Saturday, March 4, 2017

Create a Facebook Group

How Facebook Groups differ from Facebook Pages

A Facebook group is a Facebook space in which users can join as members to engage with the brand and others frequently about common interests.

To illustrate the value of Facebook groups, I will discuss them with comparisons and contrasts with Facebook pages. Pages are more formal and always public. They can be likened to a slightly more interactive 'About us' profile page or, in more human interaction terms, to your home's front yard. Using the frontyard analogy, it is visible to the public, to anyone on the street. As the owner of the home, you are the only one hanging decoration for Christmas or a new baby on board and so on. You may likely have posted short public details like your house's lot number and name on the wall facing the road. In short, what you show the world from your front yard (FB Page) has a generic tone. It is focused on general news updates to the general public who may or may not share your interests (like your target market would).
  
Passersby may choose to react, to say 'I like that decoration', perhaps to take photos of your Christmas tree to share them with their friends to encourage them to visit this place with a beautiful tree. A passerby might even show a photo and say, 'look at my tree'. However, since this is afterall your frontyard, people won't normally think to call other passersby to start decorating for and discussing Boxing Day (a holiday celebrated in the British Commonwealth).

Conversely, Facebook groups can be likened to your backyard, ie a more informal and intimate space where you invite closer family and friends to relax and chat in family gatherings. Being a more intimate settings, your guests may raise the topic of Boxing Day or any other topic. Unlike general public, your group is an already very keen and engaged audience. They are in your sales funnel, you are in their buying / purchase funnel. You and your guests may have detailed discussions about Christmas, Boxing Day, etc that you only mentioned in passing in the frontyard. In otherwords, your backyard is designed for more intimate interaction among like-minded people.

Given the more intimate nature of your discussions, you must decide the extent to which the public can observe your backyard activities. You may select to leave your backyard within 'public' view, ie by not using barricades to prevent passersby on the main road from eavesdropping on your family activities. If you wish however, you may build a wall that completely blocks the ongoings of your backyard from view to make your activities 'private'. Allowing persons into your private space is a matter of knowing that they share your values. To this end, you might even ask them questions before allowing them in. In other cases, you might configure your backyard in such a way that it is so 'secret' that the passing public on the road does not even know of the existence of your backyard. They can only be invited by someone within your intimate group.

In summary, here are some key take away points about Facebook groups.
  • Facebook groups are ideal for customer engagement and retention marketing in the sales funnel. They are a marketer's dream come true: they are a group of self qualified leads whose membership signals their engagement readiness. 
  • Group members are more active than page visitors. Unlike page visitors that only react when brands post, group members are allowed the voice to initiate discussions.
  • Brands can develop deeper insight into the target market's profile beyond just the product needs. This is because Facebook Groups encourage posts that are about anything. It is common for small business groups owners and members to ocassionally post about their children or pets. In reality, groups offer less demographic analytics than pages because pages are designed for advertising to the general public. However, the type of analytics provide such deep insight that they can help you to improve your connection. 
  • By allowing group members to initiate discussions and the fact that they are truly interested, groups are sustainable (ie in contrast with FB pages that usually get responses only when the brand generates content). It is really just a matter of setting the stage for group members.
  • Groups provide better organic reach (than pages). Since group members have used their membership to essentially opt in for notifications, they receive all of your notifications. In contrast however, Facebook relies on its algorithm only to determine whether to allow posts from pages to the public. Specifically, the public is likely to continually see your content only if they actively interacted with past posts. If not, your content simply disappears from their feed.

Depending on privacy settings, this communication is more personalized and intimate which may motivate even internet-shy group members to post. For instance, your leads can ask questions, current customers can respond and also showcase how they are receiving value from your product. In short, you can create a sense of community in which you can nurture leads more and for extended periods simply because your leads will continue to receive notifications for your new posts. Facebook group communities even allow greater company responsiveness as you can involve members in decisions.


Tips to boost group member / customer engagement & QUALITY of engagement
1. Make the group private and qualify entrants with questions. Facebook allows groups to ask 3 entry questions. Be selective! Do not worry about quanity but quality of membership as this will encourage active and meaningful engagement. (Some marketers collect email addresses as part of the 3 questions and then add the address to mailing lists as a means of ensuring they can always reach members).

2. Use the fact that your group is private with specific entry requirements to boast about membership being exclusive for the sake of guaranteeing quality experience.

