For the most effective Facebook group management, you need to know, understand, and implement the Facebook group best practices we’re about to reveal in this post.
Every activity worth doing at all is worth doing well. That includes the Facebook group(s) you manage.
There are certain dos and don’ts you should take note of. What best practices can contribute to the success of the Facebook group you manage?
Let’s discuss this.
The Need for Facebook Group Best Practices
The difference between successful communities and not-so-successful ones is how they’re managed.
Every community has its obstacles. So, what are the struggles of a Facebook group to warrant best practices?
Here are some of the struggles of Facebook groups:
1. Lack of Engagement
No matter how much you try as a community manager, a Facebook group might not be engaged enough.
Zero engagement can be frustrating. Imagine managing a group, but most of your efforts are in vain.
A high engagement rate in your group encourages you to do more, and you’ll find the activities in the group more rewarding.
2. No Revenue Generated
The whole purpose of managing a community is to generate income. As an adult, no one expects you to do something time-consuming as managing a group for free.
There has to be some reward expected in return—a reward, such as revenue generation. Unfortunately, a poorly managed group would never generate revenue.
3. Time-consuming
Managing a Facebook group requires time. There’s the time needed for the activity calendar, the time needed for moderating, the time needed to review members’ requests, and so on.
All of these and more require time. It requires implementing some of the best practices to pull them off without burning yourself out.
This article is for Facebook group managers, community managers, community founders, business owners, and more.
Now, let’s get to some tips on creating successful Facebook groups.
Tips on Creating a Successful Facebook Group
Using a Facebook group can help you in many ways. You can:
- Promote your brand and business in a way that you are offering a solution to your members’ problems,
- Get in touch with more people who are likely to make purchases from you,
- Meaningfully engage with your community to establish a stronger connection,
- Speak with the group members directly to get insightful feedback, and
- Find invaluable tips on improving your brand, content, goods, and services.
But simply starting a Facebook group for your company won’t necessarily draw in your target market and convert them into customers.
This is where utilizing the ideal growth and promotion strategy is essential.
Follow these steps to run a successful Facebook group:
1. Have a Purpose for Your Group
When starting a community on Facebook, the first thing to do is to identify its purpose.
This will make it simpler for you to identify your target market and help you decide the kind of interaction and relationship you want to have with your members—or for them to have among themselves.
Only then will you be able to establish a meaningful environment where like-minded people can effectively communicate with one another and cooperate to achieve a more significant objective—creating a better and stronger community.
2. Set Up the Right Community
Once you’ve determined the goal of your Facebook group, it’s time to start building the right kind of community. Make sure first to choose the group’s openness type when choosing the type of group.
Will it be a secret, public, or closed group?
The previous step (having a purpose for your group) will directly impact this choice.
If you want to grow your community as quickly as possible, we advise choosing the public option. Public groups will be much simpler for your target audience to get in touch with you.
3. Group Promotion
It would help if you had a lot of people with similar interests interacting with one another to maintain the engagement and activity of your posts.
Also, if you want to quickly grow a community that will be healthy and won’t dissipate over a short period, you must be able to track down these active individuals. You can convince them to join your group to accomplish your aim quickly.
There are many ways to attract new members and persuade them to join your group.
4. Quality Content Creation
Your Facebook group should be built around high-quality content as its cornerstone.
You can only create a healthy community that will expand organically, have value, and maintain engagement with relevant and original content.
While producing original content is essential, you should also post and share appealing and interesting content from other sources.
As your group expands, keep an eye on the metrics. Figure out what content engages your members the most, then skew your posting in that direction.
Finding that content sweet spot will stimulate discussion and interaction within your group and inspire them to share it outside of your community.
You can find more actionable tips when you read this article.
Best Practices for Creating and Managing Facebook Groups
Most of what you’ve read so far are already a few best practices to get the most out of your Facebook group, but there are more.
Here are some additional actionable tips and best practices to manage your Facebook groups better.
Write a Clear Description
Your group description is essential. When people check out your group, do they see a description that informs them about what your group is about?
If they do not, you should consider working on your group description immediately.
There are so many ways you can write it.
A Facebook group description explains the rationale for the group’s formation, the motivation, or the standard of the group members. A description reveals the passions, struggles, hopes, and aspirations that bind these people together.
So, how do you Write a Facebook group description?
There are Facebook group description templates you can use as a reference. But essentially, here are five key points that a group description must have:
1. Group Interest Keyword
When people click on your group to check the description, they should be able to read specific keywords that speak directly to them.
Is your group about realtors or real estate lawyers? They should see these in the description.
