Facebook Groups attract 1.8 billion users every month and there are over 10 million of them in existence. Over 80% of the social network’s 3+ billion users are part of at least one group, while more than half have joined five or more groups.
Daily, group members spend 15 minutes in groups.
If you want to promote a product or service or grow a group of like-minded people, you can do so on the back of Facebook. Engagement for the top groups is high, but every group starts the same way: with 0 followers.
Growing your Facebook Group takes a lot of time and effort, and you can do one of two things:
- Grow your group organically
- Pay to grow your group
We’re going to cover both options to help you grow a thriving group with engaged members who check in multiple times each week to see what’s being posted in the group.
How To Grow Your Facebook Group for FREE
We’re going to assume that you’ve done two of the most important first steps before trying to grow your group:
- You’ve made a goal for the group. What is the group about? What will you post in the group? What is the goal of the group? If you create a group for no reason, it’s bound to fail.
- You know your target audience. Who are you trying to target with your group? How old are they? Where are they in life? Do they work? How much do they make? Where do they live?
Spend a lot of time answering these two questions because you need to have intimate knowledge of your audience before posting. Your group’s members are in the group to be engaged, and if your posts are not hitting the mark, they’ll leave the group.
Once you’re ready, move on to the following steps to grow your group organically:
1. Create a Posting Schedule 📅
Groups with no posts are dead. You need to post regularly and set a schedule to attract members, especially in the beginning. Facebook recommends making five posts per day, but that’s a major commitment.
We recommend posting 2 – 5 times per day and slowly tapering your posts down as your group grows.
You can create a wide range of posts:
- Informative posts
- Polls
- Behind-the-scenes images and videos
- Jump on live stream when your group is bigger
- Share inside tips
- Host a Q&A
If you’re a business, you can run contests to generate a lot of buzz. You can give away a free product or a discount on your service.
Maintaining a posting schedule is challenging, but you can batch-create posts and use Buffer or Socialpilot to schedule your posts for a week or month.
2. Engage With Members Often
You want to create meaningful connections with group members, and this requires a lot of work. One mistake that new group owners make is they don’t engage with their audience. A group owner makes a post, people comment and ask questions, and the owner shows they care by never responding.
If you want your members to be loyal, you need to:
- Engage with them
- Respond back to comments
Ask members how they’re doing. If they need help with something, don’t be afraid to offer it. When you consistently engage with your audience, it will attract more members and people will even recommend the group to their friends or family.
Over time, don’t be afraid to ask members to recommend the group to others. Referrals are a powerful form of growth that you can’t ignore.
3. Create Member Spotlights
Group members want to be recognized, and you can build a loyal following with member spotlights where you randomly highlight a member for their:
- Contribution
- Stories
- Achievements
If you make member spotlights a regular occurrence, it encourages others to engage with the group more often, too.
4. Alert Your Existing Network to the Group
You need new group members. Who better to help you grow than your existing network? Tap into your network using:
- Email blasts, if you have a list already, that will encourage email subscribers to join the group.
- Social media posts, where you mention your new group and encourage others to join.
- In-person meetings where you invite customers and clients to join the group. You can even add a sign with a QR code to encourage anyone who comes into your business to join the group.
- Add a call-to-action to your blog posts to encourage people to go to Facebook and join the group.
5. Share Your Expertise in Innovative Ways
You’re an expert, and you can use this advantage to grow your group through:
- Guest blogging on relevant publications and trying to get the attention of the publication’s audience.
- Going on podcasts in your industry and sharing your knowledge with the audience.
- Creating webinars and, during the webinar, encouraging people to join your Facebook Group.
If you know influencers in your niche, reach out to them and ask them to mention your group. You might find a few micro-influencers willing to do this for free, but others may want you to pay them for the mention or post.
6. Collaborate with Others 🤝
Along the same lines as our last recommendation, you can collaborate with others and share your knowledge or insights together. A benefit of this kind of arrangement is that it’s mutually beneficial.
If you’ve exhausted all of your free growth options or just want to speed up your Facebook Group growth, there are paid options that can help you reach your goals faster.
