Facebook Group: Grow Your Business While Engaging Your Customers
Tags: Facebook Marketing, Facebook Groups, Marketing Strategies, Facebook, Digital Marketing

One of the most amazing things with Facebook is bringing communities together. It’s about people helping each other, connecting and building lasting relationships. It’s also the joy of being able to share things that help others.

Facebook groups enable everyone to create a community and share as much as possible with their members. It’s an opportunity for business owners to build their fanbase while truly connecting with their users on a very personal basis.

Having access to over 1.6 billion active users is very powerful when it comes to building communities. There are so many amazing features to enable you to create a strong community nowadays that as a business owner you have no excuse.

Furthermore, even if Facebook decided back in 2018 that businesses would get very little space in the Facebook feed, Facebook groups have not been penalized. In fact, since they “spark conversations and interactions” according to Facebook, they are part of the priority.

Since communities generally tend to drive conversions, it’s fair to say Facebook loves them. People come back to the platform just to interact with Facebook groups and it’s why you need to leverage it.

In this article, we’ll cover how you can leverage Facebook group marketing to increase your visibility and brand loyalty.

Facebook Groups vs Facebook Pages

Facebook pages are essentially personal profiles for business. It’s where you can share your point of view, news and craft your authentic voice with images, pictures and text.

It’s about showing to other people that you exist by gaining visibility on social media such as Facebook. It’s also a place where you want to give technical information such as:

What you’re selling

Your business hours

Your location

Your email or phone number

Your story

A call-to-action to your website or to get people to call you

Through this Facebook page, you can also collect data about your audience to better understand what they like most about your brand and enter conversations. You also have the option of liking posts of other Facebook pages and profiles and interact with them.

On the other hand, Facebook groups are a place to connect personally with your customers or readers. It’s about building a personal bond and a place for them to share how they feel about your company. It’s where you want to share discussions, share your values, answer people’s specific questions and allow your members to get access to exclusive scoops.

When it comes to Facebook groups, you have three options in terms of availability:

Public: everybody can find your Facebook group and enter.

everybody can find your Facebook group and enter. Private : everybody can find your Facebook group but need to request to enter.

: everybody can find your Facebook group but need to request to enter. Secret: people need to be invited to the Facebook group to access it.

To summarize this section, Facebook pages are for showing your company on Facebook and Facebook groups are for building a community. In reality, you should probably have both!

Why You Should Have a Facebook Group?

Talking directly to your customers

People in Facebook groups are most likely your most loyal customers. They are the ones who are thinking about your brand very often and want to interact with your business often. Hopefully, no one forced them to join your group.

This creates an opportunity to really understand who are your most loyal customers by asking questions and interacting with them. The motto here is “watch and learn” because Facebook groups are a gold mine of information from your most motivated customers.

Customer Loyalty Booster

By having a Facebook group, you enable people to feel personally connected and well taken care of which in turn improve your customer loyalty. It’s well-proven that having a community around your brand helps in building trust and reduces churn.

If you are looking for a way to boost your customer loyalty and get more of them to talk about your brand online, then Facebook groups are one of the best at doing that.

Gain More Visibility For Free

Facebook promotes posts that “spark conversations and interactions” and it’s exactly what Facebook groups are about. In fact, the more interactions you get, the more interactions you’ll get in the future.

If you get your members and your brand to posts often and get engagement, then you will gain drastically more visibility than your competitor’s Facebook page fast.

Deeper Into Facebook Group Types

When it comes to privacy, you’ll have three options to choose from for your Facebook groups.

Public Facebook Group

Public Facebook groups are visible to anyone. It means that anybody can see what people post and share. They can also see all the members, moderators and admins.

The advantages of having such a group are the following:

Visible to anyone who might want to take a peak before joining your Facebook group

You don’t have to manually accept everyone one by one

The disadvantages are the following:

You can have tons of SPAM fast and this gets almost impossible to manage

Moderation is virtually none

One word of advice, you should always keep in mind that the Facebook group is linked with your business. If you choose a public Facebook group, then it might be wise to monitor it daily. Spammy posts could affect your brand’s images in the long run!

Private Facebook Group

Private Facebook groups are visible to people in searches but members need to make a request to join the group. The moderators and admin can then manually accept the new member. It helps in making sure the members are filtered.

When it comes to posting, sharing and seeing who is inside the Facebook group, only current members have access to this information. However, the moderators and admin are visible to anyone who has a Facebook profile.

This option is probably the most used with Facebook groups even today. It allows for visibility in Facebook searches but remains very easy to manage and control.

Secret Facebook Group

This final Facebook group privacy setting is one that doesn’t show up in searches. Unless you are a member, not only can you not see the posts and members but you also can’t find the group in Facebook searches.

