It was back in 2017 when Praveen Ganesh, a former visual artist, decided to create two Tamil Facebook groups – Tamil Doctor and Country Medicine Siddha Medicine.
Today, over 465K and 694K members respectively are a part of these close-knit communities where they discuss everything health-related.
Recalling his best ever moment while building these communities, Praveen tells,
“Someone suffering from Cancer tried a home remedy discussed in his group, the result for which was miraculous! He got cured of this life-threatening disease and called to thank me. I was delighted to hear it and this has been one of the most memorable moments of my life.”
Here’s a small snippet of our interview with Praveen that tells how overwhelmingly happy he is as he shares this incident with us. 🙂
Since then, this young man has never looked back!
Today, he manages 12 Tamil Facebook groups (with over 1.4 million members), the engagement rate for each of which is literally mind-blowing! He shared these insights from Country Medicine Siddha Medicine in our Facebook group,Growth and Monetisation for Facebook Group Admins.
Not just that, he is earning some big bucks through them by empowering small business owners alongside. 🙂
But, how did it all begin? What inspired Praveen to create these Facebook groups?
How does he manage 12 highly engaged groups simultaneously?
What does he do to increase engagement, manage spam, and monetise while providing value to members?
Scroll down to know it all…
Running a media website to owning Facebook groups… His passion drove him
“Inside every self-made man is a kid who followed his dreams.” This famous quote aligns perfectly with Praveen’s life.
Whether it be visual art, running his own website, or managing Facebook groups, he learnt it all by himself while chasing his dream to become an entrepreneur. 🙂
Being zealous about visual art in the early days of his career, he studied its nitty gritties with heart. And, then decided to capitalise on it by offering his amazing 3D and animation services.(Here’s a video he created for his friend’s programming company a few years back.)
While this was sure an interesting business, but somehow Praveen was not completely satisfied. So, after 6 years, he took the plunge to create his own media website namely MorningPaper, getting one step closer to a dream he always dreamt!
As a means to promote his website content (that later garnered 1-2 million views/month), he created his first Facebook groups, Tamil Doctor and Country Medicine Siddha Medicine.
Managing them, he realised these perks of Facebook groups:
- They are the best way to reach out to the same audience
- They require less financial investment as compared to websites
- They are low-maintenance
That’s when events took a turn and this young man geared up to become a community entrepreneur. 🙂
Fast forward to today, Praveen is the proud owner of 12 vernacular Facebook groups with over 1.4 million members. Thanks to his visual designing skills that helped him create some well packaged and extremely attractive posts that garnered a lot of engagement quickly!
He manages these communities full-time and happily devotes 12-15 hours every day.
Tamil is what sets his community apart
Tamil speaking people from all over the world constitute his groups. They discuss anything and everything related to home remedies and nutrition and that too in their native language. And, this certainly makes them feel even more connected.
No wonder his group Country Medicine Siddha Medicine has an activity score as high as 1284 ! Simply put, he has 1284 members engaging on every post in his group.
“It’s the language that binds the group members. They come forward, let their hearts out, and seek help from each other in their native language which makes the space all the more safe and trusted,” says Praveen.
Praveen enables over 25 small businesses to earn a living from his groups
While his communities are a constant revenue stream for Praveen, they help solopreneurs or small sellers to earn a livelihood at the same time.
He has a monthly contract with at least 25 permanent small business owners who advertise their products only in his groups. He not only helps them reach out to relevant people but also craft their message well and drive good conversions.
Here’s how Mooligai Ulagam, an International herbal startup promotes its products in one of Praveen’s communities.
The activity score (total reactions and comments) of this post is 2841. Since the average activity score for the community is 1284, it means that this post has 2x higher engagement than average!
But, that’s not all. He receives inbound requests from a lot of advertisers (like the one shown below) since all his groups are public. He filters out the best ones by evaluating what would be the best products for his audience and only then allows them to advertise in his groups.
Lastly, he even reaches out to brands, showcases the most brilliant aspects of his communities and partners with them on campaigns which will drive maximum value for his community members.
