Building A Facebook Group

finnegan

finnegan

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If you're having trouble getting members to your new Facebook group, is it best to go the paid route? Or are there better ways to quickly build up an FB group that don't involve paying for members?
 
What current methods are you using to #1 gain members and #2 retain members?
 
Frame it like this...

1) Is there value in having a larger Facebook group for your project?

If yes, keep going.

If no, stop.

2) Would it be beneficial to grow it more quickly?

If yes, keep going.

If no, stop.

3) Do you have the budget to spend on growing it?

If yes, do it.

If no, stick to free.
 
If you want a tactic I've had success with, and not just unhelpful platitudes, try this:

1. Gather a large list of group-relevant, image-based RSS feeds. (Hint: Pinterest boards can be turned into RSS feeds by adding .rss to the end of the URL)

2. Combine those feeds using RSS Mix (up to 100 feeds per mix).

3. Setup IFTTT so that the RSS Mix feeds are pinned on Pinterest, with your Facebook Group as the source URL.

This will give your group a source of free and easy traffic outside of Facebook. As the group grows in members and activity, it will move up in Facebook's internal search, allowing the group to grow organically.

Good luck.
 
Jared said:
If you want a tactic I've had success with, and not just unhelpful platitudes, try this:

1. Gather a large list of group-relevant, image-based RSS feeds. (Hint: Pinterest boards can be turned into RSS feeds by adding .rss to the end of the URL)

2. Combine those feeds using RSS Mix (up to 100 feeds per mix).

3. Setup IFTTT so that the RSS Mix feeds are pinned on Pinterest, with your Facebook Group as the source URL.

This will give your group a source of free and easy traffic outside of Facebook. As the group grows in members and activity, it will move up in Facebook's internal search, allowing the group to grow organically.

Good luck.
Click to expand...

1. doesn't seem to work, can you post a working example?
2.
3. What's triggering the event?
 
ryandiscord said:
1. doesn't seem to work, can you post a working example?
2.
3. What's triggering the event?
Click to expand...

It's /feed.rss, and it looks like it's only for users, not boards.

Any RSS feed updates should trigger the event. IIRC IFTTT checks every 15 minutes or so.
 
How would you go the paid route, I thought you couldn't advertise groups on facebook itself?
 
CCarter said:
What current methods are you using to #1 gain members and #2 retain members?
Click to expand...

So the idea behind starting a FB group is to position my marketing agency as the go-to in a certain industry that the page is based around.

What I've done so far is accumulate several hundred connects from LinkedIn for that industry.

Since I have no one in the group right now, I did a test run and invited 25 of my connects to join the FB group. Much to my chagrin, only 1 of those 25 joined the group.

Since that didn't work, the next step was to pay someone to fill the group for me. Even though they'd be useless members, at least the LI connects would get the impression that the group was active and growing. At that point, I'd invite them all to join and see if I got better results.

Thing is, I'm not sure how wise that is to go the paid route and if FB can see what's going on, and what a safe number of members would be to do at one time.

If there's a better way to do this, I'd like to know.
 
finnegan said:
What I've done so far is accumulate several hundred connects from LinkedIn for that industry.
Click to expand...
Why not just create a LinkedIn Group? You should realize that people on Facebook are on there to socialize and people on LinkedIn are on there to network - two different reasonings for logging on those platforms. So you are trying to mix water with oil, when you can simply focus on the LinkedIn angle.

Your LinkedIn contacts are more likely to join a LinkedIn group - the fact that they login to LinkedIn should be the dead give-away on where you should concentrate on.

I'm not familiar with LinkedIn's platform, but your situation is the equivalent of trying to get Reddit users to Flicker (or some other social network), they are on Reddit for a reason so engage them there. Same with Linkedin.

Is there something specific to Facebook that you require that is not possible with Linkedin?
 
CCarter said:
Why not just create a LinkedIn Group? You should realize that people on Facebook are on there to socialize and people on LinkedIn are on there to network - two different reasonings for logging on those platforms. So you are trying to mix water with oil, when you can simply focus on the LinkedIn angle.

Your LinkedIn contacts are more likely to join a LinkedIn group - the fact that they login to LinkedIn should be the dead give-away on where you should concentrate on.

I'm not familiar with LinkedIn's platform, but your situation is the equivalent of trying to get Reddit users to Flicker (or some other social network), they are on Reddit for a reason so engage them there. Same with Linkedin.

Is there something specific to Facebook that you require that is not possible with Linkedin?
Click to expand...

The reasons I was trying to get them over to FB was that those groups are active while LI's don't seem to be that popular. There only seems to be 1 group on LI in the industry I'm targeting that would be a competitor of sorts. Then again, if they are active, this is a great opportunity since it has such little competition. I'll scope it out if I can get invited into the group and figure out how these things work.

It does seem like FB groups work well for others though, although they probably got those users from FB.
 
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