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3 Things Facebook Group Owners Should Do Every Week For Maximum Group Engagement
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Steve (00:00):
Hey, everybody. Welcome to the Tribes for home business podcast, episode 11, stick around for this one, because what we’re going to be talking about are three things that every Facebook group owner needs to do every single week in order to build and maintain engagement inside of their community inside of their tribe, obviously really important. So stick around, we’re going to get it covered for you.
Sam (00:26):
You’re listening to the Tribes for home business podcast. With Steve and Sam, Harradine brought to you by the Tribegeeksacademy.com. This podcast was created for just one reason to help you to leverage the power of Facebook groups, to generate more leads, more sales, and more impact with your online business. We’ve been using Facebook groups to build our business and work from home for more than eight years now. And we’ve picked up a trick or two, join us on our journey as we share, what’s worked for us, what hasn’t and how you can use that to build an audience of raving fans and buyers for your business.
Steve (01:11):
Hi everybody. And welcome back. So first things first, a quick intro, I think. Hi, I’m Steve Harradine. Hey everyone. I’m Sam and we are all about Facebook groups, as you will know if you followed us for any time at all. So again, just to get things out of the way we need to own something here, we actually have taken a little bit of a break from podcasting for a while.
What would you say, Sam, six months, at least six months, something like that six months. It has been, it has been a bit of a six months. So first of all, we’re going to put our hands up and say, yes, I’m very sorry. We did take a little bit of a break from this, but with good reason. So just to fill you in a little bit on what we’ve been doing while we’ve been away from podcasting, we’ve created a membership.
We’ve created a VIP experience for people who want to get a lot more info and knowledge about how they can build their Facebook group. And that’s obviously taken some time and energy, but Sam you’ve been busy too.
Sam (01:59):
I’ve been busy. Early on this year, I was approached by Facebook themselves to ask to be part of a program that has helped shape the community manager, community manager certification. That was just recently announced for, everybody who’s got their own Facebook groups.
So that took me out of the game for months, because when you are asked to work with Facebook, you give it everything you’ve got and everybody who around us knows, I stepped away for quite a while just to get that done and to be a part of it was a huge, huge honour. So yeah, I did step away a little bit. So we were a little bit, um,
Steve (02:35):
We say step away, like it’s, you know, a strategic thing. Dancing around, I think was probably more than the best description I’ve been asked by Facebook to work with them. And yeah,
Sam (02:45):
Well, it was a huge, huge honour. And I wasn’t allowed to say a word to anybody. Obviously you knew, but I literally couldn’t say anything to anybody. So we had to do all this under the radar while trying to keep up some sort of normal life online and normal appearance and normal appearance. Yeah, absolutely. But in the background I was working with the Facebook team. I was studying like crazy to get through the certification myself and helping others do the same. So yeah, it’s been quite the summer. Really. It’s been really intense,
Steve (03:15):
Nice to have that qualification. And if you’ve not got it and you want it yourself, obviously get in touch, come into our free Facebook group, which is tribes for home business on Facebook and touch base with Sam, because she’s going to be really involved in helping other people to get certified as well. I think you’re working with Facebook on, being a part of that and encouraging other people to do that too.
Sam (03:37):
Yeah. So I’ve got the link that you can come, you can take the certification yourself. Now. They have a group for when you are certificated to them, I’m coming to the group I’m in there. I’m actually a part of another group that’s helping people get certificated as well. So definitely touch base with me. It’s huge. It is massive step for Facebook and I’ve been real, really honoured to be part of it. So yeah, touch base in the group with me and take it forward.
Steve (04:00):
If you’re looking to get certified as a community manager, then you know where to come. So anyway, what we want to cover in this particular podcast episode it’s an important one because obviously we were all about Facebook groups as you might have guessed because you know what we’ve been talking about, but basically what this one’s about is engagement inside of your groups. And it’s one of the biggest things that keeps coming up. Every time we talk to clients, every time we talk to people inside of our community, the one thing that comes up over and over again is how do I get people to interact? How do I get people to engage with me? And honestly, if we had to boil it down to very simple steps, these three things that we’re going to talk about today, I think are probably the top three things that we would encourage people to do
Sam (04:44):
Apart from your content, which obviously everyone’s got putting good content in their groups. I know that of you guys, but these are three other things you can actively be doing inside your Facebook group every week to ensure that that engagement is being kept and your members feel part of your community and you are doing your very best as an admin. So these are, these are on top of your content for sure, but something that we should all be doing every single week.
