don’t expect premium results on a minimal budget. Just like you can’t expect a $25 haircut to look like a $250 one, you can’t expect full-service community management for the price of a part-time off-shore VA.
Common Mistakes to Avoid as You Build Your Team
If you’ve never built a team before or hired help in a key function of your business, you will make mistakes. It’s part of being human. However, there are some common errors I see community leaders make when hiring admins and moderators to run their groups.
The Disappearing Act
The most common mistake community leaders make is thinking that hiring help means they can disappear. In their mind, they are paying someone to lead the community and that means they no longer have to worry about it.
However, there is a difference between delegating the role and responsibilities associated with the management of your group and abdicating your ownership of it. If your community is a key part of your business model, you can’t afford to be absent from it.
Your members joined the community because of YOU. While a community manager can maintain engagement and facilitate connections, they can’t replace the unique value you bring. Your presence and leadership remain essential to your community’s success.
So instead of thinking that hiring help means you can ignore the group, recognize that it means you get to be more strategic about the time you spend in it. Your community manager can help you determine which efforts are most likely to move the needle toward your goals, so you focus attention there instead of on the busy work of keeping the community running.
The Budget Mismatch
Community management isn’t a “Task Rabbit” assignment. While you might fit your community into open pockets of time here and there, a professional community manager has a system by which they ensure your community is as successful as possible.
If your group is large, busy or the primary driver of revenue in your business, it may always require 10-15 hours a week of active management (40-60 hours a month).
While the hours required for success are pretty standard, there is no hard and fast rule about who performs all the tasks associated with your community.
If you want to take responsibility for strategy, content creation, and nurturing members along the customer journey, you might only need 10 to 20 hours of support from your admin team each month. So consider that when figuring out your budget for hiring help.
While some community managers bill hourly, most offer package rates. A strategic plan can cost between $2,000 and $10,000, depending on whether implementation support is included. Basic management averages $500/month for up to 10 hours of work. Advanced management can run between $1,500-$3,000/month.
Some tasks that affect service costs include whether you expect the community manager to connect with members via direct messages (DMs), create your content strategy, moderate livestreams and group calls, run group calls and events themselves, provide strategic guidance or metric analysis.
The Strategy Gap
No matter how much professionals charge for the help you want them to provide, the amount of money and time you invest in your community has to make sense within the complete picture of your business. If your community is only 5% of your business, it doesn’t make sense to spend 30% of your operating budget on it.
Before you ever think about hiring help, first get clear on what function you want your community to fill within your business. Then decide how much of your operating budget to invest in that function. From there, you can either create your own community strategy or hire an expert to create the strategic plan.
But under no circumstances can you skip over having a strategy in place.
Hiring help without a clear community strategy is like hiring a housekeeper with no plan for what parts of the house you want them to clean. You’re setting everyone up for frustration and failure. Your community manager needs to understand your vision, goals, and the specific ways you want to achieve them. Without this foundation, they have no way to define success, or project what’s possible.
Making the Right Choice for Your Community
After years of both managing communities and leading a community management agency, I’ve learned that success comes down to asking the right questions before you hire. As you think through whether to hire a community manager, consider the following criteria.
Understanding Your Support Needs
First, get crystal clear about what specific tasks need support. Are you struggling with day-to-day moderation? Content creation? Member engagement? Does everything feel scattered with no common thread? Understanding your pain points helps identify the level of support you actually need.
Evaluating Required Expertise
Different community management needs require different levels of expertise. Basic moderation and member approvals might be handled by a VA who specializes in communities, but strategic community development requires a strategic mindset and depth of experience in online user behavior and psychology. Be honest about what your community needs to thrive.
Setting a Realistic Budget
Remember that old saying, “You get what you pay for”? It’s especially true in community management. Consider what you can realistically invest and what return you expect from that investment. Don’t forget to factor in the value of your time that will be freed up.
Defining Success Metrics
How will you know if bringing in help is working? Establish clear metrics for success before you hire. This might include engagement rates, member satisfaction, or specific business goals your community supports.
Assessing Your Systems
Finally, take a hard look at what systems you have in place. Do you have documented processes? Clear community guidelines? A content strategy? Having these fundamentals in place makes it much easier for someone to step in and help effectively.
Next Steps in Hiring Help
If you’re considering hiring help for your community:
Document your current community management processes
Identify specific areas where you need support
Define your budget and expectations
Create or update your community strategy
Research potential solutions that align with your needs and budget
Whether you decide to hire help or continue managing your community solo, the key is being intentional about your choice and clear about your expectations.
Need help evaluating your community management needs?Book a strategy session to discuss your specific situation and explore your options.
When most business owners think about rebranding, they imagine going dark for months while they overhaul everything behind the scenes. But what if you could evolve your brand gradually, testing and refining as you go, without disrupting your business?
That’s exactly what I’ve done in 2025 — rebranding in real time, evolving the Tonya Kubo visual identity right in front of my audience. And I’m sharing my process so you can see how to do it, too.
The Case for Slow and Strategic Change to Visual Identity
Before discussing the evolution of a brand, it’s important to get clear on what “brand” does and does not mean. Marketing expert Seth Godin says:
A brand is the set of expectations, memories, stories and relationships that, taken together, account for a consumer’s decision to choose one product or service over another.
While Seth — and most other marketing professionals — will tell you design is not a brand, the visual identity of a company is what summarizes a consumer’s expectations, relationships, and stories of the organization’s value.
With that in mind, it’s clear specific brand elements — logos, colors, fonts, etc. — are less important than messaging, positioning and behavior. And yet, so many entrepreneurs will spend more time choosing logos, colors and fonts than they will on company values and service delivery.
A Rebrand Doesn’t Have to be an All-or-Nothing Event
When you hear the word rebrand, you might imagine a complete website overhaul and a big dramatic reveal. But the approach of a big splash and sudden switch carries significant risks:
Customer Confusion — A sudden shift can make your audience wonder if they’re in the right place
Operational Strain — Updating everything at once is a huge lift, especially if you’re still actively running your business
Missed Opportunities for Feedback — A slow rollout allows you to test, tweak, and refine as you go
When I initially launched the Tonya Kubo brand, I had the luxury of time and resources: $10,000 for branding and website design, $2,500 for copywriting, $500 for brand assets, $2,000 for brand photography, etc. I could build everything in private before making a grand reveal.
