Figuring out how to get new members and grow your Facebook group might feel like a lot of work, but it doesn’t have to be. If you follow our four steps, Facebook is actually going to start recommending your group to other people and grow your group for you. If you stick around until the end, we’re gonna show you the four mistakes most people make that kill engagement and how to avoid them.
It’s no secret that Facebook loves to reward engagement. They love it so much that they’ll actually start recommending your group to other people on Facebook and you get to grow your Facebook group basically for free! So how do we get the platform to see you as popular enough to recommend you to other people?
1. Ask Engaging Questions.
The best way to get people engaging on a consistent level is to ask questions all the time. There are four kinds of questions. You can ask decision support questions, opinion questions, prompt questions, or share questions.
2. Keep Engaged Posts Trending
Every time somebody comments or reacts on a post, whether it’s in your group or your feed or anywhere, Facebook pushes it back up to the top. That means everybody who comes into your group, it’s the first thing they see. You don’t just want engaged posts, you want trending posts. The best way to do this is to constantly be engaging with your posts. However, you might be tempted to batch, to go in and like and comment on everybody all at once. Don’t do that, you are giving up a lot of opportunities to make sure that post trends. Whenever you identify a post that you know is getting good engagement and you want it to be supercharged, go in, like and comment on one or two people. Take 30 minutes away and come back. The more you spread out your engagement in that one post, the more times it gets pushed up to the top of the feed, the more comments you have, the more engagement you have, and the more Facebook rewards you for that popularity.
3. Tag Engaged Members and Mention Old Posts
We all know Facebook never wants you to leave Facebook. They discourage you putting outside links or referencing things outside of your group or your pages. So the easy way to get around that and get Facebook to fall in love with you is for you to mention members! All you have to do is go into your Insights and look at your top performing posts and your most engaged members.Take those names and each week pick one or two of them and mention that person. Get them to engage even more. Facebook will love you for it!
Another great option is to reference past posts. Past posts of members that have said great things, posts that were super engaging, or posts where you’re promoting your product or service, maybe even lives. There’s an easy way to grab those links. All you have to do is go to the post, click on the time that it was posted, that will pop up and give you a permalink that you can now put in any future posts to reference back. It’s simple and Facebook will reward you for it.
4. Celebrate and Cry With Your Community
Don’t be afraid to ask them to use GIFs to say how they’re feeling to celebrate an amazing moment. Or, take for example Boss Mom. Every single time they gained 100 new members, they would go Live and do a dance party together! Unsurprisingly, people loved it. There was a ton of engagement, it created excitement for the group and Facebook rewarded it accordingly.
Now, you know what you need to do in order for Facebook to notice you and help you grow your group! But here’s the thing. There are also four mistakes too many groups make that will kill engagement and popularity!
Four Mistakes Not to Make
Number one: Focusing on just getting people into the group instead of engaging with the people in your group. If you do what I just taught you, Facebook will do that for you and grow it for you.
Number two: Focusing on teaching instead of engaging. Ask questions!
Number three: Letting the wrong people into the group. You don’t have to grow fast, you just have to grow with the right people.
Number four: Making your members wait for their posts to go live. Now you have the option of requiring that all posts go through approval by an admin, but you’re just wasting valuable time. Your members want their questions to get answered immediately. So don’t take that option away from them.
Now, if you want to know how to set up the right kind of rules and the right kind of culture for your group let us know and maybe we’ll write a post on that! And if you’re thinking about how Facebook is going to start recommending you and bringing you new members, stay tuned for our next Facebook for business post.
