Help me Craft the Best Set Up To Get Your Needs Met!

Believe it or not, I have nothing to add.

Having three sections – a place to get help, a place to offer help, and ask questions sound to me like a very good way to do it.

It’s a tough call, Sean. I belong to a writers group that’s so jampacked with messages that navigation is frustrating. People who have time to socialize for hours love it. Working writers aren’t as thrilled about the organization.

In the end, you have people who don’t do the work advising others who don’t do the work and little is gained. I often get requests from people who want me to help edit their work or create a landing page (for free). I try to pitch in where I can, but I can’t leave paying customers waiting for long or I’ve become a charity, not a business.

For me, the primary missing element in all forums (even Facebook) is getting away from the linear messaging display. Smart navigation with an excellent search function could help. As could separate pages/areas for the various topics. In the end, those with real ability will engage with the hope of picking up clients … and that can turn its own nightmare — online ambulance chasers.

Maybe a better way to go is a weekly focus topic where all pitch in. One essential ingredient must be there, though … guidance by the master or an appointed moderator with credibility.

Sean,
Everything you say and propose sounds good and we surely seem to be building and on the right track.

If I might throw an idea out there for consideration and some reworking, even rejecting.

All learning without action is at best a form of entertainment. To reach our goals there must be action. I am thinking about action groups.

There are going to be people joining here at different times and will take different amounts of time here to be ready to start.

Some aren’t coming to go through the Sean Steps, they already started with Sean or you offer something that they found they need and that is fine and they bring experience and knowledge to our community.

I am thinking out loud that we might want a place for the “Group Going Through The Sean Steps of the month”

So if three people now are ready to go through your training and steps this month, they are in the November 2017 group, an open group anyone can watch an even post on, but the focus is on people going through that month.
Next month a few more people join, a few more have looked over the training and posts and they are ready and we have a December 2017 group going through.

After a number of months, the posts from the groups would almost make a course on going through the steps with Sean.

When we do training in our services business and hire people we have quarterly boot camps. We want all in this quarter’s group to be able to do abc and 123, so we focus on abc and 123, then we turn them loose in the world and prepare for the next boot camp to get those people to do abc and 123.

It is a bit of a vague idea, but I am putting it out for consideration. Some way for like minded people with like goals to start together and go through together. Action Groups.

In any case, we are doing really well and just starting,

Scott Hogue CChH

Don’s right – navigation is critical. If it isn’t easy to locate a prior message in order to return for follow-up, the ability to help can be short-changed – and the person asking for help may not receive as much as they could have otherwise. A weekly topic focus might work if the info could be found and retrieved easily weeks or months down the road when someone needed it. To avoid gratis work, perhaps the rules could specify “advice” or “recommendations/suggestions” are OK, but not the “doing” of any work within the platform. Perhaps any “ambulance chasers” could be handled on an individual basis by Sean, at least until determined it was indeed more of a problem than expected.

One of the things I tried to do “early on” was click on the name of someone to see what else they had posted. That function didn’t exist, but I wondered if it should.

It could be just one more bell or whistle, but I was thinking that if you could see these things all in one place, then it might help to build up a picture of someone more quickly.

This would be especially true for newcomers.

I think Ask Anything is way too broad. It is overwhelming and way too time consuming to go in there and look for stuff. I think categories are needed.

I was in a community once where networking was strictly prohibited EXCEPT under the networking tab. Under that tab people posted about their business and services, and in some cases offered special pricing (or free help) for community members.

Maybe there could be a tab for Help Needed too, and people could post there to ask for help.

There should be categories so that when you want to offer assistance it is pretty easy to find people to help in your area of expertise. Seems like having prepared categories like video, traffic, opt in pages, sales copy, facebook ads, etc, would streamline the process for givers to find help wanted requests.

Then another category for feedback, so you can post a link to something and it is quick for feedback providers to find someone who wants feedback in their area of expertise.

