*Guest blog by Jono Petrohilos from The Course Creator Community.

** I’m thrilled to post this content to my blog as there are quite a few business owners taking advantage of Facebook Groups today. I found this article to be an easy read and informative! Remember to take advantage of my FREE Direct Your Business With Confidence for all kinds of tips and tricks on how manage money for your business.

When it comes to growing a Facebook Group in 2021, there are hundreds (if not thousands) of ways to do it! Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, Tik Tok, Clubhouse, Podcasts… you name it! 

BUT… 

Most of the strategies above take time and effort! 

And look… There’s nothing wrong with a bit of hard work… Especially when starting off… You’re going to need to work hard!

But the ultimate goal when it comes to growing a Facebook Group is to let Facebook do most of the heavy lifting for us! 

We want to leverage the Facebook algorithm so that OUR group shows up in the Facebook feed without us having to do anything.

This way, you can spend less of your time actually growing the group and more of your time on engaging the group and converting your Group members to leads and clients! 

Strategy 1: Naming Your Facebook Group

I recently wrote a full blog on how to name your Facebook Group and I share the specific formula to use (you can find that here) but let me give you the overview here! 

You want to name your Facebook Group something that your ideal group member is searching!

E.g. One of my Facebook Groups is called the Course Creator Community and one of the questions to join my Facebook Group is “where did you hear about us”. Every day I will get 4-5 new members' requests to join the Group, saying they heard about us simply typing in “Course Creator” in the Facebook search bar! 

There’s no better group member than this! They have actively searched for what we do on Facebook, found our group, clicked join, answered a few personal questions and maybe even given us their email! All from just naming the Group correctly! 

We also get a similar number of group member requests who say ‘Our group popped up in their feed / suggested groups’ and they joined because they are Course Creators or want to be course creators! 

Now the Group popping up in their news feed doesn’t have anything to do with the Group name, that’s got more to do with how engaged our Group is. However, the members are joining our Group because the name of the Group makes it super clear / obvious what we do! 

A few common mistakes Group Admin’s make when naming their group:

1) They make the group name too cute / clever

e.g. I have a friend who runs a finance company called ‘Python Wealth’. He has a community  Facebook Group and he’s named it - ‘The Snake Pit’. Now I think that’s pretty clever and cute. In saying that the only people that are going to find / join his group organically are snake enthusiasts and snake enthusiasts are not his ideal client! 

2) They name their group after their business

This makes sense in theory because your Facebook Group is essentially an extension of your business but similar to above, no one is searching on Facebook for your business (unless you’re already a big name in the industry). If you really want to add your business name to the group - add it to the end. e.g. “Course Creator Community by Jono Petrohilos” 

Strategy 2: Engagement 

The more engagement your Facebook Group gets, the more Facebook will show your Group to your ideal members in their own feed and in the suggested groups section! 

There are two main things you want to focus on in terms of engagement

1: Your own posts need to be engaging - whenever you post you want a whole tribe of people to like and comment! 

2: You want OTHER people posting in your group and you want members liking and commenting on their posts. 

Here are my top tips for making sure your own posts are engaging:

a): Study your audience

Know the type of content that they WANT to engage in and then post that! If you’re posting and NOT getting engagement, it’s usually because you’re not posting engaging content. I can’t tell you EXACTLY what to post (noone can) because that’s going to depend on your audience but I can tell you, the better you know your audience, the more engagement you’ll get.

b): Don’t post any external links (e.g. to your Website, Podcast, YouTube etc) Facebook hates this, as they want their users to stay on Facebook! If you have an external that you want to share - simple ‘tease’ about it in your post and then ask your members to comment below if they’d like to see it.

c) Always include some sort of ‘call to action’ or engaging finish to your post e.g ‘Agree or Disagree?’, ‘Comment below and let me know’... ‘Thoughts? Comment below and let me know’

In terms of getting other people to post, that’s a blog post on it’s own - which you can check out here!

Strategy 3: Your First 500-1,000 members

Strategies #1 and #2 work a treat but there’s one big limitation to them, you need to have a few people in your Facebook Group for them to work.

If your group is only small, it’s probably not going to be super engaging so Facebook won’t suggest it other users… 

Furthermore, if your group is still small, it’s probably not going to be the first group that pops up when searches the name on Facebook…

The good news, however is that you don’t need thousands and thousands of members in there to get Facebook to start showing it organically.

Providing you’ve got engagement and you’ve named your Group correctly - a few hundred people should do the trick (i’ve found the sweet spot is usually around 500-1,000).

If you’re thinking “500-1,000? Jono i’ve only got like 100 people in my group and it’s not really growing… what do I do?”

My suggestion is simple… 

Pick ONE social media platform (it doesn’t matter what platform you chose, they all work)... 

Go ALL IN on that one platform… Study how to use it (by completing a course) and the whole goal of using that platform is to grow your Facebook Group! 

Now there’s no such thing as ‘the best platform’... It’s more about what’s the best platform FOR YOU… and that’s a whole nother discussion that is too deep for this blog… but I was to simplify it… 

1: Pick ONE social media platform that you want to focus on

2: Complete a course in that platform (a highly reviewed course)

3: Spend time on that platform to grow your Facebook Group

4: Spend time in your Facebook Group making it fun and engaging 

5: Rinse and repeat

Even then, you’re not going to get to 500 over night but if you stay consistent - you’ll get there sooner, rather than later and eventually it will get to a point (around that 500-1,00mark) where the Group will start to grow itself and you can take your peddle of the medal a little bit.

If you’d like to join my Group and see how I engage it, you are more than welcome :)

The Course Creator Community Facebook Group

*Thanks Jono! and be sure to check out how to direct your business with confidence!