S4E2 | Sandra answers more listener questions

“Start posting in your group when you have a couple of people in your group. They will feel special, they will feel welcome. They will feel part of the community right from the start.”

We’re back with more listener questions about Facebook Groups! Thank you to everyone who submitted questions for this episode! 

How do I get more interaction with my members, and how do I grow my group? 

To start, I actually have a workshop focused entirely on this question! It’s called the Grow Your Group Workshop, and it teaches you three different ways to grow your group when you aren’t paying for advertising. 

Group growth and engagement actually both go hand in hand. Every time you add new people into your group, the engagement will go up. Your new group members will be exploring, interacting with posts and Facebook Lives, and bringing new questions into your community. But how do you go about growing your group? 

One great way to do this is to have an exclusive event in your group, something that gives them a reason to join the group ASAP! In my Engaged and Profitable Groups Program and Community Driven Business Accelerator, I recommend having a welcome gift to incentivise people to join your group. This could be a PDF, a video, or something else, but it should be exclusive to your group. You can also hold a challenge event, which people have to join your group to access.

Lastly, think about where you can promote your group. Does your email list know about your Facebook Group? What about your Instagram audience? You could even collaborate with another group and cross-promote each other. 

How do you engage in a Facebook Group when there’s hardly anyone there? 

One idea is to have an introduction post, so that when new members enter your group they’ll have a place to make their post to introduce themselves. You can also do something like a poll or an engaging post. 

Even if your group is small, you should still keep posting! The members that are there will feel so appreciated and welcome. 

How can I get people to sign up for my free Facebook Group, other than my friends and family?

Write out what your group is about and why people should join. Let people know what’s in it for them, like a valuable resource they’ll get from joining. Share the expectations for the group so people know whether or not it’s for them. Include what you’ll be talking about, and if there will be any upcoming events like challenges happening soon. Then you can take this description of your group and put it out to your other audiences, like your email list or Instagram followers. 

How long should Facebook Lives be? How long is too long? 

This is a great question! I like to keep it short and aim for about 20-30 minutes. Keep in mind that most people will be watching the replay, and will be able to see how long the video is. A Facebook Live that’s over an hour long can be off-putting, even if they’re really interested in the topic. 

I have 80 members in my group and no engagement. Should I close it down?  

You can probably keep going with 80 members, that’s great! I would ask your group a very easy question, like ‘what topic would you like me to cover next’ or ‘what would you like me to discuss.’ You can also find the answer to this question by putting out a poll, and have a couple of topic options listed. Tell your members they can feel free to add their own suggestions as well! Once the topic of discussion has been decided, go Live in your group and teach about that topic. That way you can show off your knowledge, and your group members can learn what they need. 

You can get engagement with 80 people in your group…keep going!

Do you have any advice for two people co-hosting a group?

Make sure your scheduling doesn’t overlap! If you’re scheduling engaging posts or posts for launches, have one person do it, or have some sort of document that you can both share what you’ve scheduled. 

And if you don’t have a community manager yet, you can each take care of administering the group for a one or two week period, and then let the other take over. 

How far apart should you run challenges?

If it’s a challenge going into a launch, I would suggest one a quarter. Those launches tend to be heavier for you and your audience than if you’re just running a specific type of challenge with no sale at the end. 

You could also run mini-challenges, so there’s something small for them to do every month, like a 15 minute task each day. You could even schedule these every other month to give your members a break. Or play it by ear with planning and see how your challenges do before you plan others. 

Thank you for joining me for our Facebook Groups Q&A Part Two! Next episode we’ll be continuing our Q&A, but shifting our focus to membership. Talk to you soon!