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For A Woman, By A Woman: Akansha’s Online Community Is Making Parenting Smooth For Over 40,000 Mums

Let’s admit it: At some point in their lives, every mum out there wished motherhood came with some sort of a manual.

Or maybe a magical potion was created to help them know it all, the A to Z of motherhood.

But, neither of the two exist. (Yeah, that’s sad but true!)

While one can go all out and read through tons of blogs on the web to find a solution, here’s a suggestion that’ll save you all that trouble. And, from getting lost in the sea of information!

Reach out to other moms and share your thoughts and feelings.

How? Through online communities.

Parenting Mom Style (started by Akansha Bansal in November 2017) is one such parenting Facebook group that connects over 40,000 moms and to-be moms. They not only help and support each other constantly but also share their hearts out.

Although conversations around baby care, pregnancy, and home remedies make up for most of the engagement, mental health is yet another topic that gets a lot of attention.

Being a follower of Sri Sri Ravi Shankar herself, Akansha cannot emphasize enough on the importance of mental health. Hence, she encourages members to take part in her group’s ‘Mental Health Programs’.

When asked about her best ever moment while building this online community, here’s what Akansha had to say.

“The best moment for me while building this community is the recognition I got in my own city where blogging is an alien thing. And, also the award my group received for the best use of Facebook Group for 2020. It’s moments like these that make everything worth it,” she smiles.

She further adds – “I participated in the ‘WE Can’ program by the U.S. Embassy’s North India Office in 2017 that gave me the confidence to reach where I am today.” 

This young woman has won the hearts of thousands of mums! And, did I mention her story was featured in ‘The Tribune’, a highly distributed publication in Chandigarh city?

But, how did it all begin? Scroll down to know this and also learn:

  • About the core values of Parenting Mom Style (PMS)
  • About the engagement and growth drivers of PMS
  • About how Akansha provides value to members and earns through her group
  • About Akansha’s full-proof way to stay ahead of SPAM

From A Lecturer To A Community Admin… It Has Been Quite A Journey!

Hailing from city beautiful Chandigarh, Akansha has been passionate all her life. She was an MBA topper, even cracked the UGC NET exam after which she served as a lecturer for 3 years.

Clearly, destiny had something else planned for her.

No sooner she was blessed with a nephew, than she found herself launching a parenting website, BudingStar in April 2017. The objective was to share detailed and all possible information around baby and child care with the new and expecting moms.

But, how to make sure all the insightful blogs reach them? This was her next concern.

Hence, she decided to capitalise on the perks of social media and created the Facebook group, Parenting Mom Style in November 2017.

What started as a means to promote her website blogs, garnered immense traction in no time. In fact today, PMS is one of the most trusted online parenting communities. The engagement rate of 84% and activity rate of 51 are proof of it. (More on these metrics below)

moms parenting style

Mommies from all over India (including foreign moms living in India) are a part of this Facebook group. And, they really appreciate Akansha for creating this closed platform where they can seek guidance and support from their counterparts no matter the time of the day.

Mental Health is important: Here’s how Akansha conveys this in her group

As part of the PMS Mental Health Support Program, she connects her group members with experts, conducts live meditation sessions, and others such.

Like here, she encouraged all moms to come forward and share their feelings at the same time, urging them to support each other.

The activity score (total reactions + total comments) of this post is 78. If we compare it to the activity rate of Akansha’s group, i.e. 51, we can say that this post received almost 1.5x higher engagement than average.

Mental health

On the heels of International Yoga Day, they conducted a special Health and Happiness online session to understand mind patterns and techniques to happiness.

Akansha’s Online Community

Here’s an effort to bust the underlying myths surrounding mental health and how moms can support their children at the time of coronavirus pandemic.

The activity score of this post is 87 which means this post got almost 1.5x higher engagement than average.

mental health 1

“ I think it’s my involvement that gives my group an edge. Whenever I see any incorrect information posted by any member, I make sure to correct them over personal chat,” she says.

How does Akansha earn through her community while providing value to members? 

Through brand partnerships.

She has partnered with quite a few global brands like Johnsons, Firstcry, Dettol, Cuemath, Veet to name some.