Steve (05:08):
Absolutely. And it’s important because when you’re building your community, when you’re building the Goodwill inside of your group, obviously it makes it so much easier when the time comes for you to make offers. So if you’re not sure why you need engagement, if you’re not sure why we talk about it quite so much, it’s because without engagement, none of that other good stuff happens. So Sam, I’m going to kind of throw a few of these little points at you and we’ll talk through them. Cause obviously this is more, you know, you love talking about this stuff and I’m going to just kind of put it out there a little bit on this one. Yeah.
Sam (05:39):
That’s a good idea. Let’s talk about
Look at the stuff you've tried, figure out what worked... do more of that!
Weekly Step #1 - Welcome Your New Group Members
Steve (05:42):
Step number one. This is something that we would encourage you to do every single week. And step number one is to welcome new members. Now this is a little bit controversial. Some people like to do it. Some people don’t like to do it. Talk to us about the thinking behind, like when new members come into the group at, you know, going out there and inviting them in and kind of acknowledging them as new members and stuff like that. How do you do that?
Sam (06:06):
Okay. So like Steve said, it’s a very controversial subject. So I have a lot of people who say outside of our group, that they don’t like welcoming their members into the group with a big post, tagging them all because they don’t like to feel like they’re putting them under the spotlight. We did a recent poll in our group and we asked our members, do you like to be tagged in welcome posts? And overwhelmingly everyone said, yes, they like to be tagged because they like to feel part of the group. They want to be welcomed in and they want to be given some, some direction basically when they first joined the group. If you’ve ever listened to any of our podcasts or trainings, we very often liken our Facebook group to a party. And my reasoning and rational thoughts on this is that when you invite people to your home, when you’re inviting people into your party, you wouldn’t just leave them on the doorstep and not say hello to them, not bring them in and introduce them to everybody else. Cause that’s a pretty crappy party., right? That’s the thing. It’s all about getting engaged.
Steve (07:07):
I mean, it’s all about getting people to interact and if we aren’t acknowledging them as they come in, if we just leave them to their own devices, what most people will tend to do is just stand on the sidelines and look, and just kind of be a bit of a lurker, be a bit of a voyeur at the party, just kind of watching everybody else interact. And that’s entirely not what we want. We want interaction. We want a community where people are comfortable coming out and telling us about themselves.
Sam (07:32):
That’s a huge part that you’ve just hit on this feeling comfortable. And I think if you just join a group and there’s, there’s nothing you literally are just left to wander, you don’t feel comfortable. You don’t know the vibe of the group. You don’t know where you fit in. And it’s very difficult sometimes to fit into any new group. But when you’re welcomed, when you’re told, well, these are the few rules, this is our freebie giveaway. This is where to find this, go over to this unit and find this straight away you feel at home, you feel like you belong and you feel like the person’s taken time out just to show you around a little bit of what’s going on. And I know that everybody who comes into our group, we tag everybody once a week. So there’s not posts going every single day. Cause people can get really fed up with welcome post every day. That’s a bit much in a group. You don’t want people you don’t want to see that in a group cause it’s just repetitive. Exactly. Make it a feature. Once a week, we do it every single Wednesday, we have the big welcome post and everybody knows that they will jump on. We have the welcoming committee jumping on help saying hello to everybody. And it just makes everybody feel special.
Steve (08:39):
That’s a valid point, actually, Sam. So when you’re doing a welcome post, because a lot of people probably don’t realize they don’t, maybe they’re not doing it. Maybe they’re not sure of the right way to do it, to give the best experience. What would you say? Just get a certain amount of people together and then do a post and include all those guys at the same time. Or do you do them as they come in individually?
Sam (08:58):
You don’t do it as they come in individually? Just because it would overwhelm the group because we have anywhere between a hundred and 150 new members each week. Yeah. So if we did it, even if we did it every time 10 people come into the group, you’re going to overwhelm your group with welcome messages. So we save it all up for one day a week. So we have one day when we do this, we tag everybody and at present as recording, you can’t do this on your mobile, but on a desktop you can go in and there’s a welcome message inside where it says members click on members. It will bring up all of the latest people that week already tagged for you. So Facebook are doing the work for you. All you need to do is put on a post just to say welcome and let everybody know where everything is.
Sam (09:40):
So they’ve done half the work for you. Everybody’s tagged in that post. I would just suggest do it once a week and making some of your, pivotal members aware that that’s going on. Maybe even take them in the post so they can come and say hi, we always tag our admins so they can come and say hi as well, just to give our new members the best experience of coming into that group. Because if they don’t have a good experience coming in, they’re not going to hang around. They’re not going to feel comfortable enough commenting and engaging.