With engagement rate as high as 920%, his communities have great health
Having emphasised enough on how engaging Praveen’s communities are, I’ll now shed light on the metrics of 3 of his communities. He tracks all of them via Convosight.
1. Tamil Doctor
a. Engagement Rate: The average actions (posts + comments + reactions) per member per month in his group is 43% or 0.43 actions per member per month.
b. Activity Rate: The average number of comments and reactions per post per month in his Facebook group is 319!
c. Daily Active Users/Monthly Active Users% , i.e. the percentage of monthly active members that are active daily in his Facebook group is 31.5%.
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!
2. Country Medicine Siddha Medicine
a. Engagement Rate: The average actions (posts + comments + reactions) per member per month in his group is an amazing 927% or 9.27 actions per member per month.
b. Activity Rate: The average number of comments and reactions per post per month in his Facebook group is 1284!
c. Daily Active Users/Monthly Active Users% , i.e. the percentage of monthly active members that are active daily in his Facebook group is 32%.
3. Free Doctor
a. Engagement Rate: The average actions (posts + comments + reactions) per member per month in his group is 205% or 2.05 actions per member per month.
b. Activity Rate: The average number of comments and reactions per post per month in his Facebook group is 81!
c. Daily Active Users/Monthly Active Users% , i.e. the percentage of monthly active members that are active daily in his Facebook group is 28.4%.
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.
Praveen’s secret to getting more than 100K views on his posts revealed!
“Live videos work like a charm in my groups. They easily get around 3 – 5 lakh views,” says Praveen.
One of his clients who’s a Reiki healer recently went live in one of his groups to talk about the healing classes she conducts. Just look at the engagement! (2.4K reactions, 3.1K comments, 850 shares, and 249K views)
The activity score of this post is an awesome 5.5K. Since the activity score of this group is 1284, it means that this post has 5x higher engagement than average!
High-quality content is the next best thing to keep group members engaged.“I always make sure to create quality content because that’s what users want,” he admits.
Just look at the engagement (1K views and 6.6K shares) in the image below. It’s a simple yet extremely useful home remedy to cure Dengue fever in one day. Hence, it got massively shared!
Talking about the activity score of this post, it is an amazing 1021. Since the activity score of this community is 1284, it means this post has slightly less than average engagement.
“It is this engagement that helps my groups grow organically,” Praveen says.
Praveen shares his simple yet extremely effective strategy to deal with SPAM
Managing spam is pretty time-consuming and tough. Hence, Praveen relies on Convosight’s Urgent Alerts feature that helps him stay ahead of spam at any point in time.
He marks abusive words and medicinal recommendations as spam for his group on Convosight and gets notified whenever any member uses them.
Furthermore, the platform allows him to take action from the same dashboard.
Besides, he has 2 full-time moderators who keep a track of all group conversations and closely monitor everything that’s posted in the group.
How does his moderation team help him scale his Facebook groups?
Two friends of Praveen work as full-time moderators for his groups.
They devote 10-12 hours/day and all three of them share the same office space. When they’re not in office, they keep each other informed about the latest happenings of the group over WhatsApp.
“This way I don’t have to ask them for any report and am able to track their work easily,”he says.
Praveen pays them around INR 15,000 – 20,000 monthly for their hard work and dedication.
4 skills Praveen is proud of learning in his journey of becoming a community entrepreneur
- Digital Marketing
- Communication
- Content creation
- Engagement generation
The best part is he learnt them all by himself just by reading tons of articles out there on the internet. 🙂
Praveen’s Message for every Community Admin reading this….
Now, that’s some nice motivation!
That said, we have our Facebook group, Growth and Monetisation for Facebook Group Admins where Praveen and hundreds of other community admins like him 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! 🙂
Creating value in the lives of others with my content, little by little.✨
Working at Convosight, I do more than just wrangle commas. I’m passionate about innovating new ways to create super valuable and actionable content about Communities and Community Marketing at large, and sharing it with the right audience.
I also happen to manage a global community of power admins on Facebook, and that’s where most of my learnings come from.
Do check out my latest blogs and feel free to share them! 💛