The power of Facebook Groups
This week, we’re talking about the power of being part of an online community, namely Facebook Groups. Being part of the right Facebook Group can really boost your business, giving you access to people who you otherwise may never have spoken to and it’s also a great space for knowledge sharing.
I’ve been really fortunate this past few months to have found an incredibly supportive group of like minded women in a Facebook Group in my local area. It’s been a fantastic source of information as a new business owner and we’ve also met some of our new clients there!
It’s not all about joining groups though - they could be a great opportunity for you to build your own community. Anyone can create a Facebook Group, all you need is a subject you think people will find interesting and engage with and off you go!
Sounds simple right? Well, it is, but it also (like anything great!) involves a certain amount of work to maintain. It’s not quite as simple as just creating a group and it all just manages itself - so here are some pointers to help you along…
Set some rules
I’ve worked my way through a few groups over the past months and there’s nothing worse than being in a group where members don’t show any respect to each other. Set some ground rules for your members before you get started and make sure you remind them of those rules every now and again.
Decide how you want to administer your members
The least time consuming way to manage the membership of your group is to simply let anyone join. However, a word of warning - this may seem easier up front but if you’re not able to vet who’s joining your group then you’re likely to find it much harder to really build a good community.
Our recommendation would be that you set your group up so that new members must request moderator approval before being able to engage with the content. This will make it much easier to lock out anyone who might create a toxic environment and put off other members who have valuable contribution to give.
Set yourself a schedule
Treat your group like a mini-business, put together a plan for what kind of content you’re going to put out and when. For example, every Monday you might want to send out something motivational to get engagement started for the week. A great way to do this is ask a question, you’ll get people chatting and sharing ideas instantly for example "What’s the main thing you’re hoping to achieve today to get your week started?”.
You don’t always have to be sat on your Facebook first thing on a Monday morning to do this though, you can use the scheduler to set up your posts ready to go. So take a little time to sit down and organise the next couple of weeks a couple of times a month.
Welcome your new members
Facebook has made this bit easy for you! Once every 7 days, write a post specifically to welcome your new members, you can do this through the admin console in Facebook - just write your post and it’ll pop all of the new members names into it for you. It’s nice to feel welcomed into a new group and personally, I’d say this is one of the most important things you should do.
If you’re interested in getting more information out there about what you do and you’d like to build a community around it, then why not give creating a Facebook Group a go? If you this article has inspired you to give it a try, then let us know how it goes for you at hello@junipercreativestudio.com - we’d love to hear your success stories!
