Facebook is currently the largest social media platform in the world and one of the 5 most visited websites with more than 2 billion active users. And because many users spend around an average of 45 minutes per day on Facebook, this social site gives you excellent possibilities to reach out to your target business audience to market your product and services offers.
With this massive global reach of over 2 billion users, the two important questions for your business are:
- How can you differentiate your brand to make it stand out in the crowd? And…
- More importantly, how can you find and make connections with those people who are most likely to be interested in your products and services?
The answer to these questions just might be a Facebook Group is the solution that you’re looking for…
Facebook has organised part of its online platform to allow like minded users who are interested in the same social topics, niche market or industry types to gather together to form ‘groups’. These groups have expanded into large numbers with a huge range of themes from cooking and dieting, to relationship coaching and to marketing, money and wealth.
Although some of these can be private closed groups set up for members only, Facebook in the main allows you to join any existing group you wish and start to form relationships and market yourself subtly as you build up your reputation for helping others in the group.
The good news is, you can set up and start running your own Facebook Group which gives you almost complete control over the activities in the group and can provide you with an online space to get your message out and interact with your target market audience on a more personal level. And, as the administrator of your group, you can decide who has access and you can also appoint moderators to help you manage the group and ensure it follows group rules and that it’s not taken over by people just muscling in to hijack your members.
You can also automate your publishing through Facebook’s calendar, or a third-party tool like Hootsuite, so your moderators don’t need to be watching Facebook 24/7 and, once familiar with the task scheduling, an administrator of your group efficiently should take around 30 minutes a day.
The good thing about Facebook Groups is that there are many features to help you build a really quality and authoritative presence. You can share content information, documents, files, images, photos and videos with group members. You can also create surveys, polls, quizzes and events …even live online meetings.
You can also allow group members to share content with others in the group on a moderated basis, which means you can review their posts to make sure it is acceptable for others to use and block anyone who is not following your group rules.
What all this adds up to is that Facebook Groups can be an extremely valuable marketing tool for your business, and best of all, Facebook Groups are free to use and have clear instructions which makes them easy to set up. Which makes them ideal for building relationships and getting new leads onto your email list.
In addition, you can increase your marketing content by ‘publishing’ on a regular basis to position yourself as an ‘influencer’ and authority figure in your market and industry and build your brand. And Facebook’s clever interface instantly makes all your content mobile-friendly,
Finally, and best of all, Facebook will actually market your group for you because when someone searches for certain keywords in the search box, they will get a list of results, one of which should be your group if you have followed Facebook’s guidance. You can also get engagement through likes, shares and comments which will encourage others to look into your group as it tells Facebook that your content is worth paying attention to.
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