If you want to generate leads for your business, you need to go where people are saturated. Right now, everyone is on Facebook. With nearly 3 billion daily active users, Facebook is a giant in the marketing scene and a great place to start your social media management strategy. When used in the right way, it has proved to be very efficient in promoting content.
Recent studies have shown that 30% of potential customers will not buy from a business if the business does not have a social media presence. As a result, more brands and social media management agencies are seeking social media presence to create quality leads, solidify branding and drive sales.
What are Facebook Groups?
Facebook groups are places where communities come together to engage in shared interests. A cause, an issue, or an activity. For you to generate leads with Facebook, you need to create your own group and use it as a lead-generating machine. Give your Facebook group a name most people might search for. This allows all Facebook leads to find your group easily. There are three different ways you can form a group. I will highlight them below:
- You can create a group and make it available publicly for everyone to access.
- You can create a private group that is limited to the ‘invite only’ protocol.
- The third option is to create a group that relies on moderator approval. Members send requests to join the group and the moderators decide whether to regard or disregard their requests.
Facebook Group for Business
For a business-oriented group, it is wise for you to create a group that requires administrator approval. This kind of Group gives the administrator the advantage of ‘interviewing’ potential members by asking them ‘Membership Questions’ before they join the Group. This enables the administrator to separate jokers from genuinely interested members. This way, it is easier to align with people who share similar interests.
Groups are more popular because they generate a far greater engagement when run effectively. They provide exposure and a large potential audience. But for them to deliver optimum results, a lot of work and effort must be put in. It is important to note however that a great engagement and interaction beats a large following. A group with 1,600 interactive members yields more results than a group with 16,000 passive members.
The Disadvantage of Facebook Groups
Even though marketers try, dealing with Facebook groups tends to be exhausting in the long run. If you do not have the time and resources, you cannot expect to build a robust and engaging community. Do not be scared. You can always outsource Facebook group management. So many options may present themselves, but Socialays is all you require to get started. Socialays is an artificial intelligence-based social media assistant and management platform designed for marketers, influencers, and enterprises. It is the world leader in machine reading solutions that provide users with action-ready insights from unstructured texts in real-time.
Intended Audience for your Facebook Group
Socialays’s AI helps you understand your social media faster and better. It is designed to guide you to make more accurate decisions in your Facebook group.
To generate leads using Facebook groups, it is essential to define your client profile for your social media agency. Representing a client’s profile will help you identify the ideal prospects reached through your Facebook group as it helps create a thorough understanding of your target market. What kind of community do you want? What expectations do you have of your intended group?
Social Media Management for Small Business
Your group may be for small business owners to make comments and ask questions about marketing their brand, or it can be a marketplace for anyone with a relevant interest to share and comment on their marketing experiences, inspirations, and challenges. Socialays simplify the reading of social media comments. The AI analyses sentiments and categorizes them under ‘positive,’ ‘negative,’ and ‘neutral’ with the highest accuracy. It also analyses emotions into nine categories; hate, worry, fun, love, relief, surprise, sadness, neutrality, and love. You cannot respond to comments while sleeping, but Socialays can do that for you.
It is also essential for your group to be welcoming to other social media management agencies. This helps you gather important information, swap ideas, and learn from them. This interaction creates networking potential. However, your primary focus should be on small businesses – they are your potential prospects. When exposed to other social media management agencies, you might not be their first option in the long run.
Recruiting Members as Part of your Social Media Management Plan
When recruiting new members to your group, other than ensuring they meet the community guidelines, you should target people to who you want to sell your service potentially. A thorough understanding of your target market is critical for the group to achieve its set objectives. This also helps you as a client avoid wasting time, money, and effort on the wrong audience.
Break down where your customers are, their existing Facebook pages or accounts, and their names. So, with this information to your advantage, use proper bait to lure them into your group. Additionally, you may entice them with the kind of results your agency produces for small businesses or a pitch on how you can make their business get more traffic on social media.
In simple terms, which bird in the air are you going to focus on catching? Whichever you choose, make sure you meet your intended audience where they are.
Create Facebook Group Community Guidelines
Think of Facebook group community guidelines as a non-negotiable aspect when creating the group. It is important to start a group with the guidelines already in place rather than adding them gradually as the group grows. Having an existing set of rules allows room for maintenance of order within the Facebook group community. They give members a sense of comfort and freedom in the group. These guidelines explain the reasons behind your group’s existence and the expectations you have of your members.
