In the past few years, the purpose of using social media has evolved and shifted from just sharing images and videos to actually engaging with people and creating communities. Brands have modified the manner in which they market to their existing customers and bartered the essence with innovative ways to build meaningful relations with customers.
One platform that has outperformed community marketing is Facebook, via Facebook Groups. Facebook groups are, by far, the most popular channel that drives the biggest organic engagements. Members of Facebook groups share millions of topics every day for discussions amongst each other in the form of sharing experiences, asking questions, offering recommendations, and seeking advice. For brands, these communities play an important role as they propose boundless opportunities to explore more about their marketing mix. But, before tapping into Facebook groups and how they help brands build communities, knowing what communities are and why brands need them is vital.
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What is a community?
A community is like a ‘tribe’ of people coexisting to have meaningful conversations about a common topic or cause. The common cause could be anything, a hobby, a pain point, a phase, an event, etc. This group of people uses Facebook as a channel to share, talk about, or discuss a theme to bring resolution to the cause. A few examples of these communities are:
1. Women of Impact by National Geographic
Source : FacebookThere aren’t many groups or communities that talk about women’s impact. However, this group, National Geographic, has become one of the first to inspire art and be a voice for change. The main focus of the group is “celebrating world-shaping powerhouses” while encouraging passionate women to break through barriers and join the field.
2. Canva Design Circle
Source : Facebook
With this Facebook group called Canva Design Circle, members learn how to take advantage of various features and functions of the product to create something creative. Also, the group members are notified about the newest product updates or launches, useful tips, etc., to open up a topic related to designing.
Through this Facebook group, Canva encourages its members to introduce themselves upon entry. Such initiation fosters a sense of trust, belonging, and identity in the community.
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Why do brands need to build communities?
Communities are where people have real conversations. The members here can have transparent and open conversations about a topic without showing their ‘fancy’ versions. Brands take advantage of these group conversations to open up discussions about things that they want their community members to actually engage with.
In this particular example, members like Lind are putting forth posts to help people in a profession like her build amazing and responsive websites by using different WordPress themes.
In a game streaming community on Facebook, members like Sonny are taking up the platform to ask for solutions to their problems from other members of the group.
In UNO Mobile Game’s community, people are sharing their experiences about how they are playing the game and offering hints and ideas about how they could bring innovation to the game.
Build Community with Facebook Group Marketing
Reading through all the examples and possibly thinking Facebook Group Marketing is amazing, but amidst that, you deserve to know why it needs your attention. So, if you’re thinking of getting into building community with Facebook Groups, consider these three big benefits:
1. They give you better organic reach
To kick start with the benefits, this is perhaps the biggest advantage. If you’ve seen your Facebook engagement wavering over the years, you need to build one of these groups. According to Facebook, their algorithms prioritize content that users frequently engage with within the groups. So, it is best to post frequently on the group, as then the members will react to the posts and share them, which is exactly what the Facebook algorithm wants.
2.Provide a direct communication channel to your audience
According to various studies and data surveys, at least half of the customers join Facebook groups and communities to directly engage with the brand. Think for yourself, If someone joined your Facebook group, they would want to engage with your brand and consistently hear from you. Well, these group members show the highest potential to become your most loyal customers when they show interest in your content and nurture your thoughts.
3. Allows you to form meaningful relationships
Facebook Groups have brought newness to what brands can do to build relationships with their customers. In other words, running a group on Facebook can help you connect with customers on a personal level. Since normal people like us post on the groups from their personal accounts, it gives a human touch to what we can call ‘Facebook Group Marketing’. Since people post using their personal accounts, members get to interact with a human first and then the brand.
This one-on-one human interaction, questioning, and answering allow brands to learn more about their customers and simultaneously provide them with ideas about what they can do to help.
Another huge advantage of using Facebook Group Marketing is that it can expose your content to a wider audience. Good! Now that we know how Facebook Group marketing efforts can help us, it is time to learn the nitty-gritty of how to get the attention of your target audience.
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Step-By-Step Guide To Facebook Group Marketing
Step 1: Pick a perfect group name
First impressions matter a lot. Thus, picking the right Facebook group name can do wonders and bring out the best of its advantages. This step doesn’t have to be that difficult unless you already have a good brand name. Naturally, this group should pop up when people search for your business via its name on Facebook. Ideally, you can use your business’s name with a pinch of creativity.
While naming your group, remember that:
- The URL is short and easy to memorize.
