How Starting a Facebook Group Can Help Your Business

I know what you’re thinking: do I really need another marketing tool? You already post great photos on Instagram and come up with witty captions. You engage with your audience as much as you can and make hashtags everywhere.

You’ve set up a Facebook page, post regular updates, share links to interesting articles and add the occasional meme or funny quote.

You’re even able to use Pinterest and pin with your eyes closed. You also have a presence on LinkedIn and Twitter from time to time.

You write blog post after blog post and know enough about SEO to get decent traffic to your website.

Surely you’ve covered all the bases to reach your audience. Yes, you do a great job running your business, but there’s always room for growth.

Whether your business is product or service based, you could be missing out on an essential strategy to promote it. Not only is it free, but it’s simple to set up. Because you manage it yourself, you can decide how much time and effort you put into it, who you accept into the group and the ground rules for members.

How many people spend time in Facebook groups? According to this Forbes article, more than half of Facebook users are in groups. A Facebook group offers the opportunity to reclaim the power of community, organic engagement and meaningful connections on a more human level.

Think of it this way: if a friend or family member started a business, you’d want to support them, buy their products, recommend their services to others and spread the word as much as possible. You know them, you trust them, you’ve seen their talent or creativity and you know how reliable or experienced they are. Well, a Facebook group has a similar impact on its members if it is well managed.

Here’s how creating a Facebook group can help your business.

1. Authority

A Facebook group allows you to establish yourself as an authority in your field. To do this, you need to provide quality content, answer members’ questions, respond to their comments and post useful tips and tricks.

2. Trust

Once your group members get to know you on a more personal level, putting a face to your name will earn their trust. Trust is a valuable quality that customers demand before they decide where to spend their money. It takes time to earn this trust, and it needs to be genuine, not commercial.

3. Efficiency

Customers or potential and existing customers can join your group to ask questions at any time. Communication is more relaxed and direct, which means that both parties can save time by avoiding sending emails and messages back and forth. Members even have the option to search the group using keywords. If I want to know how many hashtags to use on Instagram, I can search a small businesswomen’s group and read all the discussions related to it.

4. Exclusive

Not only will your members feel like they have access to exclusive information and additional resources, but you will also have full access to your target audience.

5. Visibility

Whatever your niche, it can seem almost impossible to be heard amidst all the noise on social media. But the good news is that your posts won’t get lost in the news feed. Facebook group members will be notified as soon as you or one of your members has posted.

6. Engagement

A closed Facebook group allows members to discuss and learn from like-minded people. When engagement is high, it helps strengthen the relationship between the business and its audience, which in turn helps influence their purchasing decisions.

7. Research

A Facebook group is the virtual version of inviting your target audience to your seminar, giving them a questionnaire and asking them to improve your activity. You can easily assess what they would like to see more of, how you can help them in some way, what their current problems are and much more.

Now that you know the value of creating a Facebook group, it is a good idea to plan your content strategy for the long term. It’s usually defined by the purpose of the group – is your goal to support existing customers or sell to members? Is your group just for networking or market research?

Once you have defined your purpose, you can start planning the content itself – will it be inspirational, entertaining or informative? You can prepare messages in advance; there are scheduling tools for this, such as Buffer. Use group analytics to find out the most popular times to post and the types of posts that work well to inform your future content strategy. Organising regular events, such as Q&A sessions with experts, quizzes and live chats, helps to strengthen the group’s relationship not only with you, but also with its members. Receiving a recommendation from one member to another is priceless.

Conclusion

If you’re still not sure if creating a Facebook group is the right marketing strategy for you, join some popular groups in your niche. You’re a woman who works from home, so why not join some business groups and find out if other people have found that creating a Facebook group has helped their business. We might even meet up there.