TOP TIPS for FACEBOOK GROUPS I've collected for 2018

Facebook groups were initially introduced back in 2007; Facebook groups was the OG business opportunity on Facebook. This later turned into “likes” now known as the pages of today. Facebook groups have had it’s ups and downs within the social media expert community but these days groups are becoming the must-have item of the season.

I highly suggest researching what opportunities are available for Facebook group themes/names/niches before just starting one. For those ready to jump on it, here are some of the best practices I picked up from group moderators and kind friends.

My New group "Jane's Smart Coffee Shop" has the dizzy heights of 2 people. Hmm maybe optimistic but I only launched it today. Funny enough can you work out what it is about?

Yes Gold star, my new SmartCoffee business. Click here to find out a little more and make the group up to three.

Now my top tips come courtesy of many teachers, friends and watching others grow.

REMEMBER, REMEMBER have a reason 'Why!' you are starting the group in the first place.

Think of Facebook groups as an open forum minus the horrid design and inconsistencies in development. Depending on what your business and social goals are, you may want to consider creating an open forum-like group where your community can gather. Groups are an interactive forum anyway so utilizing your group in such a way will help introduce the idea of self-guided conversations again. Enriching your original content with the content of others is also a total bonus to whatever research you do currently.

Facebook Group VS Your Facebook Business Page

Your Facebook business page is for marketing and creating an engaging experience for your customers and users. Like we mentioned earlier, Facebook is actively seeking to remove organic engagement on pages and push everyone into a “pay-to-play” strategy (whether Facebook will admit it or not). What you discuss on your Facebook business page needs to be different than what is discussed within a Facebook group. FB wants you to pay as a business. Interesting business model, get you addicted first then charge you greatly in the future. Sound like another model?

Within your group, you should focus on building a community – an empowered group of individuals ready to advocate for you/your business anytime. These people must be your “ride or die” peeps! Enhance the group with keeping it to the strict conversation. Yes, you can share links, videos, and podcast recordings but re-orienting the conversation is critical.

If we look at the differences in messaging, we can begin to distinguish conversational differences between the page and group.

Page visibility drops month after month, but the ability for a group post to still appear high above other user content in the newsfeed is certain. As business page reach drops, your organic reach in a group will climb as customers flock to your community.

Creating The Group: Admin, Management, Posting

Everyone wants their Facebook group to grow. It’s important to note you won’t see exponential growth overnight. You have to put in the time and work to see your group grow. Here are some best practices when it comes to setting up and managing your group:

Process for adding people to the group:

Qualifying questions

Post/web page with rules & regulations

Monthly intro FB group thread tagging new people and give an opportunity for them to share about themselves

How many groups are people in – should they be in yours?

How to Build Your Facebook Group

Once you’ve your group up and running, it’s the things that you do day in and day out that will make the difference. The group should be your top priority because if you put the work into it, it will reward you to multiple times the effort.

Here are some tips to help you build a following with high engagement;

1. Show Your Face Often

Initially, your group will have only a few members. This means that it’s up to you to initiate the discussions in the group.

When you are just starting out, you have the most valuable resource with you- TIME! With only a few members on board, make sure you comment on every post and answer the questions. Let people know that you are there when they need help. Help people perceive that they are part of a valuable community. 

Also, encourage new members to introduce themselves. This helps them break out of the cocoon, show up more and participate actively in the discussions.

2. Guidelines for the Group

To build a healthy community, it’s important that you keep your group spam free. It is your group and you cannot allow random members to post spammy links and offend your valuable members.

To prevent this, you can create a post which clearly explains the Rules and Guidelines the members are expected to follow to be a part of the inner circle and pin that post. Pinned posts appear on the top of your group feed and enable all the members to see this upon joining your group.

It is possible that sometimes genuine members unknowingly post links by mistake or without the knowledge that it is inappropriate to do so. In such cases, you can delete the post and send them a personal message with a gentle warning reminding them of the group’s guidelines.

If the problem persists, do not hesitate to ban the member. You can’t take the risk of all the hard work that you’ve put into the group go in vain. As your group grows in size, it helps to keep a moderator to ensure the group is spam free.

3. Promote Your Group

No matter how good your content is, it is of no value if you don’t get people to notice it. It is the same with your group too.

A Facebook group has the potential to grow much faster than a page. But, the process does not happen overnight. It requires you to invest a significant amount of time and resources in the process.

There are many ways you can promote your group. Some of them are:

Promote Your Group in Other Groups

You can search Facebook for groups similar to yours. Before you start promoting, it is better to first introduce yourself to the admin and understand the group rules. Remember, you don’t want to look like a spammer and end up getting blocked by other groups.

Spend some time in the group and be a valuable contributor. Once you gain credibility, you can start promoting your content and your group as it will look more natural.

Encourage Influential People to Join Your Group

Start by making a list of people you want to add to your group. Then, share some of their content you found helpful to genuinely benefit the members of your group. When you share the content, make sure you tag the respective person to let them know that you’re promoting their content. Often this will encourage them to join your group on their own without having to look pushy. Simple trick, isn’t it?

Promote Your Group with Paid Ads

How can you do this if Facebook doesn’t have any option to directly promote your group? Remember the discussion we had about having a Facebook page for your business?

Your Facebook page may not get the level of engagement you desire, but it will help you a great deal in getting your group in public and even attract a lot of new members.

To promote your group using your business page, copy the link to your business group with a short, relevant description and post it on your page. You can then promote or boost the post to reach the targeted audience and get people to join your group.

Final Words

Congratulations! You are now equipped to create a Facebook group for your business and eventually grow it to attract more like-minded people.