Marketing through Facebook Groups is one of the trending approaches nowadays. In this article, we will discuss below Facebook Group Secret topics –

  1. The Difference Between a Facebook Page and Group
  2. The Go To Market Technique for Facebook Groups
  3. The Power of Communities in Marketing Through Facebook Groups
  4. Top Facebook Group Settings You Need to Consider
  5. Why Your Facebook Group Isn’t Thriving

The Difference Between a Facebook Page and Group

So, you want to start promoting your business on Facebook?

The question now is whether you should create a Facebook page, a Facebook group or both!

And the answer is of course both.

But in order to make the most of this strategy, you also need to understand what the top benefits of each are and how they are different.

Here are some key differences between Facebook pages and Facebook groups.

The Basics

The idea of a Facebook page is to provide your business with a kind of ‘shop window’.

This is a largely static page that includes a call to action, a description, a photo, etc.

While your followers can post on your page, you are likely to do the majority of the posting and they will then comment on those posts or react.

The best feature of a Facebook, is that people can share the things you post and this will then promote those posts to their own social networks.

If you share a great post through a Facebook page, then this can end up spreading virally across all the different real-world social networks that are out there!

A Facebook group is different. A group does not allow people to share content to their networks and instead only lets them view or create posts.

Most often, this is going to involve their reading what you have written or starting conversations with group members.

Facebook group posts are more often discussions with the community.

These are assumed to be more personal and less advertorial, and as such they are also more likely to appear on the newsfeed with more prominence.

The Power of Each

While a Facebook page allows you to create content that gets naturally shared then and can include a call-to-action, a Facebook group will allow you to reach more people with each post.

It will also facilitate more conversation.

The question then is not which one you should use, but how you can better use the two together to maximum effect.

A Facebook page can be a great way to attract the attention of potential fans and followers, and you can then use this in order to get people to sign up to your Facebook group, which will allow you to discuss with them more directly and increase engagement to thereby drive more sales and build more loyalty and trust.

The Go To Market Technique for Facebook Groups

Marketers may be familiar with the term ‘go to market’.

It’s essentially a marketing technique that involves identifying precisely who your target audience is for your product or service, locating where they spend time, and then creating promotions and posts that those people will see.

For instance, if you were to sell gardening implements, then you might identify that your target demographic is gardeners, and you might head over to “Gardener’s World” magazine and pay for an advert in that glossy.

The result is that a huge number of the precise people who are likely to buy from you, will now see your product.

That can of course result in a great number of sales.

How do you do this on the web?

One option is to use social sharing sites and social networks. Groups and subreddits are popular options.

Find the right subreddit for your topic and share a post in there, and if it is shared and upvoted enough times, then this can lead to that post being seen by hundreds of thousands of people Ð this can even potentially lead to vast numbers of sales.

Unfortunately, this doesn’t typically work out that way. What is actually much more likely to happen, is that you share your post on a subreddit, and it gets buried to the bottom.

Why?

Because it’s not a perfect match for that community. Worse, is that it might get completely removed from the site and you could even be banned from that community! The vast majority of online communities do not like it when you share content that is clearly self-promotional.

But thatÕs why itÕs so valuable to consider creating your own social group.

When you do this, you can firstly choose precisely the topics that you will be sharing. You might opt to create a group discussing the exact niche that you will be selling to.

These people will be likely to be interested in what you have to offer, because you made sure the group would target the exact right people!

At the same time, you are the owner and that means that you get the ‘final say’ on the type of content that can be shared there.

No one can deem that what you posted was inappropriate, and therefore you know your content isnÕt going to get deleted.

Create a small Facebook group in the topic you are targeting, invite people, and then let it thrive and grow on its own. Then, when you are ready to, post about your product or service!

The Power of Communities in Marketing Through Facebook Groups

One of the most powerful and important aspects of marketing is something that very few businesses or marketers think about: that is community.

A community is any collection of people who feel a certain kinship, often due to a shared set of interests, values, or cultural activities.

Communities online emerge all the time around certain topics and hobbies.

And one of the most obvious examples of this is in Facebook groups.

Good Facebook groups donÕt necessarily create communities, but tap into those that already exist and give them a forum in which to communicate and grow.

And some of the biggest hits in the world come from these kinds of communities.

Right now on the web, there are countless businesses trying to make it in the emerging ÔnootropicsÕ industry.

These are supplements designed to make people more productive, more creative, or more focussed.

The problem is that companies bring out products with the same promises as all their competitors and then disappear without making a splash.