Today, as a working service provider and content creator, that approach isn’t feasible. I can’t take my digital footprint offline or invest $15,000 all at once. Instead, I chose to evolve my brand gradually much in the way Kit (formerly known as ConvertKit) did in 2024, making intentional changes while keeping my business running smoothly.
Rebranding in Public: A Phased Approach
Before initiating the evolution of the Tonya Kubo brand, I needed to first map out the project both in terms of dates and deliverables. In rebranding, some businesses will update their ideal client avatar, offer stack and pricing, along with visual identity, messaging and positioning.
In my case, my ideal client avatar, offers and prices have evolved consistently over the years. It was my visual identity and messaging that lagged behind. With that in mind, I took a phased approach with the Tonya Kubo brand update.
Phase I: Define Your Brand Foundation — 1 month
As a solopreneur, this phase was fast because I didn’t have to seek buy-in from anyone other than myself and current clients. Larger organizations with multiple decision makers may require 6 months to a year for this phase.
Phase 2: Visual Identity Updates — 3 months
Outsourcing the design work meant the availability of hired help had to be accommodated in the process. That naturally extends the timeline.
Like Phase 2, messaging and positioning adjustments take time because I’ve hired service providers who have their own busy schedules.
Phase 4: Deep Structural Changes — 2 months
By the time we initiate redesigning the website, so much will already be in place that it should only take the amount of time required to go through the design and approval process.
Phase 5: Final Touches — 12 months
Once everything is in place, little things are bound to emerge that require updates and adjustments. This is a natural part of the rebranding process for any organization. However, larger organizations may need up to three years for this phase because of size and scope.
The Team Behind the Rebrand
Throughout this article, I mention the service providers who are assisting with various aspects of the project. Everyone is listed here, so that you can check them out if you’re in need of similar services:
Adrienne Kmetz — web content strategy, SEO, organic content marketing
Deanna Seymour — brand strategy, design and remote photography
Phase 1: Define Your Brand Foundation
The Concept: Before making any changes, you need clarity on what’s changing and why.
My Approach: In my case, core elements like values and mission haven’t changed since 2015. So this phase of my rebrand is one I could handle independently. I didn’t need outside help to figure out what I value, or my brand’s purpose, mission and vision.
Brand Values:
Love
Connection
Curiosity
Stewardship
Sustainability
Brand Purpose:
We believe online platforms can be a force for good, fostering meaningful connection and belonging over division.
Brand Vision:
Everyone has a place online where they feel they belong, can show up with love and authenticity, and help their communities thrive.
Brand Mission:
To lead the way in transforming online platforms into a space of meaningful connection through innovative, ethical, and sustainable online community design, development, and growth.
What has changed is how I approach my work and my own needs.
Early-onset glaucoma has left me with a sizable blind spot in my left eye. Abraham Lincoln, the primary font I have loved for its authority and elegance, is no longer easy to read. And the color palette I’ve used for the past decade is now hard on my eyes. If I have a hard time visually with these fonts and colors, the experience for individuals with low-vision, visual processing challenges, and color blindness is guaranteed to be worse.
4 Steps to Define Your Brand Foundation
Audit your current brand elements
Identify what’s staying vs changing
Set a realistic timeline
Document your decisions
If you’re struggling with auditing your own brand, consider these questions:
What elements of your brand still serve you well?
What needs to evolve to match your current business reality?
The new version of the Tonya Kubo brand (left) carries forward the sharp edges and classic authority of the original brand (right) with a modern edge.
Phase 2: Visual Identity Updates
The Concept: Start with small, visible changes that signal evolution without causing confusion.
My Approach: In my case, changing the logo, fonts and colors wasn’t a choice. I needed greater visual accessibility for myself and those who encounter me online. While I have no shortage of strong opinions about brand visual identity, I’m no designer.
For this phase of the Tonya Kubo rebrand, I enlisted the help of digital marketing strategist Deanna Seymour. Deanna, founder of The Playhouse (affiliate link), is among the few designers who has instantly understood the “cultured pearls and razor blades” nature of my brand identity. I chose Deanna because I wanted a fresh look that didn’t require months of custom work. She was willing to take the Tonya Kubo brand from 1.0 to 2.0 using Canva elements that would be easy to instantly apply without looking bland. Want Deanna’s take on the rebrand? She wrote an entire article on the topic in her newsletter.
Both logos align with the Tonya Kubo brand identity but the new logo (top) is much easier to read in Atkinson Hyperlegible compared to the former logo in Abraham Lincoln.
Font Selection
Before I ever approached Deanna to help me, I knew that visual accessibility was non-negotiable when it came to refreshing my brand. Though I suggested more than a handful of fonts that fit my requirements, Deanna was quick to embrace Atkinson Hyperlegible font for my logo, heading and body copy. Developed by the Braille Institute, it’s a highly readable typeface designed for maximum legibility and accessibility, particularly for individuals with visual impairments.
My work is all about helping people cut through the noise, focus on what matters, and make better decisions — whether that’s in community management, marketing or business development. This font’s design philosophy — removing confusion, enhancing readability, and prioritizing human connection — mirrors exactly what I strive to do in my business. Deanna’s take:
“You have so much experience and knowledge, let’s not distract from it. A simple font and bold colors will enhance the value of what you say and leave no room for confusion.”
Logo Selection
For my primary logo, I went with my first and last names in lowercase, separated by a vertical bar. This helps the logo to stand out from heading and body copy text, which use traditional “camel case” capitalization. My initials, separated by a vertical bar and enclosed in a solid box, comprise the secondary logo (also known as a wordmark or favicon).
The “tk” in the secondary logo is also a nod to my newsroom days. TK is an editing mark that is equivalent to leaving a blank or brackets in the text. Though we use TK, it stands for “to come” because editorial marks are often misspelled intentionally to avoid confusion with final copy.
Color Palette
The new brand color palette has been the biggest adjustment for both my audience and me. Going from deep, highly saturated carmine, purple, cyan, and black to what feels like a lighter, fresher, and more dynamic mix of blues, pinks, and teals was a bold shift. But the expanded color palette is necessary to support the growth and evolution of my business.
Viewed together, you can see how much easier the updated color palette (top) is on the eyes compared to the prior brand colors.
A Look Back: The Old Brand Colors
My previous brand centered around #E72A4C (carmine red), black, and white — a high-contrast, bold combination that conveyed strength, confidence, and authority. It was clean, striking, and designed for a business model that revolved around service-based work and speaking engagements.
At the time, this made sense. I was a consultant and workshop speaker, and my brand needed to communicate expertise, credibility, and clarity. The sharp angles and structured elements reinforced that positioning — direct, professional, and to the point.
