Facebook Groups are a powerful way for small businesses to interact with a red-hot group of highly interested potential customers.
If you have a Facebook Group or are considering starting one, you’ll want to take note of several new features Facebook is rolling out this year.
New Formatting Tools
Active Groups mean engaged potential customers. But for Admins, it can also mean your posts can get lost in the shuffle.
To help combat this, Facebook is rolling out a new post formatting tool that will allow Admins to take advantage of bulleted lists, larger test and block quotes.
Facebook Group Units
When you set-up your Facebook Group for the first time, you might want to consider selecting the Social Learning Group Type. This selection allows Admins to set-up Units to better organize your posts and improve the user experience for members of your Group.
With other Group types, when an Admin creates a post, after days or weeks have passed, it become difficult to find the post. With Units, Admins can pin a specific post to a Unit so it’s easy to find in the future.
If you have an existing Group, you can change your Group Type at any time, to take advantage of the Units feature.
Group Badges
Every Group has a subset of members who provide invaluable content and interaction regularly. To recognize these members and help users learn about their fellow group members, early in 2019, Facebook released Group Badges.
Badges recognize Admins, New Members, Founding Members, Conversation Starters Conversation Boosts, Story Tellers, Rising Stars, Greeters, Link Curators, and more.
Currently, the Badges feature is only available to Groups with 50 or more members.
As an Admin, you can turn this feature off or on by visiting your Group Settings in the Admin Tools and Insights page.
Mentorship
Facebook tested the Mentorship feature with several large Groups on the platform. Facebook recently announced it has rolled out the Mentorship option to all Groups, starting with Groups in North and South America.
According to Facebook, here’s how the Mentorship feature will work:
- Group admins create a mentorship program. Admins can choose from a variety of template programs, such as career advancement, skill development, or encouragement and support, and select the one that best fits their community’s needs.
- People sign up and are matched with their mentor/ mentee: Group members can sign up to be a mentor or a mentee, then the group admin will pair people together.
- Pairs are introduced. Pairs can get to know each other and work through program steps in their one-on-one mentorship program on Facebook. They can share and comment on posts there or communicate through Messenger.
- Mentors and mentees get step-by-step guidance. The pairs progress through a guided program that encourages them to check in with each other weekly.
Mentorship is built with privacy and safety in mind. All communications between a mentor and mentee is visible only to the pair. People can report issues to Facebook, and they have access to the same reporting and blocking features available elsewhere on Facebook. Mentorship is only available to people 18 years and older.
Action Steps
- If you don’t already have a Group for your existing customers, start one today!
- Consider selecting – or changing your Group to – the Social Learning Group Type so you can take advantage of Units to better organize the content in your Group.
- The next time you create a post in your Group, check to see if your Group has been given access to the new Formatting features. This is a great way to make sure your posts stand out and don’t get lost in the shuffle.
- Investigate the Mentorship feature to determine if it is a good fit for members of your Group.
Groups are a powerful way to engage with potential customers. Make the most of your Group by taking advantage of these new features when they are available to you!