4 Things You Should Know About Facebook GROUPS for Web Marketing

While figures do vary according to the particular survey and geographic region, there is no doubt that Facebook is one of the most popular websites of the noughties. It took a while for businesses to find their feet with Facebook web marketing – for quite a while, all you could do on the site was play Vampire Wars, after all. Nowadays, though, Facebook Groups are well-recognized as one of the primary methods of social media marketing. We explore what you need to know about Facebook groups for web marketing success.

What are the features of a Facebook Group?

Many of us are familiar with the features of an ordinary profile page on Facebook. A Group page is simply a page where people of similar interests and values can come to discuss things and post related content. When you set up a Facebook Group, you can use the platform for:

• General discussions via the wall (although conversations can get a little messy)
• Post photos related to your topic
• Post videos related to your topic
• Post links to related content across the web (although these are not followed by Google and therefore don’t count toward link popularity)
• Sending news and updates to your Group members

What is the cost of setting up a Group?

As far as Facebook is concerned, there is no cost to set up a Group. However, you will certainly want someone either within your organization, or outsourced, to administer the group. When somebody posts a question about your product or service, the polite thing to do in social media situations is to answer it .

Group Title considerations

People on Facebook often use Groups as a ‘bumper sticker’ for their profile. If you create a group name that is bumper sticker-ish, you instantly increase appeal for these people. Use a bit of humour, and make sure you go into detail about the group’s purpose in its title. Here are a couple of good examples:

• People Who Always Have To Spell Their Names For Other People
• I Flip My Pillow Over to Get To The Cold Side
• Unlike 99.99% of the Facebook population, I was born in the 70s.
• When I was your age, Pluto was a planet

Do you have a running joke in your company or industry that other people relate to? You can see that the groups that have no direct link to companies or monetization of any sort often do well.

If you get popular…

You’ll have to think about all sorts of different things, like assigning someone to administer the group on a more permanent basis, weeding out spam links in the comments and wall posts, and developing a strategy for marketing with the blast messages.