Facebook groups are a great way to build community among prospects and existing customers. However, what typically happens is a Facebook group starts off very strong, lots of new members, excitement, and activity. The longer the group exists, the activity starts to decline. Don’t worry, it’s not just you. This is very common but there are a few ways to bring life back into your group.
- Go live more – Every time you go live in a group, all of the members get a notification that you are doing so. This is an easy way to gain interest and remind them that the group exists! Just make sure that the content in your live videos is exciting and engaging enough to make them want to stay and watch.
- Host giveaways – You’d be surprised at how many people miraculously show up in the comments when free stuff is involved. You can even do something as small as a $5 Starbucks gift card for simply answering a question. If whatever you are asking them to do involves more work than asking a question, like inviting friends to join the group or something similar, then consider upping the free gift.
- Post regularly – If you aren’t posting at all, it’s no wonder the group is dead. If you are posting daily and no one seems to care, that’s a content issue. Post at least 3 times per week to maintain a group. If you are posting more than that and it’s not working, change up the content, don’t be predictable, and add in some of the other tips here.
- Tag members in posts – There’s always a chance your members aren’t seeing your post or glaze over it like they do every other post on social media. If that is the case, tag them in the comments of the post you want them to respond to. This works like a charm.
- Create personal connections with members outside of the group – Private messaging members is an amazing way to get them engaged in the group. Build the relationship, recognize their activity, or if they haven’t posted/commented in a long time, check in on them and ask how they are doing or if they are alright. That sincere connection tells them that you really do care and notice when they go inactive.
- Clean house – If you have a large group and there’s only a handful of active members, especially if you have tried all of the other methods and some people still just won’t budge, you can either do a post letting everyone know you will be cleaning through members and if they want to stay, they need to comment and let you know. If you don’t want to do that, you could just remove them from the group.
- Invite others to join via a personal message – I HATE when people invite me to join a group without telling me what it is and why they think I’d like it. It takes 10 seconds to write up a quick note saying, “Hey Lindsay – I’d love to have you in my clean eating community. We share recipes together and I host giveaways from time to time. I hope you’ll join us!” I am way more likely to accept the invitation when there’s a note than feeling like you went through your whole friends list and clicked “invite” on every name you saw.