Do you remember those amazing house parties from your college days? There was something so special about being in a small group of like-minded people who shared the same interests.
You could let your hair down, and everyone had an unbridled sense of camaraderie and belonging. Facebook groups are the modern day equivalent. They’re a smaller community within the wider Facebook platform, which makes them feel more intimate and accessible than larger public pages or profiles.
According to Social Media Today, there are over 1 billion Facebook users worldwide . . . but that doesn’t mean every one of them is your ideal target audience. There are countless niche communities on Facebook with very few members outside that specific circle.
If you run an organization or business , this is incredibly beneficial because creating a dedicated group gives you access to like-minded people who might not have discovered your page otherwise. So if you want to grow your following using Facebook as a home base, here is everything you need to know about creating and growing an engaged group.
If you’re a brand, business, or marketer with a presence on Facebook and a desire to grow your audience and visibility, creating a Facebook group is an excellent way to do so. A branded Facebook group is an extremely visible part of your profile and provides you with an opportunity to showcase your expertise in a particular area by facilitating discussions and encouraging engagement among members.
A successful branded Facebook group will provide opportunities for member interaction, drive traffic back to your profile, and create new connections that can lead to increased visibility for your brand.
The trick is knowing how to make it happen by cultivating the kind of environment that will result in positive outcomes for all involved. Here are some of the best ways to create and grow an engaged Facebook group.
1. Build Content Around Your Group
One of the best ways to grow a Facebook group is to build content around it. This means creating blog posts, videos, or images that are directly related to your group and are designed to drive more people to join.
You should also be sure to include a link to your group in your profile to make it easy for people to join. By making it easy for people to find and join your group, you are setting yourself up for success by expanding your reach and making it easier for people to engage with your content.
2. Leverage Influencers in Your Space
If you’re looking to grow a Facebook group quickly, leveraging popular people or influencers in your field can be a great way to do that. However, you’ll want to be careful to select people who are a good fit for your group and are likely to encourage engagement.
Also read: How To Grow Your Facebook Group: 10 Proven Strategies for a Successful Group!
You can find influencers by searching for relevant keywords on Facebook and looking for people who have large followings and frequent interactions. You can also use tools like Buzzsumo to find influencers.
Once you’ve identified the people you want to approach, you can reach out to them through email or direct message on Facebook and ask them to contribute to your group. Diversifying your group members is an excellent way to ensure a high level of engagement, and influencers will bring new people to your group.
3. Hold Events for Your Facebook Group
Another way to engage your members and encourage more participation in your group is to hold events. You can use these events to bring people together in a virtual setting, where you can encourage engagement and relationship building through group discussions, polls, or Q&As.
For example, you might hold a monthly event where members are asked to share their experiences and offer advice in a particular area. You can also use events to highlight important topics or drive discussion around timely topics related to your industry or brand.
4. Ask for Help From Members of Your Group and Provide Value in Return
Engaging people in your group is great, but you can also use that opportunity to help others. For example, you might ask your members what they would like to see covered by your brand or what needs they have that you could help to fulfill.
Then, you can put together a list of those needs and start working to fulfill those requests. Building relationships with members of your group can also help you to identify potential new customers or people who might be interested in what you have to offer.
By actively seeking to help others in your group, you will not only be building stronger relationships with your members, but you’ll also be increasing your visibility in your field and providing value that can lead to new customers.
5. Mix Up the Types of Content You Share in the Group
As the creator of an active Facebook group, you have a significant amount of freedom in the type of content you choose to share. You can post images, videos, polls, links, or any other type of content you like.
The trick is to mix up the types of content you share so that it doesn’t become boring and repetitive, which could cause members to lose interest. To help you avoid this, you can create a schedule for the types of posts you want to share in your group.
For example, you might decide to post links to relevant articles, videos, or podcasts on Mondays, host polls on Wednesdays, and encourage members to share pictures related to their weekend plans on Fridays.