To join the group, someone already inside needs to invite you with a secret link. It’s definitely harder to gain an audience because of the lack of visibility, but if the content is amazing, you can get a lot of traction as a business.

I recommend these groups for your best customers, the ones who bought the most from you or your business partnerships. It’s a nice place where people can feel safer about sharing certain information.

How Can I Create a Facebook Group?

That’s a great question. Fear not, creating a Facebook group is extremely easy compared to other things such as launching a Facebook ad.

How can I create a Facebook group from my desktop?

Go inside your Facebook account Click on “create” at the top right and select group. Name your Facebook group and select the privacy Add your initial group members Add your group’s cover picture Add a group description: we recommend adding the “reason why” as well as the group’s policy.

How can I create a Facebook group from my iPhone?

Select the menu on your news feed and choose groups Hit create a new group Add your Facebook group name Select the right privacy setting as mentioned above Hit create Invite your initial members Add a good looking cover photo for your Facebook group Add a group description: we recommend adding the “reason why” as well as the group’s policy.

How can I create a Facebook group from my Android?

Select the + sign on your news feed and choose groups Hit create a new group Add your Facebook group name Select the right privacy setting as mentioned above Hit create Invite your initial members Add a good looking cover photo for your Facebook group Add a group description: we recommend adding the “reason why” as well as the group’s policy.

How Can I Create a Business Facebook Group?

If you have already created your Facebook group with the method above, you’ll just have to add your Facebook business page as an admin. If you haven’t created your Facebook group yet and want to set it up as a business read on.

For your information, your Facebook can be an admin of up to 200 Facebook groups. It would be very difficult to manage, but it’s just for your information!

To create a Facebook group from your business Facebook page on your computer, just follow these steps:

Go inside your Facebook account Click on the page you want to use from the arrow-down menu on the right Select groups in the tabs on your left. If you can’t see it head over to your business manager >> settings >> templates and tabs >> add a tab >> Groups Hit create group From there you’ll be able to add members, edit your cover picture, description and policy.

If you want to create your business Facebook group from your iPhone or Android, follow these steps:

Enter your news feed and hit the menu button Select pages then select the page you want to use Hit more and then tap on groups Hit create group Hit create group From there you’ll be able to add members, edit your cover picture, description and policy.

How to Make Posts In Your Facebook Group?

It’s quite simple to post, but here are two tutorials based on if you are using a computer or a mobile phone.

How do I post on my Facebook group from my computer?

Look at the left menu and click on groups Hit on writing something Write your posts in words, select your media and format: poll, video photo, collection event, and much more.

How do I post on my Facebook group from my iPhone or Android phone?

Hit the menu icon, and select your groups after clicking on groups. Select share something or write something Write your posts in words, select your media and format: poll, video photo, collection event, and much more.

How Should You Leverage Your Facebook Group?

While Facebook groups can often seem like a place for people to bond and talk about trivial things, it’s only one side of the equation. Facebook groups can truly help your business grow.

Being able to connect personally with your audience and have people meet through your brand can have a tremendous effect on your business in the long run.

Answering Your Customer’s Question

When customers are looking for help, they generally want it now! By having a Facebook group, you can have one of your customers answer the query if they had already experienced a similar issue.

Elementor’s Facebook Group

This can save you time, money and get your customers satisfied with your product with very little effort!

Teaching & Engaging With Your Community

There are tons of amazing features integrated in Facebook groups that enable your company to interact with its users on a daily basis. Most of these features are not leveraged by Facebook group owners but they can be lethal:

Social learning : this feature enables your brand to have videos that people can watch in order, pretty much like training.

this feature enables your brand to have videos that people can watch in order, pretty much like training. Watch party : you can share a video so that everybody can watch it together at the same time.

: you can share a video so that everybody can watch it together at the same time. Polls

Member badges: you can give certain titles such as rising stars to encourage those who post often

you can give certain titles such as to encourage those who post often And much more…

The more people interact with your posts, the more visibility and reach you have and the more your business can grow!

Getting Feedback Inside Your Community

Social listening is very important with brands nowadays. It’s why Facebook groups can be invaluable allies when it comes to getting feedback from your customers.

If you want to know how people feel about your last update and change made on your website, you can ask them directly.

Elementor’s Facebook Group

As we can see in this example, Elementor added a new feature and people seem really excited about it from the interactions we see.

Data is king ?

If you already love your Facebook page’s analytics, then you will be thrilled with your Facebook group insights. You’ll be able to see things like:

Engagement

Gain/loss of members

When should you post

How many people are active

If you want to find out exactly where to find that insight, I recommend this article from Facebook.

