I always find myself undermining the amount of people who are joining UK Long Distance Hiking. It’s up there with some of the UK’s larger hiking Facebook groups, and also the 2nd largest UK focused long distance hiking group.
I wanted to share a bit of background and a small case study on how I launched and grew UK Long Distance Hiking and my vision for the future of the group.
But first
A bit of context
The group was born out of a failing covid era small business. BookMyTrail. BookMyTrail was a travel business which arranged walking holidays for people wanting to enjoy walking in the UK. I wanted a community to accompany my business, hoping that I would find customers through the group.
Sadly the business folded and in the end I didn’t find any customers through the group (long story).
When the business ended I was left with a group, and an incredibly active one at that, and I saw an opportunity to learn the ropes of effective community management. By this time, if I recall, the group was around 2-3k members strong and growing rapidly after only 6 months.
So how did I get the group to thousands of memebers after a short amount of time?
The Formula
Theres probably a formula here. I think its likely something such as:
Interest + Visibility x Circumstance = A successful group
By this I mean:
There was a growing interest in all age groups and genders on long distance hiking. It was already on the up and up as a good alrenative to skipping on a plane to Ibiza due to its low-ish price, accessability and cool-hiker vibes.
I set up a public group, which meant that people were suddenly able to see each others cool West Highland Way and South West Coast Path holiday pictures across the internet. Having a public group really helped to group the group as posts were shared across Facebook on a regular basis attracting new members.
The combination of Interest and visibility would make a nice number, but covid certainly helped to multiply the growth. Circumstance was the fact that people simply couldn’t get on a plane. We had to look inward and choose holidays at home. There was no choice. Suddenly walking through the Cotswolds looked pretty good!
So, I was in the right time, at the right place. There was definately some luck involved. Whether the group would be as successful today when I set it up I couldnt say. Perhaps it would, perhaps not. I may try again with a new group in a different niche at some point and find out.
A kickstarted birth
I actually followed Neil Patels guide on launching a group. If you are going to launch a Facebook community I strongly recommend following his formula. The guide is still very relevant today and probably the best guide on the web on the topic.
I launched the group by posting in other groups.
I was already a member of the Long Distance Walking community, and a few other Facebook groups. I found my first 500 members by posting in other groups.
I didn’t simply post a ‘Hey check out my group’ post. That stuff gets you banned.
Instead I asked a question, posted some photos, or engaged with comments and then dropped my link in on the sly after.
This was enough to get members through the doors.
When I reached around 500 members it was like Facebook said, ‘Ok, you’ve proven yourself as somebody who can make a community, now I can step in and help’. The group started growing by itself.
However I didn’t put my feet up. I knew the group would only continue to grow if it was a fun place to be. So I asked questions, engaged with members, created polls, even used members pictures and videos across other platforms to bring members into the group.
It worked, and the group continued to climb.
As the group evolved, I introduced a Podcast. The podcast also did well as it was relevant and of interest to group members. More about this in another post.
The challenge
Facebook is a fantastic platform for community building. However its not all sunflowers and butterflies.
Back in 2023 Facebook introduced a new way of hosting ‘public’ groups. I won’t go into the changes, but you can read about them here.
In short, the easy to manage Facebook groups, where I as an admin was able to choose who joined the group, was no more. Instead Facebook let anyone join a group without the admins approval. We had some tools at our disposal to help against spammers, but it wasn’t enough.
The spam and malicious posting came in thick and fast. Despite the group growing faster than ever before, I was concerned that the now 10k community I owned was going to be damaged by bad actors.
I decided to limit growth in order to preserve quality.
This was exactly the right reason. The spam posts stopped, and I had control over the group.
However the growth never picked up in the same way. The greedy human in me is still saddened by this. After all, if I hadn’t put the breaks on I predict that the group would likely be at 40-50k membership by now.
Community members to email subscribers
Not long after I joined the group I found another group who asked if members wanted to share their email when they signed up so they could join a miling list relevant to their interest.
I thought this was a good idea and made an offer. Give me your email, and i’ll send a hiking relevnt newsletter.
Honestly I was horrible, and still am horrible at sending emails. But I did amass a newsletter of 3k subs. I still use that email list to this day with a good open and unsubscribe rate.
If you run a Facebook community its worth doing as a way of cheap and very targeted email aqusition.
The offline challenge
Wanting to grow the group offline
Whats next
Hiking events
Admins and moderators