One company that was successful however was Natural Stacks, which found success with a product called CILTeP.

The reason for this was that CILTeP began life in a forum Ð one user discovered the combination and became popular sharing their creation for free with the members of Longecity.

By doing this, they developed a big following that was almost guaranteed to buy the product and to create buzz for it.

The same thing happens in games development all the time.

The truly successful indie games are almost always the ones that began life as free Flash titles (such as Super Meat Boy, or more recently My Friend Pedro).

These games build big followings while the creator shares their experience crafting the title.

There is a huge difference between something that truly feels Ôhome grownÕ by the community itself, versus something that an outside brand tells a community theyÕre ‘supposed to like’.

Moreover, there is a huge difference between a lead and a friend.

When someone in an online community really knows you and considers you at least an Ôonline friendÕ, they will not only be much more likely to buy your product, but also to provide useful feedback, to help you promote it, and to shout about it to anyone who will listen.

In short, they want to help you succeed.

This is what many businesses never even try to do. Instead of thinking of making as many followers or customers as possible, think about making a couple of friends.

Top Facebook Group Settings You Need to Consider

Creating a Facebook group for your business? Great!

That’s one of the very best ways to spread the word and get people to engage more strongly with your brand. And itÕs also something that a lot of brands and businesses never think to do.

Now you need to think about how you’re going to go about taking that group and making it a hit.

Starting from the beginning and setting up your app, you first need to think about the settings.

Here are some to keep in mind.

Head over to the settings panel in your Facebook group and here are some of the important options.

Linked Pages

The linked pages option lets you link your group to a Facebook page. This is a useful tool as it will allow you to promote your group via your page Ð the group will appear at the top of the page.

That in turn means that your Facebook page followers can instantly jump into your group.

Linked pages also share administrators.

Web Address

This is the URL for your Facebook group.

This is what people will see in their browser when they visit your group, and of course it also creates the option for direct traffic to visit your group simply by typing in the address (rather than going via the Facebook app).

Choose something that reflects the group name and brand, but consider that your web address is fixed once you pass 5,000 members.

Location

If you set a location for your group, then it will appear more prominently in local searches and might even be recommended to other users, depending on your settings.

Choose a location then if your business is a local type of business Ð such as a highstreet store, or perhaps a pub or restaurant.

Membership Approval and Pre-Approvals

This defines whether anyone can join your group, or whether you need to approve them first.

Which you decide to go with will depend on the intent of your group.

Are you planning on using this as a way to build a large following? Or do you want to keep it exclusive and make your group into a way to attract more engaged viewers?

If you want to approve certain members and save yourself time, then you can use Ôpre-approvalsÕ and that way set certain groups to be accepted into the group by default.

Why Your Facebook Group Isn’t Thriving

Let’s face it: a lot of businesses simply miss the point when it comes to internet marketing and especially when it comes to social media marketing.

If you have a Facebook group but it hasnÕt made any progress/isnÕt seeing any activity, then thereÕs a strong chance you might fall into that category.

Read on to see what youÕre doing wrong and how to course-correct.

Have a Point

Too many companies believe that the best way to promote themselves is to set up a bland and boring brand and then to post about how great they are.

Think IÕm joking or exaggerating? Just take a look at the number of companies that have blue and white logos that are mainly text, with vague names like ‘VexSoft’ and that don’t make it clear exactly what they do (’empowering individuality, teamwork, and synergy in all sectors!’).

There is simply no incentive and no emotional pull for people to sign up to a Facebook group belonging to such a business. People join groups because they believe in a brand and because they want to support it/learn more about the topic.

If your brand is just ‘generic business’, then who is going to want to hear more from you? Don’t be so safe: know who you are talking to, and dare to show some personality.

Provide Value

These same companies often have Twitter accounts, Facebook pages, and Facebook groups where they just post bland statements about their own company:
‘VexSoft makes the top financial monitoring solutions in the industry!’

‘Have you tried our new accounting features?’

Things like this provide zero value to the user, they don’t encourage conversation, and they simply lack any real value.

Would you stay in a group that did this? Or would you leave right away?

Be Consistent

Finally, another one of the most common mistakes made by businesses is to fail to be consistent.

They will create a Facebook group, and then simply not post into it for months on end.

This means that when someone enters the group for the first time, they will think it is abandoned, or they will believe that the company simply isn’t interesting enough to be worth following.

That doesn’t exactly incentivize them to sign up themselves!

As such then, you should make sure that you are not only posting interesting things, but also posting often enough that your group appears to be a hub of activity.