Over the years, my business has expanded beyond a single revenue stream. I still work with clients, but now my brand also encompasses:
Digital products and frameworks that help people DIY their community strategy
Courses and workshops that make my expertise more scalable
A book in the works, which requires a unique-but-connected identity
An upcoming podcast, adding another dimension to my brand presence
The New Palette: More Versatility, More Connection
Instead of relying on just one signature color, my updated brand palette introduces a wider, more nuanced range:
Neutral black and white to provide balance and structure (primary colors)
Deep blues and teals for clarity, trust, and open communication
Vibrant pinks and oranges for creativity, energy, and engagement
While it’s important to have unity across a brand, not everything has to look exactly the same. I wanted everything I create to be sisters, not twins — connected by a shared foundation but unique in their own right.
My digital products can have a slightly different color emphasis than my podcast and workshops, but they all still feel like part of the same family. Meanwhile, the colors used on social media and my website can tie everything together without looking chaotic.
Strong Brand Standards for a Flexible Palette
With an expanded color palette comes the need for clear guidelines. Some designers like to use all the crayons in the crayon box. Without strong brand standards, a flexible palette can quickly turn into visual chaos. Or, as one client who looked at the complete brand board said, “It’s giving heavy Babysitters’ Club vibes when I look at the candy-colored palette.”
Photo credit: Brian Kubo
Using Brand Photography to Update Visual Identity
My last brand photography session was a full-day studio shoot in 2019. I spent months working with a photographer, stylist, and set designer to plan every aspect of the shoot — right down to my jewelry, false eyelashes and props.
This time around, I want to take my time with photos representing the new visual identity of the Tonya Kubo brand. I plan on a series of casual photo shoots over the course of 2025 before having a formal studio brand photography session. I believe this approach will yield the variety I need to accurately represent all aspects of my brand and personality.
The first session took place at a downtown cafe my hometown with my husband, Brian, serving as photographer using my Samsung S25+ phone as his camera. I’m wearing a black T-shirt with #FindYourFreaks across the front to promote my new podcast.
5 Steps to Update Your Visual Identity
Choose one visual element to update first (font, logo, or colors)
Test changes with clients and private communities
Gather feedback (only if you truly care about community buy-in)
Document your brand standards:
Primary colors (like black and white) as your foundation
Rules for using secondary colors (no more than 2 at once)
Guidelines for maintaining visual consistency across platforms
Update your brand photos accordingly
If you’re struggling with your visual identity, consider these questions:
Which visual elements no longer align with your brand?
Where could you test small changes first?
Phase 3: Messaging & Positioning Adjustments
The Concept: Think of your brand messaging as your story and your position as your place in the market. As your business evolves, both need regular updates to stay relevant and effective. This is true whether you’re updating your visual identity or not.
My Approach: While my core mission of fostering meaningful online connections hasn’t changed, my business has evolved substantially over the years. I’ve grown beyond blending book marketing with social media and community management. Now, my full focus is online community strategy and design and the online marketing that goes along with it.
Because I’ve lived through the evolution of the Tonya Kubo brand over time, I’m too close to my own business to be able to update my messaging and positioning in a way that makes sense to others. I’ve commissioned Rachel Allen of Bolt from the Blue Copywriting to wrap the right words around the value of the work I do.
Website content strategy was the first indicator of how the Tonya Kubo brand would evolve.
Tonya Kubo Brand Content Strategy
Before I could even start talking with Rachel about copywriting, I had to first get clear on my online content strategy. This is another example of being unable to read the label from inside the jar. Though I spent years as the online engagement director at a public research university, I knew I would need help creating a content strategy that showcased the intersection of what I offer with what my target market most desperately desires.
For this part of the project, I hired content marketing strategist Adrienne Kmetz. Adrienne and I met in Deanna Seymour’s Playhouse community before I had even begun to discuss my rebranding plans with anyone. But I instantly recognized that Adrienne had the portfolio of experience required to help me deliver the greatest value through my content.
We started working on my website content strategy in November 2024, paying close attention to blog articles, resource guides and the key pages potential clients will visit to investigate me as a service provider (home, services, about, contact).
Review current communications, noting inconsistencies and outdated messaging
Identify what resonates with your audience
Map out the gaps between current and desired positioning
Clarify Your Position
Define your unique value proposition
Identify what sets you apart from competitors
Articulate your brand personality
Develop New Messaging
Create core messages
Define your content pillars
Update your brand story and service descriptions
Strategically Implement Your Changes
Take a phased approach by starting with one channel to test messaging
Evaluate success and refine accordingly
Document what works and roll out changes across all channels
If you’re struggling with your messaging and positioning, consider:
How has your business evolved?
Where do you need more clarity in describing what you do?
How have your clients’ needs changed?
What new stories do you need to tell about your work?
Aside from the color palette and font being hard on the eyes, the hero image taking up so much space made it hard for website visitors to get what they needed easily.
Phase 4: Deep Structural Changes
The Concept: Bigger changes — like updating your website and marketing collateral — should come after your visual identity and messaging are established. By this point, your audience is familiar with the new look and feel, making the transition smoother.
My Approach: For my rebrand, structural changes focus on creating a more cohesive ecosystem across all offerings:
Digital products and frameworks share consistent visual elements while maintaining their unique identities
Course materials incorporate the new accessible font choices and expanded color palette
Website structure showcases my services and offerings in a way that makes sense
TonyaKubo.com Walkthrough – Watch Video
Structural Changes for the Tonya Kubo Brand
To redesign this website, I hired Angela Bouma of Bouma Design Co. Angela is the designer who created my original Tonya Kubo brand and website, and we’ve tackled a variety of website and branding strategy and design projects over the years. Most recently, we collaborated on the California Breastfeeding Coalition and Everyday Effectiveness website redesigns.
Angela, a WordPress designer who specializes in the Divi theme, was the last piece of the puzzle and the reason the new site design launched June 2025.
I’m also working with Kate Gilbert to create design templates for ebooks and printable resources. Though this type of work falls well within Angela’s wheelhouse, timing and capacity required that I outsource this aspect of the redesign project to someone else. Kate and I have worked together on messaging and online reputation management since 2024. Though this isn’t a standard service offering for her, I’m grateful she was willing to step in to help.
