How to Use Facebook Groups for Business Growth

Have you ever thought about using Facebook groups to help build your business and increase brand awareness?

Are you wondering how to promote your products and services in Facebook groups?

Whether you create a Facebook group or join one managed by someone else, you can use groups to position yourself, find new customers, and much, much more.

Below we discuss the best approach, strategy and tactics to use in Facebook groups to help grow your business.

I’m busy running my business, why should I join Facebook groups for business?

Facebook groups bring together individuals who share a common interest. When you join a group that’s made up of your target customers and ‘look-a-likes’ of your target customer, you’ll have multiple opportunities to grow awareness of yourself and your business by being helpful.

You’ll want to make sure that what you talk about or offer is relevant to the group members. To reveal topic opportunities, simply type a keyword or topic into the search box in the right-hand menu of the group’s page.

You’ll see that people are asking a lot of questions inside groups. Find the questions that will let you demonstrate your expertise or specialised skills. You can answer the questions outright, share a helpful blog post, or even mention your own products and services.

Community engagement is absolutely a form of marketing if done correctly. It’s particularly powerful as it is highly targeted, personalised, and you can format your messages and responses to achieve exactly your required goal. By offering helpful and relevant answers to peoples questions, and if you can provide solutions on a regular basis, you and your business will start to become top of mind with members of the group. If you get it right, people will even start to look to you for answers by tagging you in comments.

OK, that all makes sense. So how do I find suitable groups on Facebook?

There are groups and online communities for almost everything everywhere, and you can join up to 6,000 of them! Here is a walkthrough of how you can join Facebook groups:

1. Log into your Facebook personal profile and find Groups on the left-hand side of your Home page in the Explore section.
2. Click on the Groups tab and you’ll be sent to the Discover Groups landing page. This is where Facebook suggests groups for you based on criteria such as pages you’ve liked, groups your friends are members of, and so on. Facebook will also let you see which of your friends are members of the groups suggested to you.
3. Browse through the suggested Facebook groups, you’ll see both public and closed groups.
4. You can click on the group to learn more about it in the description.  Be sure you’re a suitable fit before you ask to join.
5. Most groups have specific rules of engagement. Make sure you are aware of and adhere to the group's rules so that you do not get barred from the group.
6. If you are happy that the group is relevant and of a high standard, click the Join button.
7. You may be asked to answer some joining questions. Take the time to respond to ensure you get accepted to the group.
8. You’ll then get a message letting you know that your request is pending and you’ll get a notification when your request to join has been approved.
9. When you receive your group access notification, take the time look through the posts to get a feel for how it operates.
10. Once you understand the tone of the conversation and the way other members ask and answer questions or offer advice, you’ll be able to successfully do the same.
     

Top tips for Facebook group engagement

So you’re ready to go. You’ve researched the best groups in your area and successfully joined. Now the fun starts. We’ve outlined below a few tips to help you get the best return from the time you spend chatting to your new friends in your new groups:

• Try not to ‘sell’ your products or services (unless the group is specifically for this purpose). Instead, simply build awareness of your company. If the group admins or members feel like you are overtly selling, they may lose confidence in you.
• Subtly bring your business into the conversation "I've found with the business that myself and my husband own and run that... " or "it's a challenge with my time to manage our business as well as run the family home..." or "the best thing we ever did was start our own business...". Structure these statements to be relevant to the other members of the group.
• Make sure you tailor your tone of voice to suit the group - are they talking about business, friendship, a hobby or interest etc.
• Get involved in relevant conversations, provide your thoughts or feedback on what others are posting and offer advice or help wherever appropriate.
• When joining other groups, ensure there are over 1k members and recent posts in the group.
• Consistency is key! Comment as often as possible without becoming a pest.
• Give back to the group. Provide assistance and ideas to others who are asking for support.
• Wherever you can, as appropriate, share a link to your website.

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