As a part of Dettol’s awareness campaign, checkout how Akansha tells everyone to read instructions mentioned at the back before using any product.

Looking at the activity score on this post, i.e. 224, we can say that this post got 4x higher engagement than average.

dettol

In the post below, Akansha shares the 6 most effective tips by Johnson to bathe babies and keep them healthy.

The activity score of this post is 228, which means it attracted over 4x higher engagement than average.

johnsons

These metrics indicate Parenting Mom Style has good health…

Akansha tracks these engagement metrics via Convosight to measure the health of her community.

  • Engagement Rate: The average actions (posts + comments + reactions) per member per month in his group is 83% or 0.83 actions per member per month
  • Activity Rate: The average number of comments and reactions per post per month in her Facebook group is 51.
  • Daily Active Users/Monthly Active Users: The percentage of monthly active members that are active daily in her Facebook group is 63.26%. (Sooo amazing!)

FYI: The average DAU/MAU of Facebook groups is 53%. So, if your community’s DAU/MAU is along these lines, it’s good news!

Dashboard

If you wish to know more about any of these metrics, feel free to check out our article on “Top health metrics for your Facebook group”.

These out of the box ideas guarantee maximum engagement in Akansha’s group

1. Live sessions

In a recent attempt to mix learning with fun, Akansha collaborated with an Educator and Child Psychologist for a fun and frolic lemonade party!

lemonade party 2

Moms got really excited when they got to know about this. You can see for yourself in the comments. (Looking at the activity score i.e. 125, we can say that this post got 2x higher engagement than average.)

lemonade party comments

This activity helped kids to learn about and explore the five senses. And, they had fun making lemonade themselves at the same time!

2. Games 

“We never conduct games like Tambola in our group just for the sake of engagement but only the ones that align with our group,” says Akansha.

Have a look at the online treasure hunt their group recently conducted. The engagement is pretty awesome!

The activity score for this post is 308 which means that this post received 6x higher engagement than average!

Treasure Hunt

Akansha reveals the secret for her group’s growth

When Parenting Mom Style was in the nascent stage, she recalls inviting friends, friends of friends, family members, cousins personally to join her group.

But with time, the group started to grow organically. And, she credits both the group name and engagement for it.

In her words,

“Group name plays an important role. Since it has keywords like parenting, it is easily discoverable on Facebook search. There should not be any stop words in the group name and should be free of any spelling errors.

On the other hand, keeping your group members engaged is the best way for growing because those members are your best word of mouth recommendation. Make them happy, keep them entertained, offer giveaways, and your group will grow.”

Akansha’s unique strategy to stay on top of SPAM

For starters, she uses Facebook’s Keyword Alerts feature to get notified of any abusive words on the platform itself.

Keyword

Additionally, she also uses Convosight’s Urgent Alerts feature for the same. She marks abusive words and medicinal recommendations as spam for her group on Convosight and gets notified whenever any member uses them. Furthermore, the platform allows her to take action from the same dashboard.

urgent alert

Besides, she has a full-time moderator who closely monitors all the conversations in the group. Since no abusing is allowed as per group rules, the moderator has the authority to chuck out people right away if they are found guilty of abusing other group members.

Mutual Trust between the Admin and Moderator goes a long way

As mentioned, Akansha has a full-time moderator, Dr Neeru Bhutta, whom she pays around INR 5500-6000 monthly.

Dr Neeru is quite passionate, self-driven and motivated. Akansha never felt the need to track her work and neither has she asked for any daily or monthly reports because Dr. Neeru is very proactive. She pitches ideas and pushes Akansha to experiment with different things in the group.

Not only that, she also connects with brands for monetisation and carries out the initial conversation.

Akansha says, “There is mutual trust between me and Dr. Neeru. Although it took some time initially to build that, it’s great now. She makes my life easier.”

Akansha’s message for every community admin reading this…

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Wow! That’s a really amazing thing to hear, isn’t it?

That said, we have our Facebook group, Growth and Monetisation for Facebook Group Admins where Akansha and hundreds of other community admins of her like are constantly discussing about the ways to build their groups and motivating each other in the journey. If you wish to gain such insights too, feel free to be a part! 🙂

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