Interim Site Changes for TonyaKubo.com (January-May 2025)
If you compare the old homepage design (above) and the interim design (below), you’ll notice the following changes:
Logo updated and sized down
Navigation menu added to the top of the home page
Hero image at the top of the page was changed to a smaller vertical photo
Top header (H1) and intro copy adjusted to take up two-thirds of the horizontal space
The above changes allow a call-to-action button (links to contact form) placed high on the page (above the “fold)
The black boxes with problem-agitation copy moved below the hero and are now placed in a horizontal row instead of vertical stack
Circles with arrows directing the visitor to scroll have been reduced in size by 60%
All fonts have been changed to Atkinson Hyperlegible
Accent text changed from carmine red to fuchsia
Accent backgrounds changed from cyan to mint green
Call-to-action (CTA) buttons and links switched from black and carmine red to bright blue
CTA menu under “let me help you find and serve your true audience” reduced from four options to three, and stock photos have been replaced with black-and-white versions of original photos.
The interim version of the homepage is significantly shorter than the original one from 2016, and it’s much more user-friendly. Removing reference to an outdated lead magnet left more space for the remaining options, which actually offer the greatest value to visitors: my free Facebook group, blog articles, and services page.
Swapping out fonts, colors and logo instantly freshened the look of the site before the redesign took place in June 2025.
How You Can Prioritize Your Structural Changes
Roll out new product/service names in phases
Redesign your website or sales pages only after your messaging is solidified
Update your content delivery systems (courses, products, resources)
Refresh customer-facing documents and templates
If you’re struggling with this exercise, consider:
What structural changes would better support your evolved brand?
Which changes might have the biggest impact on your customers?
How can you make transitions easier for your audience?
Phase 5: Final Touches & Full Integration
The Concept: The final phase is about ensuring consistency across every touchpoint and celebrating the completion of your rebrand journey. This is when everything should feel cohesive and aligned. Depending on the size of your organization, Phase 5 can last anywhere from one to three years after Phase 4 ends.
My Approach: While going from Tonya Kubo brand 1.0 to 2.0 is a heavy lift, I have no problem spending up to three years refining the brand further.
Tonya Kubo Brand Final Touches and Full Integration
I won’t begin Phase 5 until late Fall 2025, during which time I’ll:
Finalize all documentation — If it’s not documented, it didn’t happen. Guidelines must be written that cover visual identity and messaging so that the brand doesn’t get diluted when subcontracting with creative professionals.
Communicate all decisions — Ensuring everyone who works with my brand understands the new standards
Apply the new brand standards to my learning management system — All of my high-value educational resources are hosted on MemberVault. Though it won’t be hard to update my resource vault with the new branding, it will take time. This is something I can outsource to a designer later.
Your Checklist for Final Touches and Full Integration
You and I are different business owners and individuals, which means my priorities and yours will not be the same. It’s important that you integrate your new brand identity in a way that aligns with your priorities and the market you serve.
However, here are some things to think about before considering your rebrand final and complete:
Brand touchpoints
Website
Business cards and promotional materials
Presentation templates
Internal documents and resource hubs
Email signatures
Social media profile images and headers
Templates for social media posts, email newsletters, website feature images
Lead magnets and resource guides
Landing pages
Marketing funnel assets (evergreen webinars, social media ads, etc)
Team resources and training materials
Logos on external sites (partners and collaborators)
Google Business listings
Communicating Updates to Your Visual Identity and Brand Design
Once your visuals start evolving, it’s time to refine how you talk about your brand. While nobody will ever care as much as you do about the logos, fonts, and colors you choose, developing a story around your choices makes you memorable and reinforces the emotions the public associates with you and your company. Storytelling helps your audience adjust to the changes without feeling like they’ve lost the essence of your business.
My Communications Approach
During the messaging phase, I focused on communicating what was changing and why, being especially transparent about the accessibility factors driving many decisions. This article is the most comprehensive explanation of the Tonya Kubo brand evolution, but you’ll see references to it throughout my newsletter, social media and media appearances for at least a year — until most people forget anything before what you see now.
Some key updates communicated early and often:
Explaining the font choice — Abraham Lincoln has become synonymous with the power and prestige of the Tonya Kubo brand. The bold simplicity of Atkinson Hyperlegible is a dramatic change. But explaining its focus on legibility and accessibility helps the public understand how it aligns perfectly with my mission to help people cut through noise and focus on what matters
Sharing the symbolism behind design choices — Like explaining how the “tk” in my secondary logo connects to my journalism background, so those who know me as a professional communicator don’t mistake it for a cutesy attempt at trendiness.
Demonstrating how brand evolution reflects business growth — Walking my audience through how the expanded color palette supports different aspects of my expanding business
It didn’t occur to me how confusing it would be to show logos and brand colors without additional context.
Lessons Learned So Far from Updating the Tonya Kubo Visual Identity and Brand
As I work through updating the Tonya Kubo brand and visual identity throughout 2025 and possibly into 2026, I’ll document lessons learned here.
What’s Working
The new font made a bigger impact than expected with everyone who sees it instantly commenting on how much they like its crisp lines and readability.
Clear beats clever every time. The accessibility-first approach to this new visual identity resonated with everyone in my community.
Focusing on content before design gave the creatives commissioned for the project a better understanding of the message I wanted to convey with my visual identity.
Rebranding in public, letting my community see the sausage get made, made everyone feel included and deepened their connection to me and the new version of my brand.
What I’d Do Differently
I made the mistake of initially showing the brand board with primary and secondary logos and complete color palette without explanation.
People who didn’t know my journalism background fixated on the t|k wordmark, worried that I wasn’t aware of it as an editorial mark.
When looking at the color palette as a complete unit, most people assumed I planned to use all of the colors at the same time. And that’s what led to a lot of people referencing Skittles and The Babysitters’ Club when they first saw the brand board.
In the future, I won’t show the brand board to external audiences, instead only showing the logo, colors and fonts in context of how they’ll be used publicly.
Tips for Your Rebrand
Start with clear goals but stay flexible in your approach
Keep your audience informed throughout the process
Test changes in low-stakes environments first
Document everything, including feedback and lessons learned
In a time dominated by artificial intelligence and automated content, human connection has never been more valuable – or more challenging to cultivate. As we move into 2025, the pendulum is swinging back toward authentic relationships and genuine engagement in online spaces.
Recently, I shared my thoughts on this shift during two conversations about what lies ahead for content creators – first with Mary Williams of Sensible Woo, and then on the Writing at the Red House podcast with Kathi Lipp and Tenneil Register. Drawing from my 16+ years of experience in online community design, development, and growth, I see some significant changes coming in how we approach content creation and community building.
