5 Steps to Growing Your Facebook Group Community
Starting a Facebook Group from scratch can seem a little intimidating. If you have ever created a group before, you know that there’s a lot that goes into it; From figuring out what you want your group to be about, deciding whether to make your group public or private, to finding people to join.
Find Your Niche
Finding your niche is probably the hardest part — but once you figure that out, you’ll be on the right trajectory. The community that I created is for people who love music. The group is called Trading Tunes — A Place to Share Playlists. The first thing that a person sees is the name of your group, so it was important for me to make it stand out with a fun name. The description of my group states that this is a place for people to share their favorite songs, artists, albums, playlists, etc. The description of your Facebook Group is the most important for attracting members to join (Hodgkinson, 2021).
The reason I am creating this group is because, for me, there isn’t a place that I can go to share my love for music with people who share that interest all in one place. My goal for this group is for the members of the group to expand their music library, broaden their music taste, and participate in conversations.
Invite Friends and Family
The first thing that I did once I had my group set up was send invitations to my closest friends and family. I thought this would be the easiest place to begin. I thought about which of my friends enjoyed music as much as I do, and made sure to invite them first! There is a feature on the Facebook Group where you can send invites to specific people. These people will not need to have their memberships approved.
Additionally, I posted a Facebook update on my personal Facebook page. I included a link to the group on the post, that way any of my 4.9k Facebook friends would be able to join my group if they were interested in joining.
Encourage Friends to Invite Their Friends
Having the friends and family that you’ve invited to the group invite their friends and family is the key to growing. What’s cool about this is that these friends and family are introducing your group to a new set of eyes that you wouldn’t reach on your own. A recommendation from friends and family goes a long way! According to , when users begin inviting the people they know to, your growth propels (Grabowski).
Join Other Facebook Groups
Maybe you’re currently part of Facebook Groups that are similar to the group that you’ve just created. Or maybe you’re not. If you’re not, I recommend looking for other groups to join! What I did was post in one of these groups, and simply put out feelers to see if anyone would be interested in joining my group. In my post, I mentioned what the group was about and sent the link to anyone who expressed interest.
The first group I posted in was a Facebook Group called To Be Continued whose description reads: A magical place where no topic is off limits, no conversations are banned, and no one gets kicked out unless they’re breaking one of our rules. Let’s talk pop culture, current events, or any random thoughts on your mind. This group has 8.7k members. Below is my post:
The second group I posted in was a Taylor Swift fan group called Swiftie Stans 24/7. This group has 4.5k members. For the pinned post on my Facebook Group, I asked members to introduce themselves and comment with their favorite artist. A majority members listed Taylor Swift as their favorite artist, and since I was already a member of a Taylor Swift Facebook Group, I decided to post in there to see if anyone would be interested in joining my community. Below is my post in that group:
Team Up with Influencers
Perhaps you have someone in your inner circle who has a large following on social media. Or maybe you throw a shot in the dark and send a direct message to a celebrity. Either way, having someone with a lot of followers, or a smaller group of highly engaged followers, and simply asking them to share your group with their followers will help grow your community fast!
I attempted to reach out to American Idol alum, Alanis Sophia. I thought to reach out to her because I know that she enjoys curating playlists on her Spotify. I actually follow a few of them. Here’s one that I enjoy listening to. I am a huge fan of hers, and as you can see by the above image, she has a decent following of 122,000 followers. I sent her a direct message on Instagram, but I did not receive a response, yet.
Hashtags
If you were to post interest about your group on your other social media accounts that weren’t Facebook, such as Twitter or Instagram, odds are these people also have a Facebook account. In a recent study, it was found that 2.8 billion people use Facebook monthly (Gramlich, 2021).
Utilizing hashtags on those platforms is a great way to be seen by more people! My group could really benefit from Twitter hashtags. Just browsing through #playlist on Twitter, I found a lot of people posting links to playlists they’ve made and sharing new music they’re discovered. I could promote my Facebook Group on this thread, and hopefully get seen by these specific people. These are the people I would want to join my community. Additionally, the hashtags that I would utilize on Instagram would be #playlist (3.2m posts), #playlistspotify (215k), #newmusic (29.9m), and #newmusicfriday (1.3m).
Never in a million years did I think a single person would want to join a group that I created on Facebook. I may only have 66 members right now, but hey, it’s a start! I can’t wait to watch this community continue to grow. If you’re interested in joining my community of music lovers, I would love to have you! Click here to visit my Facebook Group, Trading Tunes — A Place to Share Playlists.
References:
Grabowski, P. (2021, May 26). The Ultimate Guide To Motivating Users To Invite Their Friends To A New Platform. CloudSponge. Retrieved October 17, 2021, from https://www.cloudsponge.com/blog/platform-invitation-guide/.
Gramlich, J. (2021, June 2). 10 facts about Americans and Facebook. Pew Research Center. Retrieved October 17, 2021, from https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/06/01/facts-about-americans-and-facebook/.
Hodgkinson, R. (2021, May 13). How to Attract More People to Your Facebook Group. Agorapulse. Retrieved October 17, 2021, from https://www.agorapulse.com/blog/more-people-facebook-group/.