Group administrators have the responsibility of choosing the Group’s rules as well as the Group’s membership questions. Facebook makes this process easier by providing a sample of group rules to their group admins. They are listed below:
1. Kindness and Courteous
This involves treating every member in the group courteously and with respect despite their differences.
2. No Hate Speech or Bullying
Facebook has community standards that ensure everyone is heard, valued, and respected. Policies crafted promote inclusivity without limiting the freedom of its users. Guidelines are essential for your Facebook group since they set the expectations of the group culture early, tell members how to engage with the group, and help prevent conflict in the group.
3. No Spam or Promotions
This limits the members from using the group for spam, constantly sending irrelevant links and self-promotion.
**4. Respecting Each Member’s Privacy **
This promotes trust among individual group members.
The rules are available for anyone. Additionally, one can modify it to suit their Group. The guide serves as an etiquette book for Group members when they engage with their fellow Group members or other community members.
This in turn sets the group’s tone, and members are aware of how they can help achieve the set goals of the agency.
Here’s how you create rules for your Facebook group?
- From your home page, there is a “Groups” option available in the left menu click it, then select the ‘Moderate Group’ option.
- After clicking the “Moderate Group” option in the left menu, an Admin Activity bar pops up where you find the “Create Rules” option.
- After clicking the “Create Rule,” option, Facebook offers several suggestions which you can choose to use, disregard, or combine with your own rules.
- If you like either of the suggested rules, you can add them by tapping on the rule and clicking the ‘confirm’ option. Once you do that; you’ll be given an option to modify the text. If you wish to combine your own rule with the Facebook rules, this is your call.
- Click on the ‘Get Started’ button and choose ‘Write Your Own Rule’.
- Add a title to your rule and write a brief description. The brief description should include the reason why the rule is in place and the consequences of breaking the rule.
- The last step is to click ‘confirm’ to add the rule. Moving forward, you can choose more of your personalized rules.
The maximum number of guidelines you can put in is ten. Ensure your guidelines are broad enough to cover all issues you intend to pass on to your members but also specific enough for them to understand instantly.
Benefits of Using Social Media Management Tools
That’s one lengthy process. Right? This is where Socialays comes to your rescue. Socialays’ AI has automated guidelines that are relevant to your specific Facebook groups based on your niche and preference. It detects questions and spam content, auto-hides ‘hate speech’ and profanity in real-time, then instantly blocks group members using hate speech or profanity. In addition, the AI is also quick to identify critical issues and alert the administrators immediately based on your custom settings which look like this;
- Notifications for ‘hate speech.
- Get alerts for profanity and spam/ad content.
- Listen to your followers and never miss an important question.
- Track your mentions instantly.
Socialays is easy and effective, providing more straightforward ways of getting work done.
Generate Interest in Joining Your Social Media Group
Nobody will openly tell you this, but your Facebook group will not blossom overnight. That is to say, it needs a lot of nurturing, dedication, and marketing tact. For people to join your Facebook group, they must know it exists. You can, for instance, promote your Facebook group on your private social media handles, seek mentions from friends and social media influencers, or you can create ads linked to your group. Ads reach a larger audience, and naturally, if they are engaging enough; more people will look your group up.
Below are more ways to generate interest in joining your social media group:
– Offer your members valuable content. Give them something they are looking for and cannot find elsewhere. For example, one smart way to do this is to include a “what do you hope to gain/learn from this group” in your membership entry questions. This gives you an idea of what your members are looking for, and that’s exactly what you’ll offer.
– Interact with them by asking and responding to their questions. Socialays’ AI is a guru in reading and analyzing questions for you in real-time and reacts instantly. This way, you never miss any message, comment, or question.
– In case you get stuck, seek advice from dedicated members of the group on how to make the group better. Groups are more popular because they generate far greater social media engagement when run effectively. They provide exposure and a large potential audience. You must work hard and add effort to deliver optimum results. It is important to note however that a great engagement and interaction beats a large following. A group with 1600 interactive members yields more results than a group with 16,000 passive members.
Why Encourage People to Join Groups as Part of Your Social Media Management Plan
As part of your social media management strategy, emphasize why they should join your group. Moreover, you can always employ the ‘about’ option at the top left of your group page to tell your members more about your group, your objectives, and the factors that make your group stand out from the rest. Be broad, but not too wordy, and be specific but not too brief. Do not over-promise and under-deliver, simply market yourself most genuinely.
Always pick engaging topics and themes for your group, on a weekly or monthly basis to promote more engagement with your group members. In addition, you can use Socialays to help you manage your social media. The AI makes you more visible to your potential target audience hence enhancing visibility.