Here are my three key predictions for 2025:
1. The Rise of Craft and Authenticity in the Age of AI
With AI-generated content becoming increasingly prevalent in areas like show notes, newsletters, and social media posts, content creators will need to work harder to differentiate themselves. The key differentiator will be showcasing your unique voice, perspective, and – perhaps most importantly – your credentials and lived experience.
While AI can generate content on virtually any topic, it cannot replicate your personal journey, professional experience, or the nuanced understanding that comes from years in your field. This emphasis on craft and authenticity will become crucial as generic, AI-generated content becomes more common and easily identifiable.
If you want to take advantage of this trend, start publishing your own perspectives in public spaces. For instance, AI can offer features comparisons of the most popular community platforms, but it can’t provide the kind of insider knowledge I have gleaned through years of experience. And that’s why my article on where to go next if you’re planning to move your Facebook Group is so popular.
2. The Shift to Intimate Communities
We’re seeing a significant trend toward smaller, more intimate communities rather than large, public followings. Content creators, especially writers, are recognizing that having 100,000 Instagram followers doesn’t necessarily translate to book sales or event attendance. Instead, there’s growing value in cultivating smaller, deeper connections.
I’m predicting a surge in communities of 100 members or fewer, where participants can develop meaningful relationships and engage on a deeper level. This trend reflects a broader desire for authentic connection and meaningful interaction over surface-level engagement.
3. The Evolution of Voice Search Optimization
As voice-activated devices become more prevalent, we’ll need to adapt our writing to accommodate voice search patterns. This means moving away from traditional keyword optimization toward natural language patterns that mirror how people actually speak when using voice search.
From my experience working with agencies, I’ve seen how incorporating natural speech patterns into written content can significantly impact traffic. One client doubled their website traffic in just three months by adapting their content to match natural speaking patterns, demonstrating the growing importance of voice search optimization.
Looking Ahead
These predictions all point to a common theme: the humanization of digital content and communities. Technology might be getting more sophisticated, but it will never have a beating heart. The most successful content creators will be those who can maintain and showcase their humanity.
What’s particularly interesting is how these trends interweave. The rise of AI is pushing us toward more authentic expression. The challenges of building large followings are encouraging us to focus on deeper connections. And the evolution of search technology is pushing us to write more naturally.
For content creators, this means:
Focusing on sharing unique insights and experiences that AI cannot replicate
Building meaningful connections with smaller, more engaged audiences
Adapting content to match natural speech patterns
Prioritizing authenticity over perfection
Creating content that facilitates genuine human connection
As we explore 2025, it will be interesting to see whether my predictions become reality. Here’s to fostering genuine connections, sharing authentic experiences, and creating content that truly resonates with your specific audience!
When launching something new in your business — whether it’s a podcast, course, or membership program — your existing community can be your greatest asset. But there’s an art to involving them effectively without keeping everything under wraps until the “big reveal.”
As someone who has designed and managed online communities since 2007, I’ve learned that launches with a splashy “big reveal” approach rarely serves small business owners well. While major corporations like Coca-Cola might benefit from secretive product launches, entrepreneurs need to ensure their offerings resonate with their audience before investing significant time and resources.
The best way to do that? Bring your community along for the journey.
The Reality of Two-Way Communication
While podcasts, emails, websites and books create mostly one-way communication streams, true community thrives on reciprocal interaction. When you already have an engaged community, you have a built-in advantage: established trust and two-way dialogue. This foundation makes your community the perfect testing ground and launch pad for new initiatives.
When you test in your own community, you also filter through feedback more effectively. You know who is a current client or former client, who is brand-new, and who has been in your ecosystem for a long time but never made a purchase.
Let’s take the example of surveying the group about pricing tiers for an upcoming offer.
If several members respond that a potential price is too high, you might second-guess your plan. However, if upon deeper exploration, you realize those individuals have never paid for any of your products or services, you apply different context to their feedback. Your price may be too high, or it could be that they aren’t the target market for the offer.
For an example from an author’s perspective, check out this short from Elisabeth Wheatley. Note: if you try crowdsourcing ideas and feedback from your community but feel like the responses aren’t useful, you might need to ask your questions differently. It takes some practice, but it’s worth figuring out how to ask questions in a way that drives responses you can use and apply.
Start with Small Tests
Before going all-in on a new project, look for ways to test key elements. When my client wanted to launch a podcast with a potential co-host, we first ran a six-episode livestream series. This allowed us to evaluate their on-camera chemistry, test topic resonance, and understand the time investment required – all before spending money on podcast production.
This test proved invaluable.
While viewership grew from 40 to over 100 viewers across six episodes, we discovered our original name “BizOpsExposed” attracted operations professionals rather than our target audience of business owners needing support with operational challenges. We also discovered that while my client enjoyed live on-camera discussion, she felt trapped by the requirements of making herself available at the same time each week for a livestream broadcast. Better to learn this through a limited test than after a full launch.
The Art of Progressive Feedback
Instead of keeping everything under wraps until it’s “company ready,” involve your community throughout the development process. While your ideal timeline will vary according to your schedule, community, and the timeliness of your offer, here is one approach:
6+ Months Out
Ask broad, exploratory questions like “If I were to launch a podcast/course/membership, what would you want to learn?”
Share early concepts and ideas through polls and discussions
Gather initial reactions and input about potential formats or approaches
Post twice-monthly updates about your progress and learnings
3-5 Months Out:
Present limited choices (start with 4 options, narrow to 2)
Test specific elements like names or branding
Begin building anticipation through weekly updates
Share behind-the-scenes glimpses of your development process
Final 6 Weeks:
Share detailed behind-the-scenes content
Provide specific ways to help
Communicate 2-3 times weekly about the launch
Create opportunities for early access or special involvement
Keep in mind that while this timeline includes aspects that are critical to the development of your offer, the time it takes to actually create the offer and set up fulfillment is separate. The purpose of this timeline is to show you what it looks like to socialize an offer throughout the ideation and creation process so that when it launches, your community is already hungry for it.
Listen Between the Lines
Sometimes the most valuable feedback isn’t explicitly stated. These indirect insights often prove more valuable than direct answers to our questions.
When exploring a potential group training program in my own business, one-on-one conversations with interested community members revealed that while they preferred individual coaching, they were considering group programs purely for budget reasons. This insight helped me realize the timing wasn’t right for the program I had envisioned.
In another instance, podcast listener feedback revealed that they valued my community-focused perspective on general business topics more than pure community management content.