Is your group about tech writers or customer support for SaaS? Then the group description should include keywords they use in that industry.
Using the keywords would also contribute to the ranking factor of your Facebook group. As people search keywords related to their interests, the Facebook algorithm will prioritize your group above others.
Hence, you’re missing a lot if you’ve not been adopting this Facebook group best practice.
For example, you may write:
“This group is for realtors and home buyers. It’s also for first-time home buyers in Ontario. If you’re looking to sell a house or buy a house in Ontario, Canada, this group is for you.”
In the sample description above, the underlined words are group interest keywords.
When people intend to join a group, those keywords are essential to the growth of your group.
2. What to Expect in Your Group
Including information about what people should expect when they join your group is a must for the description.
Do you meet in your group two times a month? Write it clearly in the group description.
Do you host giveaways for active members? Tell your intending group members about it in your group description.
For example, you can say:
“Now that you’ve joined this group, you must know that members often have to introduce themselves and what they do.
You might find a few people here who are interested in buying from you.
So, introduce yourself and give value.
We do not expect any member to send a direct message to other members. This is a violation of our rules, which might lead to getting banned…”
3. Call to Action
No matter what you write in your description, it’ll be incomplete without an appropriate CTA.
Why?
You’re not just providing information. You have a goal behind your description.
Your goal may be to persuade intending members to become actual members.
Your goal may be for them to read the group pinned post next. They won’t be able to read it unless they click on “join group” and they’ve been approved to join.
Example CTA:
“Join us today.”
“Would you consider reading the pinned post next? I recommend it after you join this group. There’s a welcome bonus waiting for you there.”
4. Include Your Mission Statement
Your group’s mission statement, if any, should also be included in the description. It’s one of the most important practices in managing a Facebook group’s description.
Use the Perfect Cover Photo Size
Next in the series of best practices is the Facebook group cover photo.
Anyone visiting your Facebook group should be able to see relevant information about your group on your cover photo.
Of course, there’s a perfect size for Facebook group cover photos that you should know about.
The cover photo is usually the first to notice when you join any Facebook group. You see how the cover photo prevails in the group.
But what makes a Facebook group cover photo that important?
Well, according to the report of a survey, 52% of social media users say that they interacted with certain Facebook groups because of their stunning cover photos.
Build Your Email List from Your Group
Building your email list is one of the best practices for Facebook groups.
As you know, Facebook groups are excellent platforms for content sharing, interaction with followers, market research, and brand development.
They are also effective methods for expanding your email list.
For several reasons, obtaining email leads is crucial when managing a Facebook group as part of your marketing strategy. The most important one is that you do not own your Facebook group.
Facebook may at any time ban your account or close your group. Hence, relying solely on a Facebook group for member interaction is unsustainable.
Even though Facebook rarely bans groups or accounts, a more likely risk is that Facebook might limit your group’s organic reach. They hold all the power over your group.
Recently, it looks like Meta has been favoring paid traffic over organic reach, generally on Facebook and even for groups. Many group owners may have noticed this.
This is why you should focus on expanding something you own and plan your audience growth around the worst-case scenario in light of these risks.
You acquire ownership of your list when you create one by gathering the email addresses of your group members.
Additionally, you increase the likelihood that someone will see your content and promotions when you have their email address, in addition to the fact that they are a group member.
Even though many group members don’t participate in the groups they join, they might still be interested in you, your content, and your products.
You only need a couple of tools that most marketers already have to collect email addresses from Facebook groups. It would help if you also had email marketing software and a landing page to give your followers a lead magnet.
Keep in mind that there are other goals for your lead magnets when creating them. They offer you the chance to get to know the people in your group and provide them with genuine value immediately.
It will increase the likelihood that they’ll stick with you and become potential customers in the future.
It’s simple to set up. Take advantage of the admin tools in your Facebook group. Set up the membership questions for new members.
Ask for their emails in one of the three membership questions. Capture their emails using the Group Leads tool.
The beautiful part is that you can incorporate your email autoresponder into the tool.
The autoresponder sequence you have set gets triggered as their emails get captured.
If well set up, they start receiving the emails and marketing of your incredible offers.
Here are more ways to capture their email addresses and build your email list.
This simple strategy involves posting something to your group that makes it crystal clear that members must provide their email addresses to opt-in.
Although this strategy is effective, group members sometimes hesitate to click on overly promotional posts.
Try taking a slightly less direct approach by sharing a blog post, video, or other content that prompts an email opt-in to avoid this problem.
Conversion rates are frequently much higher with this indirect method than with a direct link in a group. Additionally, the ability for members to share your content raises engagement.
