Apart from my general SEO consultation work, I also run a project named Present Slide. It allows students and learners in finding free and best online courses.
Present Slide has got courses in multiple niches and you can also look for guides, tutorials, and more. I always wanted to help people find resources so that they can learn new skills effectively.
Our education system focuses more on marks but at a later stage of life, skills matter the most. So, for helping people, I created an online group as a community for Present Slide. With the group, I wanted to share free learning resources, tools, and services.
The main aim behind this was to open a world of opportunities for students. The focus was never on growing the group but, still, it now has got more than 1000 members. It took just 5 months of time to reach that number and I am the only one handling group and its content.
Here is a snapshot from the group that I took while writing this article:
Facebook Group Link: Free Online Resources
It shows statistics up to the 27th of April and while writing this post, the member count stands at 1,150. I am not inviting any new members now and the group has now started to grow organically. In the beginning, I do have invited some of my close friends who helped me push the stats a bit.
And, it is not just about having members but their activity in the group should matter. There are lots of groups having lacs of members but they are not active enough. I recently shared a post and below are the statistics of that post:
At that time there were around 1,000 members and more than 800 people saw this post. It also got hundreds of comments from active members. I am not a person who values numbers much but growing things this way can help a lot of people.
I get invites from tens of people daily to join their group, but all those groups lack many things. Below is a list of things that can help you in growing your Facebook groups effectively. I used these things not just ones but many a time for my personal and other people’s Facebook group.
1. Choose a Better Niche
If you will look in the market then there are more Digital Marketing Facebook groups than an actual number of Digital marketers. This has led to a lot of spam on user timelines making people leave old groups and ignore new ones. But, there is still a lot of gap for niche and micro-niche communities.
Like, you can create a group for “Digital Marketing for Real Estate“. I just named it randomly and maybe this niche too is crowded. That you can have a look and I just presented you with an idea. Niche focused things are good as they only attract a group of targeted people. Then you can use that group to sell your checklists, courses, consultation, and more.
They help in getting ahead of the competition which main topics have.
2. Wait for a While
When I get a group invitation, I do check it once to know about it effectively. Most of the times people invite others without even updating the description, banners, and group category. This will degrade the group quality as most of the people will ignore the invitation sent by you.
Do the following things before inviting anybody to join the group:
- Add a catchy name describing your group and it’s purpose. People often name their group like “We Are Together“, “Our Journey“, etc. These groups don’t have a clear purpose and they will most probably be spammed to death.
- Upload a simple and describing image for your group. You can add your tagline and purpose of the group in your image. Canva could be easily used to design Facebook group covers.
- Add a description explaining all the important point that someone needs to know before entering the group.
- Also, work on adding group rules because you will surely face a bunch of people joining to spam the group.
- Invite only relevant people who would be interested in that niche. People who are not interested will degrade the engagement rates.
The above points are very much important to be followed by a new group. You can also publish a few posts before inviting people so that they can understand the niche a bit more clearly.
3. Solve a Problem
Organic reach on Facebook is only for those whose audience eagerly waits for their posts. The more engaging your content, the more reach you and your posts will get. And to get better engagement your group and your posts should solve some of the other problems.
I am not telling you to stick with only guides and guides but make sure that the focus of your good is to help people. It is a matter of building an active audience who knows that you always share something that takes them closer to their goals.
Share informative posts, guides, checklists, templates, memes, and whatever that can keep your audience engaged. Facebook groups work well as a starting point for your sales funnel.
4. Utilize Other Active Groups
No, I am not telling you to spam every other group for growing yours. Things can be done in a good manner that most of the people forget. Keep adding value to other communities, keep the link of your group in your timeline posts, and invite new friends from those communities.
This way the engine of your group will get started and Facebook will keep pushing it on the timeline of relevant people. Getting a lot of people from one group also showcases your group at the sidebar of that specific group in the “Suggested Groups” section as shown below:
Now, I am getting 10-20 people daily in my group without inviting or doing any efforts. And the goal here is not to sell anything but to help people find the right resources at the right time.
These points are enough for you to grow your Facebook group. Keep adding value to the community and nothing would be able to stop you.