Steve (10:08):
If you’re the sort person that, and you know, no judgment here at all, but if you are the sort person that is a little bit weird about being welcomed into a group, I would actually question whether I would want that kind of person really kind of, if they’re not going to interact, if they’re not going to come in and actually engage, then I would wonder if this is the right group for them. If that makes sense. I know that people like to come in and look, I know people like to come in and watch from the sidelines. That is absolutely fine. But when people are actively against being announced into groups, I’m a little bit like, look, the vibe of our group is very friendly. We’re friendly and we’re helpful. And if you, if you are actively against that, I’m not sure our group would be a good fit for you. That’s all I was going to say.
Sam (10:52):
We do call people out. I mean, if people are asking for help, I want to introduce each other. So I will tag lots of people and saying, I know this person, this person, and this person can help you. So yeah, exactly. If you don’t like being tagged and don’t like being helped and acknowledged, maybe isn’t the right group for you, but everyone’s group is going to be different and you may not be comfortable in doing the welcome message. But I know for us, it’s helped us tremendously build that Goodwill with people. The minute they come in, the week they come in,
Steve (11:26):
I love it. The people that we attract, they all seem to love being welcomed in. And one more point to make just before we move on, if you can get somebody else to help you with this as well, because it will free up a lot of your time, if you can, because this is one of those things you can outsource. If you’ve got an admin that you trust to do it, definitely try and free up some of your time by getting somebody else to take that role on.
Sam (11:47):
This can take a lot of our time and it’s something that we have outsourced ourselves every week. This is done by our admin team because it is just something that is something else somebody else can do. And we’re all about automating and getting anything that you can automate to free up your time to be marketing your business. And this is definitely one of those tasks.
Weekly Step #2 - Use Facebook Group Insights
Steve (12:06):
It’s definitely what we’re all about, particularly when it comes to groups and splitting up your time and leveraging your time. Right? So I think we’re good. We better get on because because of time, let’s talk about number two and the second thing that you want to be doing every single week in order to maximise your engagement. And basically just to keep a finger on the pulse of your group anyway, is to check your insights. Now I’m sure a lot of people listening to this are probably not even aware that there are insights in Facebook groups. Maybe you’ve never checked your insights inside your Facebook group. Sam, I’m going to pass this back over. Tell us about the process. Where, where can they find insights inside their group? And why do you even bother
Sam (12:46):
Facebook? We’re actually reeling out, a new system now where you can actually check the insights on each post. If you’re lucky enough to have the update. I mean, if you’re listening to this in six months time, we’ll all have it at the moment, obviously.
Steve (12:59):
Right? You might not even give him a Facebook at the moment. You never know,
Sam (13:05):
But you can check it in inside your group stats, your engagements that’s, you do need to have more than 50 people in your group to have this triggered. And when you get to 250, you get even deeper insights inside your group, but it’s a really good window into what is working in your group and what’s not working. So we always say, see, what’s working with your insights, but it also tells you what’s not working. So definitely a good idea to keep a check on this at least once a week to see things like what’s the best performing day. What day is the best time in your group to be posting? It might seem, it might be that, you know what? Friday is a really rubbish day, but Saturday is off the charts. So are you going to make an offer on a Friday? Absolutely not. You’re never going to make an offer on a day when those insights are poor, you want to be making offers on those days when you really got good engagement, really got high amount of traffic coming to your group. So those kinds of insights are essential.
Steve (14:03):
I think that’s where a lot of people probably, I don’t know if that just don’t bother or what they kind of think, well, it’s there, but I’m not really going to look at it. But we are very much led by data. We need to be led by data. And the thing is, Facebook are trying to make that easier for us by giving us these insights. Because if we can see when our audience are online, if we can see when they are the most engaged, obviously it’s going to give us the best fighting chance of getting more engagement, connecting with more people. Like you said, if you’re making an offer, you want to pick a time when you’ve got a good chance of being seen by a lot of people inside of your community. So if you’re, let’s say you’ve got a community full of young mums and things like that, you might find that you’ve got minimal engagement come school pickup times, or when they’re putting the kids to bed. But you need to know this stuff. We need to know when our insights are telling us, this is a good day. This is a good time. Now everyone’s going to be a little different on this, but I will guarantee that if you go in and check your Facebook insights, you’ll be amazed at what day Facebook tells you is the most bouyant day. It’s never the day you think is it.
Sam (15:10):
And you got to trust the data because it’s telling you factually what’s going on inside your group. And, and even things like, where your audience are. So you may think that we’re in the UK and you may think that you’ve got a wider UK based audience. But what about if our audience were mostly the US so we’re going to have to tailor our content to be available for them and posting at times when they’re online, we do actually have mostly a UK based audience, so most of our posts are during those times, but it’s these things that people need to really consider where are your audience in the world? Because if they are not in your area, you need to think about that when posting.
