Hot Topic: Why We Didn't Close Our 12k+ Facebook Group
Episode 092: Show Notes
We are here for a hot topic today. Today on the podcast, we are talking about why we did NOT decide to close our private Facebook group, which has roughly 12k+ people in it. This is one smokin’ topic, as there are a lot of Facebook groups run by business owners who are similar to us and in our circle that have been closing down left, right, and center.
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Today, we want to highlight the fact that we are not going to speak for the people who have decided to close their groups; we are literally just here to talk about why we decided to keep our group open and go over some of the adjustments that we’ve made since that “change” in the Facebook group world. If you want to hear more about how we run our Facebook group and why it works for us, keep listening.
Being Intentional with Your Strategy
If you are active in a few Facebook groups and you found it really damaging to your business that one or more of them closed, then your strategy was not in the right place to begin with. We want to remind you that you do not own Facebook, you do not own groups, and we do not own our Facebook group. It can literally be taken away from us tomorrow. If you’re not being active and intentional with your strategies, with tactics that you own and finding networking and growth opportunities that you can control, then that’s your mistake in the first place. We just want to give you a wake up call, because we don’t know Facebook’s agenda. They made a huge announcement that community is where they’ll be focusing and putting their eyeballs. Although that sounds magical, it is also a bit scary because that means there is change coming and we don’t know what it will be. We have to go into this knowing that we’re going to use our Facebook group to the best of our abilities for the time that we do have it, and we’re going to love it for as long as we can, and we’re going to know that it’s probably not going to be around forever.
Running a Facebook Group
Running a Facebook group is literally like a second job. We have three full-time paid employees who are active in our Facebook group, as well as a handful of readers, two of them being us who are founders of the entire business. We spend massive amounts of time inside our Facebook group making sure that the community is what it should be and that people are being nice, supportive, loving, helpful and giving towards one another. It takes a lot of our time and our energy to be engaged and active. It’s just another space for our heads to be in when we might want to be working on other things. It’s a lot to handle and, in addition to doing the moderating in the group, there is also a lot of moderating that goes into allowing people to come into the group. Facebook just released group insights and in the last 28 days we approved 847 new members but we also declined 257 of them. We have now started asking questions when people want to join the group. This has bumped up our declines pretty drastically which means that we’re going to see slower growth, but we’re good with that.
Using Facebook Groups for Promos
Those of you who were using Facebook groups to get people over to your blog were very sad when those top groups stopped allowing promos. We recently took the promos out of our group as well. We used to have a promo thread where you could promo your own content one day a week, but we decided to change it — now you can still promo something, but it can’t be your own content. We know that this will drastically decrease engagement activity on that specific day, but what we found was that our most popular posts were the posts where people could promo stuff, but the prompt where we were actually posting questions and offering helpful advice wasn’t getting as much activity. At the end of the day, those questions and pieces of advice are going to help your business grow much more than a blog link promo ever will. It might seem counterproductive but you have to realize that if you show up like a real human being, ask questions, answer people’s questions (and actually give feedback), or just post insightful content that helps the type of audience that is inside the group, you’re going to get noticed not only by us, but by your target audience. That leads to far more great relationships and sales than dropping a link to your blogpost.
Reasons Why People Are Hesitant To Start Facebook Groups
We’ve seen people shy away from opening Facebook groups or continuing to put their effort there because they didn’t necessarily see the same engagement. We’ve seen the opposite happen for us — our engagement keeps increasing all of the time and people are genuinely helping other people grow their businesses. Folks are asking detailed questions and they’re getting detailed, insightful responses from numerous people because people are out there to help one another. It used to be that we had to go and respond to everything ourselves so we could be certain that everyone got a response, but now we don’t even have to do that because the community is lifting itself up and doing it for everyone else. At the end of the day, we have to remind ourselves why we wanted to create this group in the first place. What was the point of getting the opportunity for people to connect online, and what did that look like?
Driving the Community Aspect Using Facebook
Ultimately, above anything else, Facebook has been one of the easiest ways to drive that connection with multiple people. You can see what people look like, you can see where they live, you can see what their business is, you can see other things that interest them and you can learn a lot about someone just from their profile. It’s safe, user-friendly, and easy to access on your phone. We wanted a spot to support, love and lift up other business owners. To have a spot where you can learn some stuff when you ask questions, and actually get some strategic feedback. It was a no fluff, very supportive group. We want to encourage you to know that whenever we make a tweak to the group, or any time there’s a change to the prompt or the rules, or if we delete a post, it’s in spirit of that purpose. The longer we can keep that purpose alive, the longer the Facebook group can stay alive. We want to help people, we want to let people work together and our dream is to create a community online.
Quote This
If you speak up, show up and make yourself known, you’re going to get way more out of the group.
Highlights
Being active and intentional with your strategies and tactics and finding network and growth opportunities. [0:03:30.2]
Why running a Facebook group is hard work, and it is literally like having a second job. [0:06:00.8]
Using Facebook groups for promos, engaging and growing your business. [0:16:38.8]
Reasons why people are hesitant to start Facebook groups and continue being active in them. [0:18:45.2]
Using Facebook to help connect multiple people and drive an online community. [0:20:13.8]
ON TODAY’S SHOW
Abagail & Emylee
The Strategy Hour Podcast
We help overwhelmed and creative entrepreneurs break down their Oprah-sized dreams to create a functioning command center to tame the chaos of their business. Basically, we think you’re totally bomb diggity, we’re about to uplevel the shiz out of your business.
KEY TOPICS
Being intentional with your strategy, Running a Facebook group, Using Facebook groups for promos, Reasons why people are hesitant to start Facebook groups, Driving the community aspect using Facebook