3. If you have a faithful following on other social media platforms, incentivize them to also tune in to Facebook by making certain types of content exclusive to Facebook. Since they already know and like you on one platform, you are likely to also get high quality engagement from them on Facebook. You can also leverage the audiences of other publishers. For instance, provide quality content in the form of responses to other publications. Subtly encourage others to know what you do. You can also do collaborations with non-competing publishers whose target market is the same as yours. 

4. Establish a very clear and specific theme. For instance, if you target a certain niche in the market, let that me very clear.

5. Have an onboarding process (tailored for the role, new customers, employees, etc). This may include a welcome video. Be sure to with the core values, expectations, the benefit to members (like a UVP), instructions to configure notifications settings to receive all posts. Consider incentivizing actions like adjusting their notification settings.

6. Provide consistent content. Create schedules for live videos, stories, etc. This should include having a tentpole calender planned for the entire year in advance. 

7. Ensure all content has calls to action. Be sure to respond. Afterall, 2-way communication lets the Facebook algorithm rank your group highly. The section immediately below briefly discusses formats for content.

Facebook offers many of the same 'Story' features, including hashtags that I discussed otherwise for Instagram. 


Always pay special attention to super engaged people, ie people who respond with full sentences and developed thoughts versus single-word responses or emojis. In this section, I will discuss some engagement ideas. 
  • Involve your group in your decision-making process. You can use polls for this type of close-ended question. The option allows checkbox or multiple choice settings. Example(s).
    • Which version of this label do you prefer?
  • Ask for opinions. You can use open-ended questions. Example(s).
    • What other element(s) would you love to have in product x?
  • See more comprehensive set of examples in my other discussion on Instagram stories. 

How to create a Facebook Group
-
  • Log in to your Facebook account
  • In the left column section named 'Groups', hover over the word groups. The word 'more' will appear. Click the 'more' link. You should be directed into a groups page (with different options like 'suggested groups', 'friends' groups', etc). 
  • Click the green 'Create Group' button in the top right corner of the page
  • In the dialog box (pictured below), enter details like the group name, privacy settings and so on. 
    • Members: 
      • You can add current friends
    • Privacy:
      • Public: anyone can see the group, join at will and post (once they have joined). Beware: public groups have a reputation of generating spam (ie unwanted commercial correspondence).
      • Closed: anyone can find the group and its members but can not see the posts. This may be useful for groups that have paid services. These groups are more likely to generate content that is more personally valuable to members, especially if they are segmented. Furthermore, these groups give some level of comfort as it relates to privacy of discussions.
      • Secret: only members can see the group, its members and post. Only invitees can become members and see the group. These groups are more likely to generate content that is more personally valuable to members, especially if they are segmented. Furthermore, these groups provide maximum privacy regarding discussions and even membership.
               How to create a Facebook group for retention marketing
  • In the top banner, select 'upload photo' to add an image. The image should be 800*200 px. Another option for uploading a photo is by selecting 'description' under the banner and then clicking 'add a photo'.
  • Below the banner section, select 'description' to enter group description information
  • Since you have admin person, you will see an option to 'add new members' the middle right section of the screen
  • From this point, members will be able to add content to the timeline by selecting any of several options (write post, add photos/videos, create poll or add a file). Unlike a classic forum, Facebook pages are not very static once members post content. This is so because new content pushes older content down and, eventually, out of sight.   

  • You will also be able to post events for the viewing of only group members. Events are useful for activities like webinars. (Read about the webinar sales funnel). To create an event;
    • click 'events' in top menu below the banner
    • click the 'create an event' link
    • enter event details like an image, event name, start and end times and a description of the event
     
  • You will also be able to upload documents (PDF, MS Word documents and so on) that can be shared among all members.
  • DOs
    • To get started and generate content, you may need to find and invite members of other groups that are frequent and valuable contributors. This is a necessary evil since most average members do not contribute at all or much, which increases your individual burden as the owner to generate all of the content.
    • Use your Facebook group like a focus group. For instance, seek feedback on (new) products, ideas and so on from members.
    • Use your Facebook group to nurture members with free resources with the use of the document upload feature.
    • Facebook groups can get out of hand if not set up and managed correctly. For instance, people may enter the group and start spamming. Plan the group well based on a clear unique value proposition. The unique value proposition will inform many things like who is allowed to become a member, participation rules and so on.


CONTENT RELATED TO CREATING A NEW FACEBOOK GROUP
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