5 Ways Brands Can Take Advantage of Facebook Groups

During the past year, Facebook has been busy making groups a central focus of its user experience. The latest Facebook design refresh devoted significant space to groups and its algorithm now prioritizes content from groups in your newsfeed. With 1.4 billion people using Facebook groups and more than 10 million groups created, the emphasis on groups makes sense.

But there’s something deeper here, too. As Facebook has reported, about 10 percent of users are members of what it calls “very meaningful” groups. These are groups that upon joining, quickly become the most important part of our social network experience. (CEO Mark Zuckerberg used the example of new parents joining a parenting group.) Facebook is measuring the progress of groups based on these meaningful groups only.

For brands, groups represent a real opportunity—building community and deepening engagement without the risk of the algorithm deprioritizing your posts. To take advantage of this, brands need a thoughtful approach for engaging with groups—no matter if you’re creating or joining these spaces.

So, how can brands utilize Facebook Groups? Here are a few ways to get started.  

1. Create a new group based on your brand Page.
   Think of this as a gathering space for your superfans. A safe place for discussion, education, collaboration and entertainment—whatever is most meaningful to your audience. You can use this space to:

   • Provide customer service, answer questions or host how-to chats.

   • Curate user-generated content (UGC) like pictures of your products in use or product reviews.

   • Gather feedback on new designs, product ideas or even advertising campaign creative. Virtual focus groups can be accomplished by simply posting a poll.

   • Humanize your brand with entertaining content like memes, GIFs or videos that show you “get” your audience.

   • Learn more about your customers with Group Insights. Facebook provides insights for groups with 250 members or more, which can inform what you talk about, how you share and when you post.

   As an Orange Theory Fitness member, I follow my local studio’s Facebook Group. My reason? I like the healthy recipes the coaches share. They understand that a lot of their members have busy schedules and need fast recipes that are yummy and nutritious. And comments from other members helps me decide which recipes to try. The takeaway here is that a group should deliver something your customers will find useful, and that may not always be directly related to the product or service you sell.
   

2. Join an existing group as your brand Page.
   Seek out and join the groups that your customers spend time in. Facebook’s research with users ages 18 to 24 shows they’re open to brands posting in groups, as long as those posts provide real value, rather than just promotion.
   
   You can respond to questions, help troubleshoot, or share recommendations. Another consideration is offering members-only perks like discounts, early access to sales or product previews.
   

3. Engage influencers to participate in groups on behalf of your brand.
   Sometimes, it may feel obtrusive for a brand to join a group—for example, if the group fosters deeply personal conversations or has set the expectation of peer-to-peer sharing. In these instances, it could make sense to engage influencers or experts to participate on behalf of your brand. For example, a brand that sells baby feeding products may engage a lactation consultant to answer questions and offer advice in groups dedicated to breastfeeding moms. Keep in mind, like all influencer activities, you’ll want to be sure any influencers sharing on behalf of your brand clearly disclose this relationship.
   

4. Leverage employees as advocates in groups.
   Jobs groups are great assets for brands looking to hire. If it makes sense for your company to join directly that’s great. But sometimes a more impactful approach is to utilize your greatest asset: your employees. Empower them to share job postings in relevant groups by arming them a few helpful assets like a brief job description and links to the job posting, a careers page or employee video.
   
   We’ve had success with this strategy at Approach Marketing. As consultants, we’re members of lots of different Facebook groups dedicated to independent marketing communications professionals. Sharing consulting opportunities in these closed groups is a great way to reach our networks in a relevant, more private way than a public post to our newsfeed.
   

5. Monitor group conversations for helpful insights.
   While engaging with groups is important, don’t forget to listen. Lots of social listening and management tools offer the ability to monitor Facebook groups for specific keywords. Doing so can help you discover the conversations that are occurring organically about your brand and industry. This intel can help you identify influencer partners, customer pain points, product differentiators and new competitors. One watch out: Social listening is typically limited to public groups, so private and closed groups won’t appear in your monitoring.

At Approach Marketing, we help clients of all sizes and across industries connect and engage with key audiences on social media. Want to learn more about how we can support your business on Facebook? Let’s connect.