Make Sharing Simple
Never assume people know how to help promote your initiative. Even my podcast co-host initially didn’t realize our press kit was meant for her use, too! Create a comprehensive resource that includes:
Sample social media posts
Email templates with clear subject lines
Key talking points and show description
Visual assets in multiple formats
Direct links to all platforms
Specific instructions for reviews or ratings
Multiple levels of promotional activities to fit different comfort zones
Clear explanation of how to use the resources
When launching The Business You Really Want, providing these resources led to features in five newsletters, coverage in a trade publication, and multiple podcast interview opportunities — all because I told supporters how to be most helpful and made it easy for them to take action.
Maintain the Momentum
Interestingly, our podcast’s fourth week saw higher engagement than launch week. Why? Because initial supporters had time to share with their networks, creating a second wave of interest. Keep the energy going in your launch by:
Sharing milestone celebrations
Highlighting community member contributions
Creating new ways for people to participate
Maintaining consistent communication
Being transparent about what’s working and what you’re learning
Don’t let your own launch fatigue stop you from continuing to promote. While you might feel tired of talking about your initiative, remember that your audience isn’t hanging on your every word. They need multiple touchpoints to stay engaged.
And even if your offer is closed, continuing to talk about it while you’re delivering adds on another layer of marketing to pique the interest of community members who didn’t buy. This can bolster results if you decide to offer it again.
The Power of Closing the Loop
When community members provide input, show them how it has influenced your decisions. This demonstrates that their participation matters and strengthens their connection to both you and the initiative. Even if you don’t use their specific suggestion, explaining your thought process keeps them invested in the outcome.
For example, when community members give feedback on logo options, don’t just announce the winner — explain the factors that influenced the final choice.
Let them know which design was your favorite going in and whether you were surprised by the results. Tell them how the votes stacked up. Was there a clear winner or was the difference in votes between Option A and B close?
This level of transparency builds trust and encourages future participation.
Remember: your community will only be as excited as you are.
Generating buzz is important when launching anything, but that’s not where the true power of leveraging your community comes from. It’s the partnership of co-creation. When you bring your community along for the journey, they become invested in its success because they helped shape it. That’s the kind of authentic support no marketing budget can buy.
As a community strategist and marketing professional, I’m constantly evaluating tools and programs that can enhance my effectiveness and bring more value to my clients. Here are the best business investments I made in 2024, some of the best ongoing investments and what’s on my radar for 2025.
New Investments That Transformed My Business
In 2024, I invested heavily in growing my individual skills both as a service provider and creator. I enrolled in a few programs to solve specific problems I was facing and made the most of them.
Courses, Coaching and Programs
Make Your Message Famous®
My life-long challenge is that I’m someone who tends to put their head down and get to business. This is fine in certain industries, but not in online business. If I don’t make time to focus on visibility and my online reputation, nobody is going to do it for me.
I have some big goals for 2025. And to make them happen, I can’t continue being a best-kept secret in the industry.
As a former public relations professional, I know the power of a strong message that serves as a consistent anchor. It’s the only way to get known in any saturated market.
And nobody shapes and elevates personal brands better than Katya Varbanova. Katya’s expertise in virality makes her highly skilled in developing a compelling message that resonates with a designated target market.
Make Your Message Famous® is an intensive designed to help personal brands position themselves as thought leaders and gain visibility.
In just two weeks, the program transformed how I position my expertise and helped me to refine my brand voice and content strategy.
I now have a single Notion board with a fully developed brand guide. It includes everything from my brand qualities and themes, to deep insights on my ideal clients.
The work done during this intensive in December 2024 has given me a year’s worth of content ideas for my blog, podcast, and social media accounts.
5-Star Sales Skills
Tasha Smith, founder of Emerge Sales Training, and I have been running in the same business circles since the pandemic shut down the world.
I’ve always admired her fresh approach to sales — and the fact that she’s one of maybe three people in online business who really understands the difference between sales and marketing.
However, I didn’t have a need to work with her until I started leading sales calls for a client. While I have a reliable sales process for my own business, my client didn’t. And it didn’t make sense for me to apply mine to their specific business model.
I enrolled in Tasha’s 5-Star Sales Skills program over the summer and used it to deconstruct and rebuild my client’s entire sales process. We clarified their offers, positioning and created a standardized system for sales conversations that put the prospective client’s needs front and center.
Sales has never felt so natural as it does now. And while I didn’t enroll for my own business, it’s helped me as well. Even if you’re not ready for a full-scale sales training program, these 36 questions (affiliate link) are a great resource when it comes to getting clients.
30-Day Sprint
Kate Gilbert’s 30-Day-Sprint (affiliate link) kicked off my 2024. Kate has a reputation as being an Instagram genius, but she’s so much more. Understanding the daily battle between the practical and ideal faced by business owners, Kate created a system by which social media content creation is almost a cakewalk. In 30 days, Kate will help you build a schedule of 70 posts tailored to your audience’s desires and your business objectives that you can loop so that you’re only have to think about what post a few times a year.
This is not a program I would have signed up for on my own. Navigating social media and know what to post, and when to post it, comes naturally to me. When I make the time for it. And in January, I didn’t have any time to spare. A friend invited me to try the course with her in an effort to block time to do what I already knew needed doing. It worked.
There is nothing I don’t like about Kate, her system, or her approach to social media. She’s not a social-media super-fan who thinks everyone should spend their days building their following. She’s a business owner who understands that every business owner has heavy load to carry. She created Sprint to lighten the load. Best part of the program, though, is the spreadsheet she’s developed to make creating and recycling your content loop simple and nearly automatic.
Launching The Business You Really Want in 2024 led me to joining Caroline Hull’s Strategize and Shine membership for podcasters.
Memberships and Subscriptions
The Playhouse
The Playhouse is a grassroots collective for freethinking solopreneurs who are done with the “hustle harder” culture of online business. I joined as a founding mentor and affiliate in Fall 2024, and love how different the culture is from other online business networks.
First, everyone in the community is both a learner and expert. You can host events, attend events or mix it up and do both. While the community is hosted on Heartbeat, the events use GoBrunch and are never recorded. This makes for engaging events where everyone shows up ready to fully participate.
There is no pressure to be everywhere or do everything – just real connections with people who get it.
Ad Coaching for 7 with Laurel Portie
Social media ads feel a lot like a trip to Las Vegas. While you hope to come home with more money than you left with, you usually end up in the hole.