6. Don’t Be Afraid to Lock People In and Change the Game
As the creator of a Facebook group, you have ultimate control over who joins and what happens within the confines of your group. This means you can limit access to only those people who you want there and, at any time, you can change the format or types of content shared within the space.
This can be scary if you’re worried about alienating people or losing members, but it’s important that you don’t be afraid to lock people in and change the game. If your group is not living up to its full potential, or if the members are not contributing in the way you would like, you have the power to change things up.
7. Be Transparent and Don’t Be Afraid to Address Problems Quickly
As the administrator of a Facebook group, you have the power to address problems quickly and transparently when they arise. This is an important part of being a good administrator and keeping your group members happy.
If someone says something inappropriate or offends another member of the group, you should be sure to address it quickly. If a member is violating the terms of your group or is negatively impacting the experience for others, you should remove them from the group as soon as possible.
8. Provide Value Before Asking for Anything
As the creator of a Facebook group, you want to make sure that you’re providing value to your members and actively helping them to achieve their goals. This can include answering questions, providing information, and offering advice in whatever way you can.
You should be careful to not overstep your boundaries and provide too much advice without being asked for it. However, you should always strive to offer as much value as possible without expecting anything in return.
By consistently providing value, you will not only be helping your members to meet their goals but you’ll also be creating a stronger relationship with your members and setting yourself up for success.
9. Encourage Member Participation
Engaging members of a Facebook group is great, but you also want to encourage participation. Participation can be anything from commenting on posts to contributing unique content to the group.
By actively encouraging participation, you will not only be helping members to develop a stronger relationship with one another and with you, but you’ll also be growing your group and increasing member engagement.
10. Ask for Feedback and Test Content
Another excellent way to encourage member participation is to ask for feedback. By doing so, you’ll not only be getting valuable insight but you’ll also be letting members know that their voices are important and that you care what they have to say. You can ask your members for feedback on almost anything.
You can also host polls or surveys so that you can get even more insights into what they like and what they don’t like. By actively soliciting feedback, you will not only be helping to create relationships between members but you’ll also be able to identify areas for improvement and make changes based on that feedback.
11. Create a group based on current user interests and behaviour
Before you even begin to think about creating a Facebook group and the ways in which you want to use it to promote your business, you must first research your audience to determine which group topics would elicit the most interest and likely drive the best results.
The Facebook group must be based on topics that are relevant to your current audience, and they must be topics that they are already interested in and engaged with. That way, when you create the group, you will be providing an environment where members can further engage with one another based on topics that are already making them feel engaged and interested in the first place.
A Facebook group should be created with member engagement in mind from the outset. The best way to do that is to make the group based on topics that are already engaging your audience.
By doing so, you’re providing an environment where members can share and discuss interests that they’re already engaged with, which will lead to greater interaction and engagement within the group overall.
12. Develop content that resonates with your target audience
The topics and discussions that take place within your Facebook group should be related to the topics that you’re providing and discussing as content on your Facebook page. The goal is to provide content on both platforms that resonates with your target audience and prompts them to engage and interact with your group by posting comments and engaging in discussions.
If the content you’re providing in the group is the same as that which you’re providing on your page, you’re likely to see greater interaction and engagement within the group because the topics are already resonating with the members of your audience who frequent your page.
If you want to create a successful Facebook group, you must first determine what type of content resonates with your target audience. Then, you must create similar content for your Facebook page and Facebook group.
The content you provide on your Facebook page and in your Facebook group should be closely related. This will help to create a cohesive experience for your audience and will likely result in greater engagement across both platforms.
13. Find ways to encourage member engagement
Engagement within the group is key because the more engagement you see, the more of the type of attention your Facebook group will receive, and the greater visibility it will have within Facebook’s algorithm.
