The First Step to Plan a Facebook Group Challenge

If you have a Facebook Group and are concerned about increasing interaction (aren’t we all?) then you may be considering a group challenge.  They are a proven way to increase interaction and get your group members involved.
Developing a clear understanding of your goals prior to the challenge can be instrumental in achieving those goals, making the challenge itself a worthy investment of your time and energy.
These are the first steps to planning your challenge.

What’s Your Goal?

Before planning your challenge, you must fully understand why you’re creating it. Group owners can create and issue challenges for various purposes:

• Driving sales
• Building mailing lists
• Filling Facebook groups
• Building relationships
• Many other things

What are you trying to do for your business by creating this challenge?

Be S.M.A.R.T. With Your Goal Setting

• Specific
• Measurable
• Achievable
• Relevant
• Time Limited

For goals to offer realistic opportunities for success, the goal must satisfy each of these parameters. So, how do you create SMART goals for your challenges?

Begin with Specificity

Be specific about what it is you plan to accomplish with this challenge. Do not attempt a one-size-fits-all approach. Instead, focus on one specific problem.
Make it simple to implement. Most of all make it a meaningful exercise for accomplishing your specific goal.
By narrowing the focus to one specific goal and going deep beneath the surface, you can offer gritty, real material that covers the specific goal fully and leaves no room for error or failure.

Offer a Method of Measurement

It’s easy to focus so keenly on the result you desire that you miss the progress and celebrations you’ve worked hard for along the way.
SMART goal setting provides measurements for success, allowing you to remain focused on the big picture without missing out on the accomplishments you’ve made along the way.
More importantly, it helps you stay focused on meeting smaller deadlines as they approach without getting lost in the larger deadline looming later.

Keep the Goals Within Reach – Make them Achievable

It’s a fine line you walk as a group owner to make challenges aggressive and beneficial for your clients without making them too easy. You must do this when setting goals for yourself as well. It’s the only way to experience a real sense of accomplishment without allowing your challenges to become so overwhelming that you give up before you can succeed.

Keep it Real – and Relevant

The specific nature of your challenge must be relevant to those goals you’ve established. Make sure the steps and tasks you assign yourself in creating challenges are worthwhile, match the purpose of your goals, and come at the appropriate place within the challenge.

Limit the Time to Complete the Challenge

There’s something about deadlines that often force people to rise to the occasion. You are no different.
Not only do you need to give yourself a deadline for completing the planning of the challenge, you also need to make sure that students experience that same sense of urgency when completing the challenge ahead of their deadlines.
The other benefit of offering limited timetables for challenges is that many people place more value on something that’s only available in limited quantity or for a short amount of time. Time is a precious commodity. The more limited it is, the more valuable it is in the eyes of many beholders.
Defining your goals as a success leader gives you better direction for creating and issuing challenges to your members and will help drive your success just as you are driving theirs.
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Want to know more?  I have a complete guide, How To Create and Launch Your Community Growing Challenge Planner