But that depends on the game you’re playing. Laurel Portie’s game is a long one. She teaches a system for running low-cost video ads that build and nurture your leads 24/7 until they reach a point when they are ready to buy.
And she does it all inside a $7/month membership called Ad Coaching for 7 (affiliate).
I’ve used her ads strategy with clients and am planning to use it for my own business in 2025.
As the fractional CMO/COO for Everyday Effectiveness, planning, production and marketing for The Business You Really Want lands solely on my shoulders.
I joined the Strategize and Shine podcast membership in Spring 2024 after listening to Caroline Hull’s podcast for several years. Caroline has poured everything she knows as a podcaster and podcast production agency owner into the membership.
Her guidance and resources are what made it possible for me to launch The Business You Really Want and grow it rapidly to 300 downloads per month (not bad, considering my co-host has an email list under 200).
The membership is hosted on Mighty Networks and includes masterclasses, Voxer coaching days, and tons of support around content planning, strategy and marketing your show.
Link in Bio with Rachel Karten
While I may no longer offer social media management services, I still like to stay plugged into the industry. Online communities will always have ties to social media and a lot of community platforms have social media-like qualities. Staying current with social media news is good for me as a professional and also for my clients.
Where Matt curates the biggest news in social media, Rachel goes deeper. She interviews the top professionals behind some of the most iconic social media accounts of our time.
I enjoy her interview style, and the perspective she brings to the topics affecting everyone who uses social media professionally.
Authory is a service that curates and showcases your online content for ease of sharing. My portfolio contains articles written for the California Breastfeeding Coalition and UC Merced, in addition to podcast episodes I’ve been featured on and blog articles written on my own website.
Authory
Authory (affiliate) is a service that I might not need but I enjoy having access to. It aggregates everything you’ve ever written or recorded and stores it in a single location. You can then use Authory to generate a portfolio, or showcase and share specific collections.
I like that it makes it easy for me to collect and keep bylined articles written for other organizations along with my own website articles and podcast episodes and interviews. And it updates automatically, requiring very little ongoing maintenance.
Productivity Tools
Motion App
Imagine Asana, a paper planner, and a robotic assistant had a baby. That baby would be the Motion app, which uses AI to prioritize your tasks and slot them into the open pockets of time in your day.
What we both appreciate about the app is how it reduces decision fatigue by deciding what we should do next. So long as I put everything into Motion with accurate deadlines and priorities, I can trust it to tell me what to do next.
Fathom Video
For three long years, I was a paying Otter.ai user. The AI-powered video transcription and note-taking service seemed worth its weight in gold.
And then I discovered Fathom (affiliate), which does a whole lot more for half the price. Fathom is a much more user-friendly interface, showcasing the meeting recording, summary, full transcription, action items and key quotes all on a single dashboard.
The Ask Fathom feature, however, is my favorite. It allows you to have a conversation with AI based on the meeting, which can pull out themes and details I might have otherwise overlooked or forgotten.
The one thing Otter has over Fathom, and it might be a big one for you, is that it allows you to upload recordings for transcription. At this time, Fathom only supports transcription of live calls. So, if you’re someone who likes to get your videos or livestreams transcribed to repurpose later, you’ll need a workaround. One way around it would be to use Zoom for livestreaming and have your Fathom notetaker on the Zoom call.
Ongoing Investments Delivering Consistent Value
My resources page is an updated list of everything in my business arsenal, in addition to other resources that benefit online community managers.
However these are the tools that I rely on heavily to keep my business running effectively:
GroupTrackCRM (affiliate) – Scaling my high-touch brand of community management would be impossible without GroupTrack. A social-specific CRM is hard to come by, and this one outshines any I’ve tried in the past. Thanks to GroupTrack, social media contacts never fall through the cracks.
Profitable Pipelines — This membership, hosted by the GroupTrackCRM team, provides a simple strategy by which to convert social media contacts into clients. It’s not for everyone, but I have found it useful in making sure that every group I run is set up to achieve the objectives of its owner in a way that’s both effective and sustainable.
Email Marketing Membership with Liz Wilcox (affiliate) — I still can’t believe the value this membership holds for just $9/month. No matter how busy I am, I can always find time to write a newsletter to my subscribers with the help of these templates.
Matt Navarra’s Geekout Pro — I thought I hated WhatsApp until Matt Navarra launched his membership community for social media managers there. So not only can I credit Matt for keeping me informed of social media news as it happens, he also gets the credit for showing me how you can successfully host a thriving community on WhatsApp.
While “best” is a relative term. These made the list of ongoing best business investments because without them, my business would truly suffer in one way or another.
Business Investments Cut in 2024
Like any business owner, I have a finite amount of money to invest in my business each year. So while 2024 was a year of new business investments — mostly in developing my own skill and knowledge — it was also a year where I made some cuts.
On the chopping block:
StreamYard — Once my ride-or-die livestreaming software of choice, StreamYard lost my endorsement this year when it drastically increased its prices. For several years, I spent $200/year to use this multistreaming service. Then in 2024, my annual subscription increased to $392. In Fall 2024, the company sent out a notice that they were redoing their subscription tiers yet again. To get the same level of service I’ve been enjoying since 2019, I will now need to pay $788/year. The juice just isn’t worth the squeeze any more.
Calendly — I love Calendly as a scheduling app. It makes it easy for clients and associates to find a convenient time to meet with me without much effort. However, now that Google offers its own booking calendar feature (and it’s free if you’re on Google Workspace), I can’t justify the expense of Calendly any longer.
Looking Ahead
As we continue to 2025, I’m looking at hiring tools just like I would hiring people — advice I got from automation expert Kronda Adair.
With big goals on the horizon, 2025 may be a year of investing in my own marketing and operations. I’m considering hiring humans for the following roles:
A copywriter to rewrite my website homepage, services page, and to create a page showcasing my mission, vision and values so that there is no ambiguity as far as who I am and what I stand for (and against).
A writing coach to hold me accountable to the goal of finishing the first draft of my upcoming book.
A designer to freshen up my brand and unify my visual identity across platforms.
An agency to help me get my solo podcast, Find Your Freaks, launched and out into the world. I could DIY the show, but I don’t think I can master podcast production on top of everything else I want to do in 2025.
A project manager to make sure my clients get the service excellence they’ve come to expect from me.
The key to successful business investments is alignment with strategic goals and measurable impact on business outcomes. If you need help deciding which business investments make sense for you, check out Do I Need This Now?It’s a mini-course on making strategic business decisions so you never experience buyer’s remorse again.
