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How To Get Involved In The Facebook Group
So, you’ve joined the Masters Program and now it’s time to maximise the benefits that the program offers you.
When you join you will be e-mailed an invitation to join the Masters Facebook Group, so be sure to accept the invitation and join the Group. Alternatively, you can search Facebook for thetrilifeMasters group and request to join. You can find the Masters Facebook Group by clicking here.
In order to make the Facebook Group useful and interesting to everyone, it’s really important that everyone contributes.
What we’d love to see from you is:
- An introduction – who you are, what training you’re currently doing, what your next priority race is
- A quick update with information whenever you’ve done some training
- Upload some photos or videos from your training
- Link to deals and competitions of interest to your group – you may have seen a great offer on Wiggle (or similar) that no-one else has picked up on!
- Tell a quick anecdote or joke – we love to hear this kind of thing! (Keep it clean!)
- Use Facebook to chat with the whole group and find out what everyone else is doing
- Ask a question – one of your peers may be online and have the answer instantly, and if not them, then one of the coaches will respond
The more active you are online, the more active everyone else will be.
Facebook Group Etiquette
Don’t Sell! No sales please, of goods or services not related to the Group. It’s fine, for example, if you have a road bike for sale, to see if anyone is interested. However, it is not fine (again, an example only) if you are a builder by trade and start touting for work!
Interact! This is not a rule per se, but when we join a group we join a community. A place for chatting, receiving advice, helping others. Of course you can join just to ask things and receive advice but it is nice if you can pay it forward by answering questions and joining in discussions once in a while. It is not so obvious in huge groups with a fast post flow, but in slower, smaller groups it is obvious when people only pop up to ask for help, or to sell things or to say yes to any freebies being offered in the groups. Don’t be like that neighbour we have all had, who you only see when they want something but who never returns the favour.
Thank and Like! If you ask for help with something, it is etiquette to like the answers you receive, or to say thank you in a comment to everyone who answered. They have taken the time to help you, so it is polite to take the time to thank them.
Read as well as Write! We all have limited time, but do try to take a few minutes every time you visit to scroll down the latest posts – you may find some useful information, be able to help someone, and find that someone asked the question you were going to ask just before you came in. It happens fairly often that two or three identical threads are started at the same time, because people don’t read. The chances of your thread getting answers is then that much slimmer because people suffer from fatigue at answering the same question three times in a row.
If there is a long thread, try to read most, if not all, of it. This means that you can see what other people have said and the thread does not end up full of repetitive comments. Think of it as a conversation – you would usually listen to a conversation before replying.
An online forum is pretty much like a book club, a coffee meeting or a round of drinks at the pub. You wouldn’t walk straight in for the first time and start demanding things, borrowing money or shouting at people. You would meet everyone, get to know each other, join in on a few conversations, build up a relationship. After that you may be more direct and jokey and tease them, and you could ask for help getting something and offer to help people in return.