Steve (15:49):
Absolutely. And I think again, we would go out and we would say, Oh, a good day for us might be like a Monday or maybe a Saturday. I think it’s generally, it comes down to being like a Thursday or something like that. You just wouldn’t think it’s your busy day,
Sam (16:02):
But it’s worth keeping an eye on it, it changes with the times and the seasons and what goes on. So that’s why we say check this each week. And another good thing to do as well is keep a check on things like your engaged members who are your most engaged members, because they are your trailblazers. They are your supporters. They are your encouragers. They will be the ones shouting about you from the rooftop. So reward them with shout outs, just reward them and just say, thank you. You’ve, you’ve just contributed so much this week. I want to give you some recognition. Or at the end of the month, you do a post where you recognise them. But those guys are the ones who show up every day for you. So we want to make sure we’re recognising them
Steve (16:39):
Again. Another powerful aspect of the groups is you get members inside the group, becoming ambassadors for you and going out and doing a lot of the advertising and the PR and stuff on your behalf. So recognise them. They’ll do lots and lots of it for you. If you just give them a little bit of recognition.
Sam (16:55):
Last, last one, before we move on to the next one, if that’s all right as well, something else you can see inside your insights is what posts are performing really well. And that’s really good because it would show you what’s working. And those posts that you think really good. You spent ages on it. You’ve got the best picture and you’ve sorted all the and never the ones. And this is brilliant because it will give you that insight to know, actually that bombed, and it will give you the chance to go back and go, ‘Oh, that’s probably why.’ And it could have been, it was at the wrong time could have been, it was just on the wrong day or something like that. But at least, you know, what is working, what types of posts are working and what’s not working and maybe it was the posts. Maybe it was the time you won’t know until you test it.
Steve (17:40):
I know I talk about Frank Kern a lot when I, when I’m on doing marketing in my mind, Frank. Yeah. I love a bit of Frank Kern, but this sticks with me. I always remember this when he, to his clients and he, you know, they’re looking at what works and what they should do in their business because it’s easy to get overwhelmed. Right? There’s so much to do, but I love it because he always boils things down to a very simplistic level. And always remember, he comes back and he says to them, I’m paraphrasing, but something along the lines of ‘whatever, worked, like, look at what you’ve been doing for the past X, Y, Z months, years, whatever, figure out what worked… do more of that!’ Like it’s some big secret. Do more of that. And that’s what we need to know. And that’s what, what Facebook insights tell us, right? They tell us what worked, what got engagement, what didn’t get engagement, what day was a good day. Figure out what works and do more of that
Sam (18:31):
What works really well is when I put pictures, like selfies of us. And it could just be a quote with a picture of our faces, but I know faces work. People love to see your face. I know that works, so am I going to do less of it? Of course not, I’m going to do more of it. Just do more of what works. Yes, Frank can knows what he’s talking about and it’s something we’ve practiced for a long, long time.r
Weekly Step #3 - Create Share Posts For Your Members
Steve (18:52):
It makes sense. Doesn’t it seem very simple, but it makes perfect sense. Right? Moving on Sam, we’re going to wrap this up point number three, create a share post for your members. This is quite a big deal. This is something that a lot of people don’t do.
Sam (19:04):
Let’s be honest. We all like to talk about ourselves. We all like to share what’s going on.
Steve (19:10):
I haven’t noticed,
Sam (19:13):
We all like to talk about ourselves and we all want to feel like when we’re inside a group that we matter. So once a week just create something where your members can actually interact with you by sharing something about them. I was in our group today and we have a lady who has a group just for, creating books with images in, Photo books. And she was saying that she has a day where she just allows all of our members to share their most recent photos that week that mean a lot to them. And it’s a really good share post that goes on in a week because those pictures mean a lot to the member, they want to showcase it. And that works perfectly in her group. Would it work as well in our group? No, because we’re not about photography, but what does work really well in our group is, for example, on a Friday, we have a share your social media links and share on a Saturday, sell and share. What are you selling today? You know, we, we have lots of ways that people can actually take part in our group where it’s allowed. Because a lot of times, people may think, can I sell in here? Can I promote? I don’t know what I can do
Steve (20:20):
People feel they need Permission. They need, they need to know that it’s okay to post and talk about themselves. A lot of groups rightfully so, don’t allow that. And we control that. So we give them a very specific time and place where they can do it. And they’re more than happy to interact. They’re happy to do that. And that’s actually based in real psychology, you know, we’ve, we obviously we study this, we love talking about this, but you know, as well as I do, if you’ve read books, like How to win friends and influence people by Dale Carnegie and books like that, (If you haven’t read that book. That is a must read. Definitely a must read. Get it on your reading list) If you haven’t read that one yet. But you know, it’s a, it’s just a fact that people will light up generally when you allow them to talk about themselves. If you want to go in and engage with people and have a great conversation, ask them about themselves because they love to talk about themselves. And it’s not a conceited thing. It’s just the way human beings work.