Have you ever sought expert guidance only to be left feeling misunderstood? Or maybe, you understood but didn’t get the results you expected when you followed their advice?
The problem might not be the advice itself, but the way you’re asking it.
Believe it or not, the quality of advice you get depends on the quality of the questions you ask.
The quality of the advice you receive depends on the quality of the questions you ask. By learning to ask clear, concise, and focused questions, you can unlock better answers that drive real progress in your business.
Unfortunately, most of us haven’t learned to effectively ask a question or to get a useful answer.
Nic Peterson, author of Bumpers, introduced me to the difference between valid answers and useful answers.
Ask that question, and the answers you get vary widely:
“An essential macronutrient”
“A chain of amino acids”
“Food for your muscles”
Each answer is valid, but are they all useful? That depends on the goal of the question.
If you want to know about the molecular structure of protein, the most useful answer is the second one. The others aren’t helpful at all, even if they are valid.
You could spend days following valid advice that is neither helpful nor useful in your specific situation. As a business owner, that wasted effort doesn’t just cost you time. It also costs money and energy. Lost productivity is hard to reclaim.
So how do you ask an effective question?
Here is my advice (hope it’s useful):
Clarify what you want to achieve — Asking better questions starts by focusing on your goal. Do you want a solution? Do you want validation? Do you want to brainstorm ideas or talk things through?
Ineffective: How do I grow my community?
Effective: What are three cost-effective strategies for increasing visibility of my group among my target audience?
Be specific and offer appropriate context – Provide enough background for the person to understand your situation but avoid unnecessary details. Don’t make the other person sift through non-essential information to uncover the heart of your question?
Ineffective: How do I increase engagement in my membership?
Effective: Given that I have 100 people in my online book club, what’s the next best step to get them having conversations in the group without me having to ask all the questions?
Ask open-ended questions – Open-ended questions, when framed with intention, encourage thoughtful responses and open the door to deeper conversations.
Ineffective: Should I use Facebook ads to grow my group?
Effective: What factors should I consider when deciding whether to use Facebook ads for my group?
Focus on one question at a time – Don’t be greedy. When you ask multiple questions at once, you’re leaving it to the other person to prioritize your needs and answer accordingly. Stick to one primary issue. Once that’s answered, move on to follow-ups if needed.
Ineffective: Should I start a free group or charge for it, and which platform is best for my community?
Effective: Based on my industry and goals, should I start a free group or a paid membership? [Wait for a useful answer.] Follow up with your next question.
Whether your group is doing well or you genuinely have a problem to solve, take the opportunity to practice your asking skills by using the advice above to articulate what you want to know.
And if you want deeper advice on how to ask better questions, my friend Mary Williams at Sensible Woo has a whole training on it. If woo isn’t your thing, jump in at the 11-minute mark when Mary breaks down her framework for asking questions guaranteed to lead to useful outcomes.
Running an online community isn’t as easy as some like to think, especially if it’s designed to build your business.
On any given day, you’re juggling the proper care and feeding of your people along with content creation and scheduling, sales and marketing, strategic planning, performance tracking, service delivery and more — and we haven’t even covered what’s going on in your personal life.
I’m in the same boat. Not only do I have to manage all of those things for my own business, I do the same for clients as well.
It’s a lot to juggle.
Which is why I’m always looking at ways to streamline my day.
Recently, I tried out Motion, an AI-assisted productivity app that optimizes your day to create a schedule that they claim will always be “perfect and up-to-date.”
You tell Motion what you have to do, and it “automagically” arranges your tasks to make the most of the time you have between meetings and other obligations.
It’s not the kind of software support I’d typically be interested in, but with girls attending schools 40 miles away from each other, I’m finding my workdays look differently this year than ever before. And because I’m a fan of deep work, I was struggling with how to spend smaller pockets of time.
So, on the recommendation of Dachelle McVey (after several failed attempts with similar free apps), I took Motion for a test drive.
My walkthrough isn’t polished and professional because I wanted you to see how easy/hard Motion is to figure out. Like with any business investment, there is always a cost of acquisition beyond the dollars you pay. There is the time spent learning how to use a new tool, work it into your existing systems and process, and the energy you have to spend to do it all.
If you get frustrated watching the walkthrough, Motion is likely not for you. If you do want to try it, however, email info@tonyakubo.com for an extended 14-day trial.
Can you believe it’s been a month since we launched The Business You Really Want? Time flies when you’re having fun (and talking about sustainable success for women in business)!
I have to admit, when I pitched this podcast idea to my co-host, Gwen Bortner, I knew it would resonate with our community. But the response we’ve received has blown us both away. In just one month:
Though I love my stats, these numbers are way more than analytics on our Captivate dashboard. They represent real people (like you!) who are investing their valuable time to listen, respond, and share our message. And for that, Gwen and I are incredibly grateful.
Your support has been the driving force behind our successful launch. So many of you have gone above and beyond to spread the word:
Brand and messaging consultant Jaime Blair shared on LinkedIn and in her newsletter
Mary Williams of Sensible Woo gave us a shout-out in her Merry Mag
And a special shout-out to all of you who’ve left reviews on Apple Podcasts. Your words mean the world to us and help other potential listeners discover the show.
Bible study author Shadia Hrichi said it was exactly what she needed. Another listener called it a “treasure chest of business knowledge.” Meanwhile, Kathy Barbro of Art Projects for Kids said that even after 10 years in business, she’s learning a lot that she can’t wait to apply in real life. And Rhonda Stoppe, an author and speaker who visited my MOPS group when Abby was just a teeny-tiny baby, said she can’t wait to learn more.
As we move into our second month, your continued support can help us reach even more women entrepreneurs. Here’s how you can help:
And don’t forget to tag @tonyakubo when you share on social media!
Thank you for being part of our podcast journey. Here’s to many more months of building the businesses we really want!
P.S. Check out this super-listener badge we’ve created just for you! Feel free to share it on social media or anywhere you’d like to recommend the podcast. Right-click or long-press (on mobile) to save it to your device.
Before initiating the evolution of the Tonya Kubo brand, I needed to first map out the project both in terms of dates and deliverables. In rebranding, some businesses will update their ideal client avatar, offer stack and pricing, along with visual identity, messaging and positioning.
For my primary logo, I went with my first and last names in lowercase, separated by a vertical bar. This helps the logo to stand out from heading and body copy text, which use traditional “camel case” capitalization. My initials, separated by a vertical bar and enclosed in a solid box, comprise the secondary logo (also known as a wordmark or favicon).
