Facebook Groups for a Local Business

Why groups, and why now

Since January, Facebook has been showing people more posts from friends, family and groups, and fewer from business pages.

Many owners have watched their page posts reach fewer followers each month. Posting more often has not helped, because the change was never about frequency.

Groups work differently. Members talk to each other, and conversations between people are exactly what the News Feed now favours.

So a business that hosts a group around something its customers care about can keep a community talking while its page goes quiet. That is the opportunity. The cost is one most businesses underestimate.

A page and a group are different things

A page is the business talking. Followers mostly read, sometimes react, and rarely talk to each other.

A group is members talking among themselves, with the business as host. Their posts appear in each other's News Feeds and notifications, which is how a lively group stays visible.

A page can now create its own group and post in it as the business, and the group appears on the page.

Groups can be public, closed or secret. For most local businesses closed works best: anyone can find it and see who belongs, but only members see the posts, which makes people readier to share.

What it takes

• A subject bigger than the business: quilting, renovation, trail running.
• A moderator every day, approving members and removing spam.
• Written rules, pinned at the top, including what counts as selling.
• Questions for new members, which keep most spammers out.
• A regular prompt inviting members to share, not to buy.
• Patience: months before members start conversations themselves.

The first decides everything else. People join a group for their interest, not for your business, and a group named after the shop reads like a mailing list with a comment box.

Setting it up

Name the group after the interest and the area, not the business, and let the description say plainly who hosts it.

Create it from the business page so it appears there, and give at least two staff members admin roles, so the group never depends on one person's account.

Set two questions for people asking to join: one about their interest, one asking them to accept the rules. Together they filter out most accounts that exist only to sell sunglasses.

Write the rules before the first member arrives: be kind, stay on topic, offers only in the monthly thread, and what happens to posts that break them.

Posting without selling

The business's own posts should mostly be invitations: what are you working on this week, what would you do with this, who has tried that.

Tips, behind-the-scenes photographs and honest answers come next. Class and event notices fit too, posted once each rather than every other day.

Avoid engagement bait, such as asking people to comment yes or tag a friend. Facebook demotes it, and members recognise it.

Reply to every new member's first post. The first answer a person gets decides whether they post a second time.

A worked example

A fabric and quilting shop in a small Interior city had a loyal following on its page, and posts that fewer of those followers saw each month.

Last autumn it started a closed group for the valley's quilters, named after the craft and the area, with two staff moderators, two questions for new members and the rules pinned at the top.

Every Friday the shop asked members to share what was on their table that week. Classes were announced once each, and offers went in one thread each month.

For the first two months most posts came from staff. Then members began posting finished quilts, asking each other about bindings, and arranging to sew together.

The shop has not tried to measure what the group sells. It knows the group is where its customers now talk to each other, and that the shop is their host.

Moderation is the job

A group is not something you post to. It is somewhere you look after.

Membership requests need approving daily, or keen people wait and lose interest. Spam needs removing within hours, before members decide the group has been abandoned.

Honest criticism of the business is different from spam: leave it up, reply in public, and take the details to a private message. Members watch how that is handled more closely than anything else.

Budget a few minutes every day, more in the first months, and give the job to whoever knows the subject best, not automatically to whoever runs the page.

What to avoid

Do not add people without asking, and do not buy members. A group full of people who never chose it stays silent, and that silence tells Facebook its posts are not worth showing.

Do not let staff argue with members, however wrong a member may be.

And do not treat membership as permission to email. Joining a quilting group is not consent under CASL to receive the shop's newsletter; that needs its own sign-up.

When not to start one

Some businesses should not run a group at all.

If nobody can moderate every day, the group will fill with spam within weeks and reflect badly on the business that owns it.

If there is no interest beyond the purchase, there is nothing to talk about. Few people want to discuss their insurance renewal with strangers.

If membership would reveal something private, such as a health condition, a debt or a bereavement, a group is the wrong tool, even a secret one, because members can see each other.

And if a thriving local group on the subject already exists, being genuinely helpful there, within its rules, may serve better than starting a rival.

The counter-case

A group is not a replacement for anything else.

It lives on Facebook's terms, as pages do, and Facebook can change what groups receive as easily as it changed what pages received in January. The website and your own email list remain the things you control.

It is also slow and indirect; a business that needs enquiries this month will get them faster elsewhere. But with a real shared interest and somebody to look after it daily, a group is worth starting.

Before you start

1. Name the shared interest beyond your business.
2. Choose two moderators with time every day.
3. Write the rules and pin them.
4. Set two questions for people asking to join.
5. Make it closed and create it from the page.
6. Plan one weekly prompt members can answer.
7. Keep offers to one thread a month.

Step two decides whether the group survives its first wave of spam. Rules, questions and prompts all depend on somebody being there to apply them.

Another way to reach people your page posts no longer reach is covered in Facebook Live for a business that has never filmed anything.

Frequently asked questions

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