This essay was originally published on November 27,
Recently I shared my experiences engaging in a new set of daily habits every month for a whole year. For example, for the entirety of last February, my three daily habits were
After I documented that year, two readers suggested I extend this notion beyond just myself. Galvanized by this idea, I decided to run with the wind and create a community of Habit Hackers who would embark on their own daily habits every day for the month of October. Now, I want to share my processes and outcomes of running a community group and what I learned.
The Idea Churning
Surprisingly (or not), I somehow found myself on the exact same mountain a year after I heard that initial podcast about daily habits, doing the exact same 17-mile trek. This time, however, instead of listening, I was speaking out loud.
That August 2018, I was hiking on the Appalachian Trail and musing out loud exactly how I would cultivate this community of Habit Hackers. Since there was no one else on the trail, I engaged in a series of questions and answers — by myself and to myself — in order to plan out the most minute details of the Habit Hackers group.
During the hike, I would quite literally say to myself, “OK, Katya, you want to put together about 30 people as part of an online Facebook group, and encourage them to participate and document their own daily habits journey. How are you going to accomplish that?”
To which I would reply, “First things first. Learn how to make a Facebook group. Learn how to make marketing materials. Identify to whom you’d reach out. What else do you need to consider?”
Every time I answered my own questions, I would try to distance myself frommyself and act as a third party trying to ask about those tiny details. This sort of dialogue — while perhaps a bit odd — helped me to clarify my ideas without actually having to sit down and write them through. (Mind you this was already Hour Two of my hike, and I needed some way to keep my brain occupied. Productive use of time!) So that I wouldn’t lose my ideas, I’d stop occasionally and jot my thoughts down on my phone, to then revisit later when I had service.
I finished my hike with a concrete plan of timelines (prepare in August, market in September, and launch Day One of habits on October first) as well as the marketing materials I’d need to create.
The Preparation
Over the next several weeks that August, I got down to work. I wanted to create templates for my group members to use, and tried using the free version of Canva, but found it too immalleable for the level of customization I needed. So, I went back to a simpler platform, and created my documents using Microsoft Word. It was that easy, and I had a lot of fun choosing the pictures and colors. The first template was a 31-day guide with space to identify 1–3 daily habits, as well as a daily tracker of whether each of those habits was completed. I called this tracker the “My Habits Template.” Then, I created a template to allow folks to reflect on their experiences weekly and at the end of the month, which I called the “My Reflections Template.”
Next, I taught myself the ins and outs of a Facebook group, and the differences between variations thereof, through a simple Google search as well as the Facebook help site. It astounded me how many options there were, and I was purposefully meticulous about choosing the best-fitting option for my and my audience’s objectives. In the end, I went with a Social Learning group, which had far more options than I actually used (such as polling). I crafted the page header using Canva (which has a lot of great templates for creating various social media posts) and made sure to use matching photos, colors, and text as my templates.
I housed all drafts of written content, such as the group description, in a Google Drive folder, so that I could have both a system and a record of what I’d published or planned on publishing, with attached publication dates. As a learning playground, I ended up playing with the pinned and introductory posts on Facebook quite a bit, editing and deleting many versions until it was publishable in my eyes.
With the templates, the About section, and the welcome post squared away, I was now ready to market my group.
The Marketing
Working in Google Spreadsheets, I created an initial list of everyone I wanted to target, purposefully keeping it small to about 20 contacts. After creating email text (and putting that into my Google Drive), I sent a BCC email in batches explaining and inviting the individual to participate in my group. Here, I was dubious about using Chrome extensions like mail merge to personalize the emails with each individual’s name (because of their accessibility to my data), but in the future, I would definitely personalize every single email. This fosters engagement and perhaps would have led to a further conversion rate of emails to group joiners. The few email replies I received were supremely positive, which further fueled my passion for this side project.
In September, as the group started growing, I wanted more than the 20–30 folks to join, so I reached out individually over Facebook Messenger to friends and acquaintances, personalizing the messaging this time. A few never replied, but others actually asked to join the Habit Hackers group. I was pleasantly surprised that a few folks referred their friends whom I didn’t know to join, and was excited to connect with such a diverse group.
With my group reaching about 35 members, two weeks before the official Day One, I made an introductory post introducing myself, sharing my story, and asking members to do the same. Twenty-seven people saw the post, and three responded with really in-depth replies, which I “Liked” or “Loved.” In retrospect, perhaps I should have replied to each answer to make it more of a conversation as opposed to acknowledgment.
