The shift in focus at Facebook to push Facebook Groups means adjusting your marketing strategy. If you promote your business using Facebook, the use of groups can help you increase reach while making meaningful connections.
Why is Facebook Pushing Facebook Groups?
This switch happened shortly after the 2016 election. Without getting too deep into the weeds about the politics of it, Facebook saw that trust in the platform dropped dramatically. You may have seen Facebook advertising on streaming services like YouTube and Hulu, working to regain trust and bring Facebook back to its roots of friends, family, and community. The goal was to reduce the influence of “fake news” sites and scam artists. One way to improve the platform and regain some trust with users was to shift the focus to Facebook Groups.
How You Can Use Facebook Groups to Grow Your Business
While the platform pushes business owners to create their own groups, you may want to start smaller and then scale. Some ways to do this include joining a few Facebook groups which cater to your local community, have a large number of active members, and allow for promotional posts. Engage as a neighbor would, form real connections with the group, and then begin promoting your services.
Once you have grown your own audience, consider creating your own group. You can link it to an exclusive membership program or your email list. Get creative about it.
Did you know that you can now join Facebook Groups using your business identity? Facebook used to only permit users to join groups. But for some months now, you have a choice between joining as an individual or as a business page/identity. In fact, you can do both, if you want.
Facebook Groups Won’t Replace Your Business Page
Keep your business page active. You never know when Facebook will make another change, and you have more control over what you can publish on your Facebook business page. Why do we bring this up? Because in groups, you are at the mercy of the admins and moderators.
It’s also important to maintain your business page as you should engage with group users as your business identity. For example, Julie James should not join the group; JJ’s Medspa, however, should join and interact in that way. You need a business page for JJ’s Medspa in order to make this work, so create and manage your Facebook business page.
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