It’s been almost 13 years since I created the Kiwi First Home Buyers Group and today we have 150,000 members.
We’re pretty sure that this makes the Kiwi First Home Buyers Group the largest New Zealand forum dedicated to first home buyers and it’s grown on it’s own merit without any major backer or marketing budget.
It’s quite amazing really just how popular the group has become!
Obviously there was a real need for a forum like this – a place where first home buyers could ask all the questions that they want and get responses, replies and comments from a whole range of people including mortgage advisers, bankers, real estate agents, solicitors and most importantly from other people who have just been through the same journey – buying their first home.
I would love to say that I set this group up with an expectation that it would be similar to what it is today however, that would not be true. When I set up the group, it was really a bit by accident.
I thought it seemed like a good idea, but I didn’t realise how much people really wanted something like the Kiwi First Home Buyers Group.
Where It All Started
My name is Stuart Wills and I have been a mortgage adviser (broker) for over 25-years. Our business is known as Mortgage Managers and we have a small team of advisers, plus I also set up the Kiwi First Home Buyers Group.
People often ask how I started the Kiwi First Home Buyers Group and I therefore thought I’d write this short article.
Where it all started …
I had been to a business after five, which was held at a new McDonald’s franchise in West Auckland. One of the speakers was a marketing person that came up from Wellington head office and talked about social media.
What you need to understand is social media was still fairly new to people in those days – Facebook only started in 2004 and was not listed on the sharemarket until 2012.
So this marketing person made the comment that they’d set up a McDonald’s group but really had no idea what they were going to use it for. It was from that presentation that I decided it seemed like quite a good idea to set up a group where people could get advice.
So I went ahead and I set up two Facebook groups: the Kiwi First Home Buyers Group and the Kiwi Property Investors Group.
My logic at the time was both first home buyers and first-time property investors really did want to get some advice.
I then had a look around at some of the other groups on Facebook at the time and I decided there were two things that I did not want these groups to do.
- Firstly, most groups were set up by a business or a person, and really it was all about them trying to promote themselves and get additional business. My view was that’s what your Facebook business pages are for, but it shouldn’t be what the group is for. So I decided that we wouldn’t have anybody offering self-promotion and we wouldn’t keep the group exclusively to ourselves. Obviously, we have a mortgage business, but the Kiwi First Home Buyers Group has a huge number of mortgage advisors that participate, as well as bankers. My belief was (and still is) as long as people are providing good advice and not just promoting themselves, I think that adds a lot to the group.
- The other thing that frustrated me with some of the groups was the amount of advertising. I decided at the outset that we wouldn’t allow advertising, and it’s something that the Admins spend a lot of time on – making sure that it doesn’t become an advertising notice board. Obviously we get a lot of people who want to advertise, but if we start letting even one person advertise then that would go against what we set the group up for.
We do have some people criticise us for the rules, but in general they work and have kept the group as a real forum for advice.
Reviewing Some Numbers
It’s always interesting to see the numbers in a group like this.
As mentioned, we have now got over 150,000 members in the Kiwi First Home Buyers Group and that’s awesome. But the activity is also next level – in the last 28-days we have had 9,117 members post of comment and 1,667,040 views.
That’s a lot of people active in the group.
It also means that our Admin team are busy approving posts and making sure that people follow the rules.
Who are the Admin Team? At this stage the admin is all done by our Mortgage Managers Team, so you might want to reach out to them if you need some advice on your mortgage or a potential mortgage too.
What Next for The Kiwi First Home Buyers Group
Of course we are always looking for ways to improve the group and help the members get access to the best advice and help.
We need to be mindful that we do not have a budget like many of the big businesses that try and dominate social media with advertising. Instead of spending money, we rely on the members (you) to help promote the group and that seems to have worked well.
The key to remaining successful is to ensure that we hold onto the standards that we set, and to ensure that the information that is shared is useful and relevant.
There are some ideas that we have discussed and are looking at, and I’m sure things will evolve over time too.
Let’s keep an open mind to change, but also be true to our principles.
