Why Should You Start Building A Facebook Group?

For many individuals and businesses, Facebook has been the go-to place for creating hype and marketing content on social media. And because of its sheer user base and because audience likes to associate with a brand socially before engaging, it is safe to say that Facebook Pages became the de-facto standard for businesses operating in the social playground. But over the past couple years, some businesses have slowed down their Facebook operation thanks to a plummeting organic reach after many Facebook news feed algorithm updates. Facebook Pages are old and bulky. Facebook Groups are now hot in fashion.

This is a two-part post. In the first post, we will discuss why we need Facebook Groups now. And in the second, we will look into ways of building a strong group on Facebook.

Why build a Facebook Group?

Facebook Groups are nothing new. They have been around for many years now, and people have been using them for various purposes. For the most part though, they have only rarely been used to drive organic traffic. But more recently, they have started appearing again and businesses who had given up on Facebook marketing are turning to a new ray of hope once again.

Facebook is still relevant

All the kids left Facebook years ago for Instagram (now Snapchat) and a number of businesses gave up on Facebook marketing efforts when "organic reach" plummeted.

Despite this, there are still hundreds of millions of users still on Facebook.
In fact, Mark Zuckerberg posted a status a couple of months ago stating that for the first time in the network's history, Facebook had over 1 billion active users in a single day.

Let that marinate for a second.

Facebook is a powerhouse that isn't going anywhere anytime soon — it's time to re-invest back into the network.

Groups notifications are more effective, hence more organic reach

Facebook pages and personal posts rely completely on the Newsfeed algorithm for organic exposure. Facebook Groups send users a notification whenever someone posts to the Group, thus driving traffic to each post.

Facebook gives users the option to silence these notifications. However, if your Group consistently adds value, they won't.

Improved credentials

Let's piggyback off the previous point for a second.

When the Group had 660 members, we were driving 122 visits per post = 18% visit rate (CTR)
A recent post when the Group had 2,700 members drove 600 visits = 22% visit rate (CTR)
With the ability to drive quality traffic with a single post, you've got a powerful value proposition. I do a ton of link outreach for clients — including the Group in my pitch has skyrocketed success rate.

I mean, which outreach email would you respond to?

Outreach email 1:

Hey [Editor's name],

I came across your post [insert URL] and really enjoyed it. I noticed you're linking out to some posts about [insert topic] and wanted to pitch you on my latest guide that fits in perfectly.

If interested, let me know and I can send you the URL to check out for yourself.
Outreach email 2:

Hey [Editor's name],

I came across your post [insert URL] and really enjoyed it. I noticed you're linking out to some posts about [insert topic] and wanted to pitch you on my latest guide that fits in perfectly.

If included, I'd be happy to share it with my active Facebook Group [insert link] that regularly drives over 600 visits every time I post.
Link building (and marketing, really) is about the exchange of value. When you've got a solid value proposition in exchange for the link, your acceptance rate goes through the roof.

Free content

Despite the lack of organic reach, Facebook Pages are still a tremendous marketing resource. However, you need invest time into creating content to be successful. This is a full-time job in itself which requires you (or someone else) to spend time managing it.

When properly managed, Facebook Groups run themselves because the content is crowd sourced from members.

All you need to do is stay active on threads and make sure you're keeping a close eye on spam.

Although Facebook Groups are nothing new, they're being rediscovered as a far more useful resource than a Facebook Page, and could potentially prove to be a the new trend for this year in social marketing.