How to Build and Grow a Successful Facebook Group?

The social media giant offers many forms of communication with customers and potential clients for brands. Among pages, paid campaigns, cooperating with influencers and messenger marketing it also gives an excellent opportunity to build a community via groups. Keep reading to find out more about this great marketing method!

Why should you consider running a Facebook group?

Any digital marketing activity can bring you a profit, but there are certainly ones from which you can benefit more. A proper Facebook group is worth running because it: 

• helps you build brand awareness and engaged community focused on it;
• enables you to get to know your target group and its needs better;
• generate leads – you can interact with people potentially interested in your offer;
• lets you get feedback about your products, services or customer support;
• helps you build an expert image as a brand – you can show how much you know about the industry and expose your advantages;
• warms the image of a brand, shows that it is caring and helpful for its customers;
• gives you more opportunities to present your offer and build a relationship with your customers.

How to run a successful Facebook group?

Now you know how beneficial Facebook group can be fro your brand. Check out our tips on how to start and what to publish in your Facebook group. 

1. Do your research. Check out how your competitors handle Facebook groups, what they publish, what kind of language they use. Pick a few benchmarks and follow the best practices. Join also groups not only related to your industry – maybe other brands also have fantastic ideas that can inspire you.  
2. Identify your target group – do not create a group for everyone (even though you wish everyone could be your customer). Based on your current knowledge and marketing personas figure out what kind of content and inspirations your audience needs. 
3. Come up with a name! It does not have to include your brand’s name. It can be creatively mixed into it, but do not focus on that. The bottom line is that the group’s name should directly tell what users can expect from it. Otherwise, you will just misguide people, and that is not cool. 
4. Start posting. In the beginning, the good idea is to have a plan on posting as you probably will be the only active member until you build your community. Do not spam, but do not let your group’s members forget about you – optimally at the beginning, you should post around three times a week. 
5. Use different types of posts. Remember, there are more forms than an image. Use videos, animations, GIFs, polls. Moreover, as a form of a webinar, you can use live streaming. 
6. Format your text – now you can highlight the headline, use bullet points, and more! That way, your posts can be more clear, readable, and attractive. 
7. Ask for suggestions. Create polls and find out what type of content your community would like to receive or what issues they have with your products. The very engaging idea is to run Ask Me Anything (AMA). Once in a while for one hour you (or any other expert) can answer members’ questions. 
8. Take advantage of user-generated content. Group’s members can help you create content. Ask for their tips and use it, for example, in your blog post. Use the potential of experts gathered in one place! 
9. Be friendly and engage with your community. Publish a so-called welcome post with a warm welcome of the new group members. Ask them to introduce themselves or if they need any support. For many users, it can be the first touchpoint with your brand; therefore, take good care of your first impression. Do not forget about reacting to their comments and questions. Try to help as fast as it is possible – not only when an issue relates to your products or services. 
10. Promote your group – invite your friends that could be interested in joining it, but also use paid campaigns to reach more people who might benefit from your group. Use other communication channels to invite your customers, like newsletter, web push notifications, other social media networks. 
11. Moderate published content – create a set of rules which will be a guideline of what kind of content can be published in your group (probably other brands can try to use your group to leverage their business in a pushy way). 
12. Do not forget about entertaining from time to time! We all could use some laugh, so when you have an idea for less professional, yet engaging content – do not hesitate to publish it. 
13. Test, test, test – analyze your performance and find out what kind of content works best for your group. 

GOLDEN TIP:

While sharing any content in your (or any) Facebook group, you can use dedicated link prepared with facebook URL shortener like RocketLink. That way pixels will enable you to create a custom audience and target your ads to people who have already clicked your link. As Facebook does not allow for targeting ads to group members, RocketLink is a great sniply alternative and way to get to your community with different content. It is a way not to spam your group with ads (as it supposes to be very valuable) but reach the same people who showed interest in your content. 

Follow a guideline presented above and create your brand’s group to interact with your audience and boost your marketing performance. 

Also… 

…Join RocketLink’s group on Facebook!