A week before October’s launch, I posted an image comment asking members what their habit goals were, and shared a picture of my written-down habits for the month of September as an example. Only six people saw the post out of the group’s 30 or so members, and there were a total of 14 comments, coming from two members and my replies. While I responded to every comment, I was overjoyed to see those two members sharing their ideas with each other, thus facilitating the conversation. This was exactly what I was envisioning — a community that would support each other!
On September 30, a day before Day One of the official Habit Hackers month, I reminded my group to print the templates (if that’s how they’d choose to track their habits), shared my own October habits, and asked members to comment on their own individual habits. Very interestingly again, this post was only seen by six people (a huge deviation from the 27 in the introduction post), and four individuals replied with their habits. Here, I was ecstatic that new members were willing to vulnerably contribute their personal goals, and I made it a point to reply to most (but unfortunately not all) comments.
During the month of September, I kept a content calendar and post templates of what I would publish and when. The timelines and written content were helpful since I could reach members at points I thought were relevant and drive engagement in the group.
Days 1–31: Habit Hackers in Motion
The first two weeks of October were relatively quiet in terms of engagement, because I wanted to give members the space to figure out what worked for them on their own habits journeys. At the two-week mark, I did publish a post asking the group to share their experiences. Eight members saw the post, aggregating a total of 10 comments, with me learning to reply to each member’s comment — thus five unique individuals replied. I was thrilled to see these posts as lengthy, thoughtful answers. One member even shared a resource of a blog article she’d found called “This Is How to Kill Bad Habits,” and another member (who’d never posted) cross-referenced a seasoned member in his comment. This was incredible — seeing the interaction and connection from such disparate parties!
Three weeks in, I made another post which revealed that I, too, had let some of my own daily habits slip, and offered encouragement to keep going and to recommit to our habits for the next week. Again only eight members saw the post, two individuals replied, and five liked the post. Since my post wasn’t really an “ask” of the members, this low-level engagement seemed appropriate.
On Day 31, the last day of the October Habit Hackers, I made a final post congratulating members of the completion of the month’s journey. I asked members to share their takeaways, a reflection of what members learned, and what they would do differently next month. Curiously, the post was seen by five people, yet no one replied! I did post in the comments my own takeaways, as well as a reference to a popular habits blogger, and while three folks “Liked” my comment, no one actually responded with their takeaways. I wonder if this was due to the fact that it was posted on Halloween, or if people were generally less engaged as the month went on.
Lessons Learned
Over the last year and some change, I learned a tremendous amount from my own habits journey, as well as leading others on theirs. Here, I’ll focus on takeaways from cultivating an online community.
First, it was definitely difficult to engage more than the usual five members to comment on my posts. I am curious why, with around 40 members in the group, only 5–8 members even saw the posts. Do most people just ignore group posts? Personally, I belong to several groups on Facebook, and I check about one in five notifications of a new post, so members of the Habit Hackers group just may not have viewed the notifications.
Next, I wonder if people actually found the templates helpful and put them to use. I’ll admit: I had my own way of tracking daily habits (in a notebook I’ve been keeping for years), so I didn’t actually use my own templates (shh, don’t tell!), but my goal in creating those templates was for others who were unfamiliar with tracking.
While the big question is how to get people to engage in and respond to content in the Habit Hackers group, I have to be mindful that the concept of betterment through daily habits may be an incredibly personal topic.Folks may be less willing to share their habits with a group of near-strangers, and here is where this online community may have fallen short. Since there really wasn’t an incentive for folks to post (they didn’t pay money to join), and since not all members knew each other, that may have dropped the engagement rate. Furthermore, I surmise that not all group members even created their daily habits, since psychology explains that it is very difficult to want to change and even more so to do it. Talking about habits is a very personal journey, and members may have been reticent in sharing their vulnerabilities. (This is why I tried to create a safe space to share those personal things by being vulnerable and forthcoming myself.)
If I were to repeat this experience with what I learned, here is what I would do differently:
- Target individuals in my email list individually; personalize invites.
- Conduct a preliminary survey (formal or informal) to ask folks what theywant to get out of being in this group.
- Ask for end-of-month feedback from participants.
- Devote more time to this side project by conducting focus groups within the Habit Hackers community. For example, I’d host video chats with groups of 4–5 members to have them feel more connected, and to foster accountability among a smaller group of members. This would minimize the feeling of anonymity within a group, and drive engagement.
All in all, this was terrific action learning in taking an idea and making it a reality. It showed me that I (and anyone!) can create a community around a common purpose, and was an excellent playground to experiment with building my own content, trying out marketing and content calendars, and learning about group engagement. It also makes me want to continue building out my own initiatives…so stay tuned!