The main benefit of a Facebook Group is not that it allows you to grow your audience and reach lots of people.
Groups, unlike pages, are typically quieter and less public.
If you have your privacy set to private, then other visitors won’t even be able to see the content of a group until they join!
The benefit of Facebook Groups is more about increasing the engagement with the followers you already have.
And to that end, you need to think about what goes in the group more than how you promote it.
BUT with that said, you will still likely want to grow your Facebook group to at least some degree, so that you can get the best Return On Investment (ROI) for the time and effort you put into it.
Here are some easy ways to grow your member count.
1. Link to Your Facebook Page
If you have a Facebook page, then linking to that will mean that your group appears at the top and this will attract more of your Facebook page members. This is a great way to treat your Facebook promotion as a kind of sales funnel – taking your viewers from a less invested form of communication to one that involves them taking part more actively.
At the same time, this can be a really good way to ‘wake up’ your Facebook page, if it has become somewhat stale.
2. Talk About It Elsewhere
Another great way to get more people into your Facebook group is to talk about it elsewhere. If you have a blog or a YouTube channel, then make sure to actually mention your page and to make it sound enticing. Drop it into the conversation as often as possible, and choose your language carefully. Calling your members things like ‘VIPs’ can go a long way to making the whole concept seem more exclusive and exciting.
You can also use other types of incentive – for instance by offering something free from within the group only to members.
3. Run a Competition
Invite your members to invite other members to the group. The member who brings in the most new members wins something. This could be an ebook or something similar, or even mean making them moderators!
Simply making more members into moderators can even have a similar effect – as they will likely feel pride at being in that role and want to share what they are doing with friends.
We have produced a complete training on how you can grow your business by setting up and running a Facebook Group: Facebook Groups for Business.
