How Ruby Built Her Online Community

A bit about you

Name – Ruby Ebere Ogbonna

What you’re up to in life? – I have a goal to build lasting digital solutions for digital challenges business owners, coaches and startups face regularly.

How long you have been running your community for – for 1 year

Anything else cool about you we should know. – I am a co-founder at iAssistAfrica.com. A Virtual Assistant company that gets work done by vetted EXPERTS while letting business owners, business coaches and startups focus on what they love doing while they delegate other tasks to their iAssistants.

Why did you join/sign up to your community platform

1. When did you sign up to the community – Oct. 2021
2. What pushed you to sign up – I am an experienced digital marketer with over 5 years of experience.

About 2 years ago I carved a niche in the media buying field (an aspect of digital marketing).

While working with a nutraceutical media buying company as a senior media buyer, I saw great lag with junior media buyers not meeting up with their target; majorly because they lack versatile knowledge of the profession.

Most junior media buyers know how to buy ad space, do their set up and monitor, however, they lack creativity when it comes to copy writing, image creative, landing page design, scaling, troubleshooting and other necessary skills required to be an expert. I also saw the struggle media buying agencies go through before finding media buyers they can work with for long term.

Having seen the struggle at both ends, I decided to create a solution that meets the needs of both the agencies/companies and the junior/intermediate/expert media buyers.

Currently I am building a startup to provide all of these solutions. So far, I have grown my FREE community to over 11,000 members.

A short summary of your community

Name of the community – Media Buyers Hub (MBH)

What it’s about – MBH is a community where agencies who needs media buyers finds a match for their needs. This includes Media buyers for platforms like Facebook, Pinterest, TikTok, Instagram, Google, Twitter and services like Social Media Management, Lead generation, Copy writing, Sales Closing, Telecommunication etc.

Junior Media Buyers also get to offer free services in exchange for experience and case studies.

Intermediate and Expert Media Buyers also share their experiences and insights on the platform.


What you do in the community
My Goal is to nurture and educate media buyers in the community while they get job offers.

While the educative aspect of the community is still in progress and yet to be launched, I am currently ensuring that all contents being posted in the community aligns with its original goal. I also handle reports by media buyers (about certain fake agencies) and reports by agencies (about self-acclaimed media buyers); when a receive a report on a certain post, about a person and a comment, I get to hear from both parties and determine whether the induvial should be warned, blocked or let be.

The community doesn’t allow pre-approved posts, to ensure that all contents meets the goal of the community, therefore, I also read through and approve all posts in the community.

How do your members stay engaged (i.e. events) – I have already designed events for the community to launch by next year. Events and education kicks off 2023.

https://facebook.com/groups/freedigitalsolutions/

What prompted you to create the community?
I was prompted by the struggle and challenges I saw in the last media buying company I worked with both for the agencies and the buyers.

What was the main way you grew the community?
Advertising, word of mouth, referral programs, social media, word of mouth, social media, advertising

What are your top three tips for growing a community from scratch?

1 – Ensure that the community is actually solving a problem

2 – Use a name that is highly relatable to your target audience and clearly draw up a step by step strategy to grow the community.

3 – Always monitor activities in the community to ensure no SPAM content is being circulated, even in the comment section. This is important because spam contents gets your members irritated which will make them leave the community and warn other not to join.