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“How do I get more engagement in my Facebook group?” is one of the most frequently asked questions I receive from my members and people who look to me to help them market their business on a budget.
If your Facebook group has been collecting dust bunnies for months or years, you are in luck. In this article, I will share some of my favorite ways to boost engagement in your Facebook group, as well as my secret for attracting and retaining people in your community.
6 Tips to Boost Engagement in Facebook Groups
Ask relevant questions
Sitting around waiting for your community members to initiate conversations is not an effective way to market your business.
People join Facebook groups because they think there will be other people like them in the group, and they generally want to meet and get to know those people. But once they join a group, they are not likely to jump in and start conversations themselves. They will look to the group leader to do that.
The best and easiest way to initiate conversations is to stir up discussion about topics that are of interest to your group members.
For example, if you sell cleaning products and your group is about healthy home cleaning tips and tricks, ask people their favorite time of day to clean their homes, how they get their children to help them tidy up, how much money they spend each month on cleaning supplies, and what cleaning supply ingredients do they avoid and why.
Once they begin to answer questions around topics they care about, they will begin to get to know each other. They will share their opinions and experiences, and learn from each other. If the experience is positive, they will come back for more.
Leverage the power of video
Use the power of live and prerecorded video to establish yourself as the leader and authority in the community. Video content allows people to get to know, like, and trust the real you. It boosts your credibility so that, no matter what you sell, people in the group will come to know that they can rely on you to add value to their lives.
Video does not have to be fancy to be effective. In fact, the more fancy your videos are, the less people can relate to you as a real human being — just like them.
Inform and educate
Use a combination of video, text, and graphics to inform and educate your community. Video brings you and your products to life, while text is quick and easy to scan. Graphics tell stories, and can be used to reflect how your products look in the environment where they are intended to be used by the people in your group.
Tell people how your products work. Make recommendations on how to use them to get the best results. Show group members how to remove the products from their packaging, how to store your products between uses, how to recycle product packaging, and how to select one of your products as a gift for a friend or family member.
Stay on point
Do not allow group conversation to take sharp turns into irrelevant areas. It is generally wise to avoid topics like religion and politics — unless they are an integral part of what your brand stands for. It is also wise not to allow discussions in your community to veer too far off the subject matter you chose for your group.
It is helpful to have clearly posted group rules to ensure that people can easily see and understand them. Try to avoid surprises in this area. It all starts with you proactively staying on topic and leading the discussions in the directions you want them to go.
Admit the right kinds of people
Facebook allows group leaders to require people who request admission to a group to answer questions when they make their request. You can ask whatever questions you want to ensure that you are admitting the type of person you want to be a part of your community.
For example, if you sell non-toxic cleaning products, you might ask people to share what ingredients they avoid when buying cleaning products, or how many times a week they clean their homes. You could also ask them to give you permission to add their email to your email list, or ask them what city and state they are in. And you can deny entrance to people who are not the best match for your community.
Invest your energy in your group
Just showing up is my secret for boosting engagement in your Facebook group. It's so simple, that I almost feel guilty calling it a “secret.” But it is a secret … because it's so simple that most people miss it.
A lot of people tell me that they do not maintain a Facebook group because it takes up too much time. Showing up does require an investment of time.
But think about it. You want your customers to invest time with your brand, right? You want them to think about you when they have a need to buy the types of products you offer, right? Well, why should they invest themselves in you if you are not investing yourself in them?
It's a fair question, and I encourage you to give it your attention, especially if you are finding that other social media outlets are great for getting likes and followers — but not so great for converting sales.
Questions for discussion and sharing
After reading this article, I hope you can fully embrace the value of a Facebook group. It's like a living online ecosystem for your brand — who doesn't want that?!
I’d love to hear from you in the comments below. How do you create and maintain engagement in your Facebook group? What tips and strategies can you share? What questions do you have?
What do you think of the advice shared here? How do you make slow sales times more productive? Leave a comment below and let me know.
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