5 Mistakes to Avoid with Your Facebook Group Community
There's a lot to consider when it comes to building a community with Facebook groups, and I'm not here to debate the pros and cons. As long as the features align with your audience's needs, building a Facebook group community is perfectly fine.
This week, I’m revisiting this 2021 post where I highlighted some common mistakes made when building community with Facebook groups. Then, I had audited some Facebook groups and documented these mistakes that were reoccurring.
So, if you're running a Facebook group community, get ready to run through this checklist. And if you know someone managing or building a Facebook group, feel free to share this with them.
1. Wrong Cover Photo Size
This is one frequent and common mistake that pops up in a lot of Facebook group communities. Some people just put up anything and walk away. Don’t let that be you!
The cover photo is very important as it’s the very first impression your community makes on potential members.
To ensure your cover photo looks its best, use the recommended dimensions of 1640 x 856 pixels and ensure that it highlights the purpose of your community. You can change it as your community evolves.
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2. Little or No Description
The group description is another feature that is sometimes not utilized properly.
It’s very important that when a potential member visits your community, they know exactly what your community is about in detail.
Don’t just write a one-liner or vague description, and don’t leave it empty. Doing these will leave visitors confused and disinterested. Fill up the description with details that help them understand what your community is all about.
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3. Rules and Guidelines
Every community needs rules and guidelines to set expectations and foster a positive atmosphere.
Right when you get to set up a Facebook group, you are expected to put up the rules that will shape the culture of your community. These rules help to communicate what’s expected of members and what’s not allowed. It also helps to prevent conflict.
Fair enough, Facebook offers 4 rules that you can use immediately and that’s cool. But please take the time to modify them to suit your community's needs and tone of voice. Add up your own guidelines as well!
2 things to note when setting rules,
Don’t just anchor on a list of what's not allowed, equally inform on what is allowed.
State clearly the penalties for violations.
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4. Poor Content Management
When planning for and creating content, make sure that it aligns with your community’s goal - don’t just share anything.
If members are allowed to make posts as well, then you have to moderate the content they share. You can do this by being on the constant lookout for whatever is being shared or you can enable post-approval in your settings so you get to review whatever they want to share and either approve or decline.
Also, when you share links in your Facebook group community, don’t just share them without providing context- say something about what you’re sharing, share a snippet from it, ask open-ended questions, etc.
And finally, engage! Be intentional about encouraging engagement at the end of all your content with CTAs (Call To Action). And when members engage, respond to them.
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5. Inviting everyone to join
Your community has a goal and that goal is targeted at a specific group of people, stick to that. While some communities have target audiences that are broad and can fill up their community in less time, yours may not be the same.
When I built a community on Facebook in 2020, we had only 100+ members in about 4 months and that was because;
our target audience was very specific (small business owners who have been in business for less than 3 years)
we only leveraged our personal accounts on Facebook to promote the community as that was all that was feasible then
Something we did too was to utilize the Facebook group question feature to approve and decline every membership request. In doing this, we stood strongly by our goal- if they were in business for more than 3 years ❌, if they didn’t even take the time to answer the questions ❌, etc.
So, as you build or manage your community, quit obsessing over numbers and just allowing anyone into the community. You’d be glad and fulfilled with just having ‘your people’ (those who genuinely align with your community's purpose) in there. The rate at which your numbers will increase would depend on the type of community you’re building, the membership criteria, and the effort put into promoting the community.
Utilize the question feature on the Facebook group to review those who want to be a part of your community.
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And that’s that.
If you've made any of these mistakes, it's never too late to make improvements.
- I haven’t managed Facebook groups recently so if you’ve got any mistake you’d love to call out, feel free to comment, and I'll incorporate your insights.
- Need help with fixing up any of these things in your Facebook group community, let’s chat.
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