As a business owner, it’s challenging to figure out the most effective social media avenues you should invest in and focus on.
More importantly, which forum ensures greater reach and a good ROI?
When comparing social media platforms, each one offers potential opportunities to connect with your customer base.
And when it comes to engagement and lead generation, Facebook groups are an impactful way to take your social media marketing game to the next level.
Interestingly, 78% of the American customers have discovered their preferred products through Facebook.
Marketers leverage Facebook groups for multiple reasons, such as building a loyal customer base, increasing referral traffic, etc.
If promoted properly, Facebook groups have great potential that can help you find qualified leads and drive conversions. Imagine a virtual space that offers a high level of engagement where people express, interact, and reciprocate – and it’s all for free!
What is a Facebook group, and how can you create one with a high engagement rate? Read on to find out.
Why Should You Use Facebook Groups to Boost Your Business?
Facebook Groups provide businesses with unique benefits that can help them stand out from the competition. With the right FB Group at your command, you can:
- Have a space that facilitates two-way communication between you and your audience
- Greater control over who is part of the group and create a safe community
- Monitor your audience sentiment
- Easily respond to questions and deescalate any problems
- Form communities that revolve over specific events or topics related to your business, or even segment your groups based on location
- Get to know and understand your audience demographic and what interests them
- Identify new potential customers for your products, services, and marketing campaigns
- Gain honest and valuable feedback
Primarily, Facebook used to center on showing its users the most pertinent content from brands, businesses, and media. But now, Facebook’s stated main focus is to help the audience find more meaningful content and social interactions.
Facebook Groups Vs. LinkedIn Groups
You may also want to read: Get The Most Out Of Social Media Groups for Your Business
Facebook and LinkedIn offer you the best possible opportunities to engage with your prospects when it comes to social media groups.
That being said, it is imperative to think of what these channels have to offer their users and their motives. For instance, LinkedIn users have a greater focus on their business, career, or industry.
On the other hand, the audience on Facebook typically engages more with personal topics or discussions such as lifestyle, interests, politics, etc.
For instance, if you run an engineering firm and are looking to promote your strategies to high-level executives, LinkedIn Groups may be well suited for this job. Whereas, if you want to sell consumer goods, you can use a Facebook Group to target the ideal buyer depending on their interests.
First and foremost, the main difference between a Facebook and LinkedIn group is the variations in these groups’ purpose and styles. Facebook is more for personal connections, while LinkedIn connects professionals and businesses.
Here’s a quick breakdown of how Facebook and LinkedIn groups differ from each other.
Active Users
Facebook has a greater number of active users as compared to LinkedIn Groups. Facebook currently has 2.7 billion monthly active users, and around 1.4 billion are members of Facebook groups.
By comparison, LinkedIn has 700 million active users – about half as many as are members of Facebook users groups. And obviously, all LinkedIn members don’t use groups.
Group Engagement
Although LinkedIn groups center on professional networking, it doesn’t necessarily mean that it is more effective than Facebook groups when considering group visibility and content
In a LinkedIn group, the members can share job links, listings, discussions, and choose an icon. However, Facebook group members can share videos, photos, create events, tag other members, host live webinars, check-in, and more.
Therefore, in terms of group engagement and visibility, Facebook groups are often more effective and useful.
Group Conversions
Every marketer aims to drive conversions. In order to create and run a successful business group, it is imperative to know and understand the conversion types to expect.
Both Facebook and LinkedIn offer various advertising options, including lead ads, carousel, and videos. Given the broad spectrum of the user base, ads on Facebook allows you to reach relatively more people. This is because of the personal information and data people provide. Ultimately, it helps you narrow down different factors such as interests, behavior, etc.
While the LinkedIn data is not readily available for use, the cost per click (CPC) is $6.40. Additionally, most marketers have experienced a conversion rate of 6.1% from their LinkedIn ads.
On the other hand, Facebook ads are said to drive 10-15 times greater revenue relative to web leads, which makes it a valuable conversion platform that can be run if managed properly.
How To Build A Facebook Group (Step By Step)
You may now consider creating your Facebook group. As a group originator, you are the group administrator by default. This means that you can control the group’s privacy settings, edit its information, and keep it managed.
Here is a step-by-step guide to creating a Facebook group:
Step 1. Hover on the menu at the left. The menu tab will expand, click on “Groups” under the list of common Facebook destinations. This further expands the menu tab and show all the relevant groups that are a member of.
Step 2. At the bottom of the group’s list, you’ll see “Create Group.” Click on “Create Group,” and a new window will appear.
Step 3. Name your group in the field “Group Name.”
Step 4. Choose and set the preferred group’s privacy level. Typically, Facebook groups have three options for privacy settings:
- Public: Open groups are entirely available to all Facebook users.
- Private: Groups are “Closed” by default. This means the individuals who wish to join will have to send a join request to the admin to become members.
Step 5. Click the “Create” button.
6 Ways To Grow Your Facebook Group
From initiating discussions to knowing how your audience perceives your company, an FB Group can benefit your business in several ways. But to make the most of this opportunity, you must follow these tried-and-tested strategies for growth:
Set Ground Rules
First off, it is imperative to establish and set some ground rules for your Facebook group in order to maintain the integrity and originality of your group. Naturally, nobody would want their group to be the focus for pointless discussions or draw irrelevant leads.
That way, you can facilitate high-quality conversations. Additionally, it is also crucial to explicitly convey your expectations to the group members through the rules. This can prevent conflicts among the members. It will help you build and grow a safe and welcoming community for the participants.
Source: Anxiety
Add The Group’s Link To Your Official Facebook Page
Practically, Facebook pages have become outmoded due to the significant decrease in their organic reach. However, it is the easiest and effective way to increase your group’s reach and, ultimately, build a bigger community.