Sam (21:14):
You can’t scroll past. It is an actual fact that if somebody asks you a question like that, like share your latest picture, share your social media link. It’s really hard to scroll past those posts where they’re asking a question because your brain immediately goes to, ‘I’ve got an answer for that’. And they want to take part in that. As long as it’s simple, that’s the only criteria for the share post in your group. It needs to be adapted around the theme of your group. So for us, we asked, social media links. What are you working on? What would you sell? if we were to ask things like, what’s your favourite car? There’s no connection in our group with that. You’re going to get nothing because it doesn’t, doesn’t tie in with the theme of our group
Steve (21:56):
And, conversely as well, when you’ve put a post in about something that you’re doing, I think you’re more likely to come back and check your ,you’re checking to see if anyone’s commented on it. You know, what’s what are people saying about what you’ve done? So again, that boosts the engagement even more. They will be commenting on other peoples comments as well. Absolutely builds those bonds. And they feel like they’ve got value because they’ve come into your community. They’ve posted something about themselves. They see your group as being more valuable because it’s actually served them. It’s helped them to get something that they wanted, which was to talk about their business and what they’re doing. I just think it’s a great resource and a great tool. If you’re not using it at the moment, you definitely should be because this is where we see some of our best engagement. I think that’s fair to say. Absolutely.
Sam (22:38):
Yeah. Every day we have something based around this. I mean, you don’t have to do it every day, but do it at least once a week. And honestly, over this summer, working with Facebook, it has drilled into me so much. I knew it anyway, but it’s just really drilled down the importance of community. And it’s not about us just going out, sharing our products and our services. It’s not that we’re bringing people together. We are building the community and building those relationships and bringing together collaborations. That’s what a community is all about. So these kinds of posts are really important for members to be able to come and share and interact with each other and tell them a bit more, so we all know a bit more about you. I love these types of posts, where we get to know our members more and they get to know us more.
Steve (23:25):
I think a lot of people miss that this is all about relationships and it’s not, it’s not just relationships for the sake of relationships. Again, it goes back to psychology. If we’re going to buy from somebody we’ll generally buy from somebody that we feel, we know that we like them, you know, we know they’re trustworthy. So by building a relationship, it makes it so much easier to actually get people to come along and buy our products when the time is right for them. Right? So if we can get them used to engaging and used to interacting and used to agreeing with what we say, when we actually do make an offer, they’re going to agree. They’re going to say, yeah. I want this. I need this, right? Because they’re used to going along and agreeing and engage in and partake in it.
Sam (24:06):
The part of your world, part of your world, they show that they’re seeing you every day. And especially if they are interacting, they’re more likely to see more of your posts. That’s the brilliant thing about engagement and people start interacting with you. More of your posts are seen, you become more familiar. You build the relationship. So when the time comes, when you’re offering, you are front of mind or when the time comes, when they know they need what you’ve got, because you’ve shared it. They might not be ready that day. But a week, two weeks, a month later, you are going to be front of mind because you are showing up everyday on their newsfeed. And that’s the power of the group.
Steve (24:37):
It is undoubtedly the power of Facebook. So guys, if you want to know more about how you can build your Facebook group, why not come over and join our free Facebook group, which is Tribes for home business. You can find us on Facebook, just look up Tribes for home business. And we’ll, we’ll be there. Obviously you come in and connect inside the group. We might even give you a little shout out in a welcome post. I think we need to probably wrap this one up. Now. I think we’ve covered all we wanted to cover. Thank you so much for joining us. We’re Steve and Sam Harradine. And guys, we’ll talk to you again in the next episode, take care.
Steve (25:11):
This podcast was brought to you by the tribe geeks Academy. Now, if you’re an online expert or a home business owner, and you’re looking to build your tribe, then we’ve got everything you need. We’ll show you how to harness your message so your audience know exactly how you can help them. We’ll show you how to build a huge warm audience that recognize you as the go to person in your niche. And we’ll show you how to tie it all together using systems and strategies without the confusing technobabble. Bottom line, we’ll show you how to leverage the power of Facebook groups to make more impact and sales. If you want to know more head on over to tribegeeksacademy.com and let us help you get your business on the map.
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