~by Haley Lynn Gray~
When I started building the now 60,000 strong Women’s Entrepreneur Network on Facebook, growth was slow and painful. Interaction was nonexistent. People weren’t joining. In fact, all I got for months was crickets. People were just watching, but not responding, not clicking, not really doing much of anything. To say it was frustrating would be an understatement. Here are some things I learned about building an awesome Facebook Group.
Here are some of my best tips for building a dynamic and engaged Facebook group:
1. Get a friend to help you with moderating the group and with posting to the group. The more posting you do, especially in the early days, the more your group will grow and engage.
2. Post 3-5 times per day in the group, even if you get crickets. Believe it or not, people are watching, and if you’re not posting, they don’t have a reason to come and hang out. (And yes, I know it’s hard to post when no one responds. If it was easy, everyone would be doing it.)
3. Post a wide variety of content to the group. Jokes, videos, quotes, news articles – they’re all good. The more you can vary the content, while staying on topic, the better. You will get more engagement out of your group.
4. Run polls in your group and ask group members for their opinions on various subjects.
5. Create a pinned post on your Twitter feed asking people to join your group.
6. Create various posts for Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram in which you ask people to join your group.
7. Run challenges in your group that are 4-7 days long, and encourage people to join the group so they can participate in your challenge.
8. Run office hours in your group. Spend some time answering questions and purposefully being of service and engaging people.
9. Ask questions of your group members and get their opinions. Your group members can be your greatest assets. Don’t try to do it all yourself. Get opinions, and ask for help through opinions, polls, and getting more information.
10. Institute a policy about how often people can post promotional content about their business in your group. Many group owners are moving away from allowing solicitations all the time. Instead, they are restricting those posts to a single thread once a week, or they are allowing one promotional post for a certain number of other, more engaging posts. Some group owners don’t allow any soliciting at all in their group.
Building a fantastic, engaged group on Facebook isn’t rocket science, but you do have to be very consistent about it. The more you post, the more likely it is that people are going to respond back and build that community, which is where you’ll be most successful.