Share a blog entry, video, or other content that encourages email sign-ups. And that’s it.
Use Membership Questions to Gather Email Addresses
This is a fantastic thing to do in your Facebook group with the use of the Facebook group membership questions.
You can ask prospective group members up to three questions, so include a request for an email address in one of them.
You can’t just say, “Please enter your email address.”
Instead, be creative about how you ask.
Offer a useful freebie, a lead magnet, in return for their email address.
This gift will tempt new members to open your email and check their inboxes.
People are more likely to open the second email if they have already read the first one.
Additionally, your chances of having your email address added to a whitelist, which prevents future emails from going straight to the junk folder, increase.
You can also decide whether asking your new members to give their email addresses is a group requirement before joining.
With this demand, you can collect emails and prevent granting group access to fake Facebook accounts or spammers.
Anyone enthusiastic enough to share their email will probably be a valuable member and potential loyal customer.
Retrieve Their Email Using the Group Description
You can also gather email addresses from people interested in your group by using the group description as an additional method.
It’s one of the best practices for getting the most out of Facebook groups.
Even though the description isn’t as quickly noticeable as the cover photo, it’s okay to include your squeeze page link there.
The great thing about this strategy is because the link appears publicly, anyone who isn’t a member of your group will be able to see it.
In other words, you open the door to collect leads from individuals even if they decide not to join the group.
Moving forward, email your new subscribers as soon as possible after retrieving their emails to keep your name memorable to them. They might not recognize you if you wait too long or mark your emails as spam if they have grown cold.
This action may hurt your domain’s reputation.
Long-term engagement is also aided by a welcome message.
According to reports, subscribers who receive a welcome email exhibit 33% more long-term brand engagement than those who do not.
You can create an email sequence with some upfront work, automating follow-up emails that convert incredibly well.
This is after sending your new Facebook group members the freebies you promised them.
Onboard Members
Appropriately welcoming new members has been proven to be valuable to a business. It’s one of the best Facebook group practices to follow.
Establish a friendly atmosphere within your group and integrate it into the culture of your Facebook group atmosphere.
New members feel valued and welcomed when they see a welcome post.
You can say hello to each member individually if fewer people join each week.
Create a weekly welcome post that tags new members in large groups where many people join daily. You can tag up to 100 members in each post.
If group members don’t feel comfortable being tagged, you can ask them to introduce themselves in the comments of a post that serves as a general welcome.
Seasoned admins may urge the group’s moderators and fellow admins to introduce themselves on the welcome post and say hello as well.
This enables new members to feel acknowledged and learn more about the various admins of the group.
Establish a welcoming committee from your active group members and encourage participants to greet one another.
After observing administrators welcome new members, some members might begin to do this independently.
You can privately thank these active few who welcome new members, to express your gratitude for their enthusiasm in the group.
How to Welcome New Members
Facebook group administrators can extend a warm welcome to new participants.
A prompt to write a welcome post will be accessible only if new members have joined in the past seven days.
Create a welcome post following these steps.
1. Select “Groups” in the left menu, then choose your group from your Feed. Click “See more” if you can’t see Groups.
2. Click the “Members” link under the cover image.
3. On the right, select “Write welcome post.”
4. After writing the post and making the necessary changes, click Post.
With that, you can easily welcome 300 of your newest members.
Check out this post for more ways to welcome new members. You may also try using the new feature, new member intro.
Post Engagement Threads Consistently
Posting engaging threads looks obvious enough as one of the best practices on Facebook groups.
But few people take advantage of the practice. With the right kind of engaging posts, you can take your Facebook group to the next level.
If you’d like more members to see your engagement post, you may consider using the @everyone tag.
Promote Your Own Offers (Products and Services)
Since you’re taking your time to build your Facebook group, then it’s recommended to market your offers to your Facebook group audience.
There are different Facebook marketing ideas you can choose from. The most important thing is to try and turn your Facebook group members into leads.
You don’t own Facebook, and any new policy from Facebook might affect the audience you’re trying to build. But you own your email list forever.
Final Thoughts
In conclusion, you can easily grow and monetize your Facebook group, but it takes time, effort, and a willingness to experiment with different strategies.
By following the best practices outlined in this article, you can attract new members, engage your community, and generate revenue through the tactics shared.
Finally, if you’re looking for a tool to help you turn your Facebook group members into leads, I recommend Group Leads.
With its advanced features and seamless integration with your favorite email autoresponder, Group Leads makes capturing and nurturing leads retrieved from your Facebook group easy. Give it a try today and see the results for yourself!