How To Grow Your Facebook Group Using Paid Services 💵
There are plenty of ways to grow your Facebook group organically and for free. However, if you’re willing to invest in your growth, you can also leverage paid services to see faster results.
Here are some of the best paid strategies you can use to grow a Facebook group.
1. Buy Facebook Group Members or Likes
One of the simplest ways to grow your group, if you have the budget, is to buy Facebook members or likes.
This strategy will give you instant results, and you’re in complete control of your growth. You can buy as many or as few members or likes as you want to reach your goals.
But if you want to maximize the potential of this strategy, you need to make sure your provider is:
- Reputable
- Delivering real members or engagement
Real Facebook users are more likely to actually engage with your group after they’ve joined or liked it.
Bots or fake accounts, on the other hand, will only artificially inflate your numbers and may even get your group flagged.
2. Pay a Social Media Management Company
If you have the budget and prefer a more hands-off approach to your growth, you can hire a social media management company to do the heavy lifting for you.
Social media management companies are teams of marketing professionalss that can handle:
- Promotion of your group through ads
- Growing your group organically through outreach
- Moderating and setting rules
- Adding new content and encouraging engagement
- So much more
Every company will have its own strategy and package options. Connect with the ones you’re interested in to learn more about their services and results.
3. Promote Your Group With Meta Ads 📢
What better way to grow your group than with ads on the very platform your users are on? Meta Ads can be an affordable way to build awareness of your group and grow your members.
Before you dive into this strategy, first make sure that your group shows up when people search for your group’s topic. To do that, optimize your description to include the target keywords your audience is searching for. Next, incorporate those keywords into your website along with a link to your group asking people to join.
Once you’ve done this, you can head over to Meta Ads Manager and start creating ads. Through Ads Manager, you can set your campaign objective and target a specific audience to ensure your advertisements are shown to the right people.
If you’re new to this game, start with a small budget. Experiment with different creatives and copy to see what drives the most traffic and results for your group. Then, you can expand your budget (if you can) to accelerate your growth.
Are Facebook Groups Worth Building?
Do you want to build an online presence and brand awareness? Yes? Then Facebook Groups are absolutely worth building.
Over a billion people use Facebook Groups every single month. No matter your niche or industry, your audience is almost surely using Facebook Groups on a regular basis.
Taking the time to build an active group will allow you to:
- Expand your organic reach exponentially. Facebook’s algorithm prioritizes group posts in user feeds, so you have a much higher chance of showing up compared to regular Page posts. If your group is really active, users may be seeing your group and brand name multiple times a day or week.
- Build lasting relationships with your audience. Groups provide you with a unique opportunity to connect with your audience and build meaningful relationships. After all, people only join groups if they’re really interested in a brand or influencer.
- Learn more about your audience. Groups give you direct insights into your audience. In fact, they can serve as a channel to ask questions directly through polls or just by asking in a text post. The best part? You can get these insights for free and willingly from your audience.
If your audience is on Facebook, there’s no question that building a group is well worth your time and effort.
But you’ll want to make sure that your building a community that lasts, and this means abiding by the rules.
What Restrictions Exist for Facebook Groups?
Facebook group owners can set their own rules for their groups, but you’ll also need to make sure that you follow Meta’s rules, too.
All groups must adhere to Community Standards. This includes choosing a name for your group that follows their standards.
Your group also cannot:
- Add a verified checkmark to any profile-related imagery that falsely represents that Facebook has authenticated or verified your page.
- Promote online gambling without Meta’s written permission.
- Promote alcohol addiction treatment centers or online pharmacies without written permission.
- Promote illegal activities, services or products.
As an admin, you can also set rules for your group right through the group’s dashboard. Facebook allows you to add up to 10 rules. If members violate any of your rules, you can remove their posts.
Final Thoughts
Growing a Facebook group is a great way to build your online presence and brand while nurturing relationships with your followers. But, like with anything else on social media, it requires time and dedication to see results. Use our guide to start building up your group today and leveraging all of the benefits it has to offer.