You can add your Facebook group’s link to your official business page on Facebook and effortlessly let your page followers know about the group. This will create and show a “groups” category on your page that your followers can easily click on to become members.
Additionally, you can also make relevant posts on your page about your Facebook group to communicate its purpose and aim in more detail. This will help your target audience decide if they will be interested in ongoing discussions in the group and consider joining it accordingly.
Source: Huskymag
Source: Husky Puppies Group
Optimize The Group For Maximum Engagement
In order for your Facebook group to grab your audience’s eyeballs, you should generate posts at optimal times. Research reveals the best times for Facebook posts are during weekday afternoons and mornings.
You can also leverage analytics for Facebook to gauge when your members are online and drive group engagement. It is also unequivocally essential to keep your group information updated.
Remember to include the relevant keywords that appeal to your potential members – a prominent and compelling CTA, description, and a cover photo to intrigue your audience.
Source: The Life of an Introvert
Keep Your Members At The Forefront
Although you own and manage the Facebook group, it should focus more on the group members than you. The golden rule is to let your members know that you value their discussions and talks.
The more you keep your members enthusiastic about the group posts, the better you’ll keep your members in the spotlight and rank it better in the Facebook search engine.
Welcome the new members, introduce them to the group. You can also host giveaways and shout outs to acknowledge your members’ contributions and achievements. Encourage constructive discussions and relevant threads that allow the members to participate and share their views.
Source: The Language Nerds
Emphasize And Maintain Group’s Exclusivity
Emphasize building a Facebook community with individuality. This means keep the privacy settings of your Facebook group as “Closed.”
This will intrigue those who can see the group name or at most its description. They would want to know what discussions occur in the group but will only be able do so if they send the join request and get vetted/approved by admins.
A closed group’s popularity is merely not a coincidence. These groups are considered exclusive communities that promote specific offers and content for their members. So it’s smart to leverage your group’s exclusivity and maintain it.
Promote Across Multiple Channels
Finally, the importance of other channels can’t be overlooked when it comes to growing your Facebook community. Promote your group across different platforms to ensure it reaches a wide audience and increases its visibility.
You can push your group via social media accounts, websites, email marketing, digital platforms, etc. Announce the launch of your new initiative in the form of a Facebook group and encourage people to join it.
Have a prominent CTA button in your emails, websites, etc., to let people instantly join the Facebook group and participate in discussions.
3 Best Practices To Increase The Number Of Members
Here are some of the best practices that can help you increase your Facebook group members and build your community with the right audience.
Ask An Influencer To Endorse You
Within your industry and niche, find the star players, aka influencers, and partner with them. Ask them to promote your Facebook group and persuade their followers to join. Of course, it’s a two-way street, so you’ll have to offer something to the influencer in order to get this favor.
Provide An Incentive To The Potential Audience
Incentivize your Facebook group invites in order to entice more people to join in. Offer an incentive such as free PDFs, recipes, or valuable resources that induce them to become members. Naturally, this is more important for new groups than those that are firmly established and popular.
Promote Yourself Within Other Facebook Groups
You can promote and increase the number of members of your Facebook group in multiple ways. One of those methods is to pin it with other groups on Facebook. The popular Facebook groups with the right audience have the tendency to help you increase and effectively build your community.
Remember to go beyond than just leaving your group’s link. It is imperative to gain and earn the right to self-promote by doing it the proper way.
3 Best Practices To Push Engagement
Here are some of the effective practices that can drive engagement levels in your Facebook group and increase the interaction among the members.
Conduct Different Challenges Or Contests
When it comes to driving group engagement, your target audience’s needs and preferences matter the most. While it’s tricky to understand those needs and preferences precisely, your Facebook group’s content and engagement depend highly on it.
Research about their audience and determine the content they respond most to. According to that, organize contests, and challenges that the members are receptive to, such as recipes, beautiful pictures of lavender fields.
Understanding your audience allows you to determine their likes and dislikes and develop content that improves the engagement among the members and your overall Facebook group.
Source: Happy Cats
Broadcast Live and Recorded Videos
The golden rule that can help you augment your Facebook group’s engagement is “less text, more visuals.” Live videos tend to generate six times more interaction than the standard non-live videos.
Videography is an effective way to appeal to your audience, captivate their attention, and hook them to your content. And the most preferred form is a vertical video that can help you refine your Facebook group and boost engagement levels.
For example, marketing influencer Adam Enfroy posts live and recorded videos to his Facebook Group of Blogpreneurs to help them launch and grow successful blogs:
Finding Monetizable Keywords with the Ahrefs “Having Same Terms” Tool [Video]
Respond To The Group Members
Reciprocation is critical to building an engaging Facebook community. If your members comment on the group posts, make sure that you respond to them. Naturally, if you’ll ignore them, they wouldn’t want to interact with you in return.
For this, you need to ensure that you have a dedicated team to track, monitor, and reply to all comments. Suppose a member asks a question that requires a response regarding customer service. In that case, you can direct them to the relevant team or CSR channels to follow up.
You may also want to read: How to Leverage LinkedIn Groups to Boost Your Online Presence
Wrapping Up
A Facebook group is a goldmine that helps you generate engagement, sales, and referral traffic. However, it is imperative to get in front of the audience and experiment with different content ideas and formats to build an engaging community.
Chances are, you already leverage a Facebook group to market your business. It’s a viable way to engage with your audience and have conversations other than those that specifically revolve around your brand products or services.
While it may seem intimidating at first to come up with a well-rounded digital strategy, it will be all worth it in the end. Take the time and make efforts to test and investigate your approach to grow a stronger Facebook community.
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