- It has your brand name so that people can identify you just by reading the handle.
- Your group’s values and focus should be clearly mentioned.
Step 2: Decide what content to post
Your content strategy is the most important aspect of running a Facebook group. First, understand your group’s focus and values. Then, think about what unique insights you can offer people. And do you have enough content to keep the audience satisfied? Answering all these questions will help you lead your group. Well, if you’re short on what type of content can best grab attention, here are some tried and tested formats.
- Tips and advice When someone new joins your group, chances are they might need your help to get acquainted. As the group admin, it is your duty to offer them insights about the group. In order to do that, you can offer them relevant tips, advice, and non-obligatory support to help them know you better.
- Inspirational posts We all love you for our daily dose of inspiration, right? Well, inspirational posts can thus pump the audience to take action and see the brand as ‘someone’ who cares about you. Post some inspirational content that’s relevant to your group. For example, if you’re a real estate brand, you can post about achieving big, working for your dream home/office, etc.
- Q&A Sessions Getting advice from professionals within a brand seems like a valuable gesture to the members. So, holding weekly Q&A sessions by inviting the group members and driving engagement can help you pose the ‘good brand face’ as you’ll be showing your expertise, commitment to maintaining a community, and enthusiasm. A Q&A thread is a potential way to showcase yourself as a go-to brand for your services.
- Discussions and story-telling Groups are formed where there are people sharing common interests, grounds, and knowledge. Fledging the same, Facebook Group takes the opportunity to exchange mutual opinions, trends, and practices. These groups give their members the freedom to speak up on the platform, get their voice heard, and share their stories too. When people share their happy stories or experience, other members may find their motivation to purchase from you. So, give group members the spotlight to produce positive results for you.
Step 3: Use tools to make your group awesome
Beyond just sharing content, Facebook extends some excellent built-in features to keep all its members in the loop. A few features you could use are:
- Documents: you have the feature to create/upload documents, e-books, guides, etc. to share on the platform.
- Events: to engage more people within the group, you can create events like workshops, free lectures, and live sessions online.
- Polls: polls are another fantastic way to drive engagement with low efforts. You can run polls raising common concerns, topics, discussions, etc.
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Tips to successfully build a community with Facebook Groups
To create a successful Facebook Group Marketing plan, and a long-term loyal company, you need to take care of a few things. Here are tips that can help you build one:
1. Post something valuable
The foundation of a loyal Facebook community begins with offering quality and valuable content. As a brand, you need to match their interests and expectations. Create something unique, original, and creative to attract visitors.
2. Stay up-to-date
Clamping down on new visitors with old information just doesn’t make sense. Facebook groups need to have inexhaustible sources for new information. To get better results from these groups, you need to pose yourself as the expert who is interested in offering reliable information. To find out what your users actually want, create polls, questionnaires, and surveys.
3. Maintain consistency
Building and maintaining consistency isn’t very easy. You have to be well-organized and manage to remain active in the group. Fortunately, you have social media management tools to keep you on schedule. There is no limit to how many is a good number for posting, but you can figure out the difference between too few and too many posts. You can start by posting twice a week, and when you see results coming through, increase the frequency to keep the audience hooked.
4. Promote your Facebook Group
There are several ways to expand your community and followers. Promote the group on Facebook and Instagram to focus on user engagement, demographics, and reach. Besides promoting on social media, you can:
- Post the content on your website.
- Get into guest blog postings.
- Promote your group through your own mobile app.
- Share on LinkedIn.
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Measure Success Of Your Facebook Group Marketing
Beyond just following tips, and steps and posting on groups, there is one thing you need to do, measure the success of your Facebook Group. Here are a few to look at to measure success.
- A highly valued Facebook Group has monthly posts at least 0.5% higher than the number of members in the group. For example, if you have 5000 members in the group, the number of posts on the group in a single month should be 250.
- The organic growth rate of your group should be 0.03% minimum. Initially, you might need to use social media, blog postings, invitations, and emails to grow organically.
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Takeaway
Creating successful Facebook Group Marketing demands consistent efforts, engagement, and follow-ups with your followers. So, when you’re ready to take the step to build a community for your brand, take initiative to help solve your customers’ problems, because only then will they notice your efforts. Though building a Facebook community is a sensitive job, when it all comes together, you’ll be able to beat Facebook’s algorithms.
Building a community can help your brand grow, so why wait? Get started today!