I was in a group similar to this once and there was so much interesting stuff mixed together with stuff that didn’t apply to or interest me, and it took a ridiculous amount of time to try to find anything useful. I had to withdraw from that group because it took too much time to ferret out useful stuff.

How many people are in PP now?

I’m with Don on this one. Since I depend upon the business I’ve already established for the majority of my income, I have to spend a certain amount of time each week on creating the products my list purchases and maintaining the websites I have now.

I’m trying to learn how to expand what I have now into my BIG DREAM from Sean and this forum. Then I’ll have more time, knowledge and experience to share… which I’m more than willing to do.

I don’t want another Facebook-type site. I need serious training and help. While I do have a business Facebook page, I don’t really participate much in social media. In fact, to be honest, I get very frustrated with it. Too much trivia, too many scammers.

Instead, I’d like to see areas where you can focus on subjects you wish to learn: Membership Sites, Coaching, WordPress Training, Content Creation, Marketing (different types… online & offline), Sales Funnels, Squeeze Pages, etc. These are just some suggestions I’d like to see.

A good search engine would help a lot.

And, in each section, people could sign up as a resource if they wish, listing their particular expertise and whether or not they would have to charge for their assistance. (This suggestion may not be appropriate for this site… I’m not sure. While most of us will gladly help if and where we can… there’s a limit if you have a lot of other obligations.)

Much of this is already available on this site, but since focus is an issue for me, the more organized the subjects and the people who can really be of help would be valuable to me.

The thing that springs to mind when reading all these suggestions is that most people don’t have three-foot monitors.

I have a 15.5″ laptop with a 27″ external monitor plugged into it.

I use the big monitor for all writing and posting, unless I’m in a coffee shop.

So whatever the organization of these different sections turns out to be, it needs to be navigable on a smaller screen.

Menus and submenus might be a better way to do that rather than columns and sections on a page.

“And a Section where you can advertise your coaching, products, etc”

Would this be the place to advertise that we are looking for JV’s? I think it would be great if we could recommend each other’s products to our lists, as we get to know each other.

I have met and friended several people, but I have no idea what some folks do, since they haven’t completed their profile pages.

Perhaps, as Kristin mentioned, we could use a Networking section for those who are interested in promoting each other’s work. Or maybe a JV section?

Thank you for your hard work that’s making this all possible, Sean.

Sean,

I think your idea of organizing this forum could work, but perhaps it needs to be more granular (if that is possible within the constraints of the technology). So what I am thinking is kind of a hybrid of your suggestion in addition to Kristin’s idea. This could look like this:

HELP NEEDED
–> Video
–> Copywriting
–> Grammar (yes,it IS important!!!)
–> Email writing/Email marketing
–> Advertising
–> Facebook
–> Google
–> Offline
–> (other forms)
–> Traffic

HELP OFFERED/I CAN HELP WITH
–> Video
–> Copywriting
–> Grammar
–> Email writing/Email marketing
–> Advertising
–> Facebook
–> Google
–> Offline
–> (other forms)
–> Traffic

FREE TRAINING/DOWNLOADS (same structure as above)

PAID TRAINING (same structure as above) that could (if members wanted) be at discounted rates for members of this community.

Those who are offering help gratis would have to know how much they can offer for free without becoming resentful or neglecting paying clients, and then after that point, they could point the person being helped to the thread where they have their offers listed.

I also like Scott’s idea of action groups.

I think that one thing that would make the most sense (please no tomato-throwing at me, ladies and gents) is that the person who is doing the helping/training should be already doing the thing they are helping with, and if possible earning an income from that thing. This way the advice is not theoretical, but something that the person has done before. Being paid for it also means that they have sold someone on their expertise. I realise that this would probably not be a popular idea, but one thing I see in a lot of FB groups is that you have people who are just learning advising others who are just learning, and it can cause confusion. So, for example, if someone has helped with editing and/or proofreading a book, he/she would be able to advise someone better than someone who has not actually done that. If someone is successfully getting results with FB ads,then that person can teach/help others to do the same.