If your group is low in engagement, it will get buried within the Facebook experience and likely receive very little attention. Getting members engaged and participating in discussions within your Facebook group is not only important for growing the group as a whole, but it will also help you engage with members directly by facilitating conversation with them and helping to create relationships between your brand and the members. You’ll want to find ways to encourage member engagement that are tailored to your specific group.
Some good ways to do this include asking members for their opinions on certain topics, asking for feedback on products or services, and asking members to share their stories, experiences, and knowledge with others in the group.
14. Utilize Facebook ads for further visibility and exposure
If your Facebook group is gaining traction and engagement is high, you might want to consider creating a few ads that link to your group’s page to help drive more attention to it and expose it to a wider audience.
Creating ads that link to your Facebook group is a great way to help spread the word and drive more members to the group, which will increase the overall engagement within the group and likely also result in greater engagement on your page as well. Because you’re paying for these ads and directing people to the group, you want them to see something that is interesting and engaging so that they don’t just leave the group and forget about it altogether.
If you have a significant enough audience, you might even want to consider creating a custom landing tab for the group that welcomes members and gives them an idea of what to expect as they navigate the group.
15. Be clear about your group’s purpose
The more that you can be clear about the purpose of your Facebook group from the outset, the better. If you create a Facebook group with the purpose of driving traffic back to your page and providing members with an environment where they can share and discuss topics that are relevant to your page and business, the likelihood of success will be higher.
With that being said, you’ll want to be clear about the types of discussions that are permitted within the group.
For example, if you want the group to be a place to share and discuss content related to your business, you should make it clear that you won’t tolerate discussions that are unrelated to your business.
By being clear about the purpose of your group, you’ll likely see greater engagement because members will know what they’re getting themselves into and what the expectations are from them.
16. Advertise in the lead-up to launch
As you get closer to launching your Facebook group, you can use Facebook ads to help generate greater exposure and drive more members to the group. Your initial ads can include an image, a short description of the group, and a link to the group’s page.
You can rotate different ads and track the performance of each ad to see which ones are receiving the highest engagement, which will help you to better determine how you want to promote the group in the future.
You may want to consider running ads in the lead-up to launching your Facebook group to help generate more attention to it and help drive more members to the group when it goes live.
17. Don’t be afraid to shake things up
If your Facebook group is not performing as well as you’d like it to, it’s okay to shake things up a bit. If you notice that the engagement within the group is low, you may want to shake up the discussions taking place to see if that results in increased engagement.
Don’t be afraid to make changes and experiment with different approaches. The more you’re willing to be flexible and open to trying new things, the more likely you are to find a formula that works for your group and drives increased engagement within it.
18. Host Discussions
Hosting discussions within your Facebook group is an excellent way to promote engagement and drive member participation. The key to hosting discussions is to host them in a way that will promote discussion while also keeping it civil and on topic. Here are a few tips to help keep your discussions focused and interesting.
- Offer a prompt – When you host a discussion, start with a prompt to get members thinking and engaged in the discussion right away.
- Create sub-forums – You can break your discussion topics into sub-forums so that members can organize the way in which they respond to the prompt you offer. This will help to keep the discussion on track and prevent it from becoming too disorganized.
- Close the loop – When the discussion has come to an end, be sure to close the loop and provide members with some closure and insight from the discussion. This will help to keep the discussion from becoming stale and will also help to create a cohesive discussion thread that you can refer back to in the future.
How to create facebook group
Here are the steps you need to follow to easily create a facebook group:
- Facebook login your account
- Next, go to your facebook newsfeed and click on the menu button
- Click group from the dropdown menu
- On the next page, enter your group name
- Choose your group privacy
- Lastly, click create at the bottom left of the page
- Add your facebook group cover photo and profile photo
- Add your facebook group description
- Lastly, invite people to join the group
Conclusion
As you can see, there are many ways to create and grow an engaged Facebook group. Building content around the group, leveraging influencers in your space, holding events, asking for help from members and providing value in return, mixing up the types of content you share, and engaging members are just some of the best ways to make your group successful.