You just have to follow these two steps to find your analytics:

Go inside your Facebook group. In the left menu, select Insights and click on Growth, Engagement, Admins & Moderators or Membership.

Making People Connect Together

Why is it good for people to meet in your Facebook group rather than somewhere else? It’s because they build a positive bond around your brand. Your brand is what connected them in the first place.

This helps people feel more attached to your brand, create a human connection that can create feelings of goodwill for your brand. It also pushes people to think about your brand and talk about it more often.

Although most posts revolve around people needing help, some people ask for personal recommendations and it’s where they might decide to connect more personally.

Elementor’s Facebook Group

Bringing more revenue

Of course, we can’t talk business advantages without talking about revenue. We’re not recommending that you post about your products and next discount promotions (although you can in moderation).

In our experience, by providing value to your customers, you’ll be able to make much more money than that. If people feel satisfied and appreciated, they are much more likely to continue buying from you.

You can also choose to make exclusive sales and discounts for your group members once a while. This would definitely make them feel lucky and appreciated by your company.

10 Additional Tips For Your Facebook Group

#1 — Strong & Solid Policy

When it comes to Facebook groups, we often hear about spammy posts from strange-looking Facebook accounts. To remedy to that problem, we recommend having a strong set of rules that you enforce.

To do that, you just have to go in moderate group settings and set up your 10 most important rules that people need to respect. Here are a few ideas to pick from:

Terms of service: you can only stay in the group if you do X or have X.

you can only stay in the group if you do X or have X. Behaviours: be nice, don’t post offers, etc.

We also recommend making sure people know that if they don’t respect the rules too often then they will be banned from the Facebook group definitively. Here are examples from Facebook:

Facebook Group Rules

#2 — Set up keyword alerts

By going into your group settings, you’ll see an option to set up keyword alerts. It’s good to have those because you could, for instance, set up an alert for people writing that they are “angry”.

This could also help your team better manage the important requests posted rather than going at it in a random order.

#3 — Engage With Your Audience Moderately

While it’s important that your team engages frequently in your Facebook group, we would recommend against interacting too much. You want to let your members try to answer each other’s question and connect with each other.

We recommend making posts, announcing product updates, giving advice and starting interesting debates but we also recommend letting your Facebook group members take the lead sometimes.

Users interact

To keep up a good posting rhythm, we recommend having a content calendar that you can follow easily.

#4 — Leverage Time to Post Data

We recommend taking a look at your Facebook group insights to figure out the best times to post for your specific audience. It’s crazy how the time at which you post has a big effect on your engagement rate.

In fact, the first 5 minutes of your post are the most crucial. If people that saw your post interacted, then Facebook will show the post to all their friends.

#5 — Be Unique, Facebook is Crowded With Copycats

We recommend not posting the same content on your Facebook page and Facebook group. The reason is that people who already liked your post might not make the effort of liking it on the other. It’s why we advise against cross-posting.

For instance, you could announce a new feature on your app on your business page but ask your community about what they want to see next inside your app. It’s often quite simple to be different on both platforms, we recommend making the effort.

#6 — Use Questions To Weed Out The Spam’s

If you run a private Facebook group, then you’ll have the chance of asking people question before accepting them inside your Facebook group. These questions are extremely important, here’s why:

They allow you to make sure the people are serious about joining your community

You can gather people’s email address to contact them

Testing if the person is a bot or a real human

Here’s an example from a group about Pinterest ad buyers asking for my email address:

Users post questions

#7 — Don’t Be Afraid To Kick Out People

If you see someone disrespecting your rules or posting spammy links, don’t be afraid to weed them out. You will lose way more followers for allowing someone to do that then that person alone.

Furthermore, you can make a post explaining why you kicked out someone earlier which might be a good moment to reiterate the rules everyone agreed to follow. Make sure to explain why the rule is important.

#8 — Exclusivity is Key ?

It’s important to make sure your Facebook group members are truly benefiting from being members. Having exclusive webinars, Q&A’s, discounts or pre-access to certain products is key.

#9 — Take All Your Members Here

If you have a website with traffic, a big email list or even just a strong following on social media, we recommend making sure people know you have an active community on Facebook.

You could add a banner on your website or announce the most popular posts of the month to your email list. The more people are inside your Facebook group, the more interactions and relationships you’ll be able to build.

#10 — Constant Efforts Pay Off

Like anything, you can’t just create it and leave it to god. You’ll probably have to spend a lot of energy trying out certain posts, failing, interacting with your users and so on.

All this energy will definitely pay off but you need to work long enough to see the end of the tunnel.

To finish, if you have a business you think would benefit from having a Facebook group, then you should get on it. Of course, you need the time to manage it because just creating it won’t be enough.