Some really good information and answers here so I won’t repeat only add, if there was a way to be able to know when someone has commented on the same Question (and you can choose or not choose to receive notification about this).

Hi Sean,

I’m broadly with you on your suggestions. But I would temper them with the wisdom that Don Sturgill brought to the table. We desperately need more structure, even at this early stage, it’s difficult to keep up with all the new questions. I personally have spent at the very least a couple of hours daily, since I joined, trying to add something useful to the question threads I have commented on, and reading and taking in the points raised by others.

We must respect that some people within the group are already running online businesses, and their time is money, so to speak. I stand here with only a bunch of ideas, no business, and a lot of research to do, so at some stage I too will have to prioritize my own stuff, otherwise I won’t get anything off the ground.

I don’t have any suggestions as to what format future changes should take, but we should avoid, at all costs, information overload and getting lost in a quagmire of information, regardless of how useful it may be. So an easy to use Navigation system is, perhaps, the most vital step at all and at the earliest opportunity.

If all the sections are going to be visible simultaneously, then the sections should be bordered, and the headings bigger.

I’d also like to see a different color. Blue, for instance, rather than red.

All of you have some really great ideas and have clearly taken the time to fully think them through! The way that Suzanne has broken it all down looks like it could really work.

I do understand the need for there to be people who have actually done what they’re advising others to do in the “I can help” section, but I do think it is also very helpful and crucial for everyone to have a voice – whether or not they have any experience at all.

Everyone in this community has something to say and offer regardless of their experience in IM. As Sean always says… Anyone Can Coach. Let’s not forget that spirit in here! We don’t want this to be some exclusive club for experts only. We want to make this a place for all serious people who have the burning desire to make a living online.

It is thanks to my experience with giving my “inexperienced” feedback here in PreneurPal for 2 days in a row that I discovered how helpful I actually am. This boosted my confidence so much, that I actually took the plunge and started seriously building my website (squeeze page, included).

ANYONE CAN COACH.

1 user thanked author for this post.

Mark Rhodes

We’re all experts at something, Claire.

Quite often, however, someone else has to tell us what it is.

We’re usually looking somewhere else. 😉

Claire,

I love the spirit in which you posted your reply. My suggestion was not made to dissuade people from being helpful. What it was designed for was to figure out who is good at what, and have them help in that way. Yes, Sean does say that anyone can coach. And as Bruce said, everyone is an expert in something. One person’s expertise may be FB traffic, another’s may be grammar, and another’s may be helping to brainstorm ideas. What I was trying to say is that while opinions are useful, particularly as entrepreneurs and possibly even being potential members of a particular niche, those who are more experienced in, for example, FB advertising, would be better able to teach that, than someone who has opinions but who hasn’t actually run any ads.

There are posts here that I have chosen not to comment on, not because they aren’t interesting, but because they are about things I haven’t read about, or done. It doesn’t mean I can’t express an opinion, but if we are opening a format up where people are actually asking for help, particularly where they might be spending money (traffic, advertising, etc.) and not just discussing things, then it may be more helpful to listen to folks who have some idea about the subject, so that we don’t create confusion. I’m not trying to be elitist at all. I hope that makes sense.

I always loved listserv and subscribing to the topics that I was most interested in… still on a few Yahoo lists. But everyone is very focused on just one micro-topic that way and the messages are all archived and searchable and you can opt to receive every message or just a weekly digest or not at all but hit the archives once in a while.
Some way of adapting that idea here might be interesting but technologically I´m not sure how.

This is the reason I joined Preneurpal to help others and even get a little help myself.

I have tutorials and products I would like to share with the group.

I want to thank you all for contributing to this endeavor, I feel like this is going to be special!

A Place to but tools that could help others

Maybe a section where we could like tools that others could use such as photos, plugins how to etc