Facebook Groups | Strong Customer Communities and Brand Advocacy

November 17, 2017 by Lindsey Perron

Facebook groups continue to gain in popularity and in many cases it has replaced continuity and membership sites. There are as many uses as there are Facebook users. Facebook groups are an increasingly important tool. The best businesses use Facebook groups to help build trust with the brand.

As you know doubt know, engagement on Facebook for brands and publishers is down 22% YTD 2017 when compared to 2016. Unfortunately, as with many social media tactics, small business owners judge a Facebook Group only by watching metrics that measure costs and revenue.

Facebook Groups exist to enhance a sense of community. Great Facebook Groups help a brand show that it is trustworthy and to help form relationships between a brand's customers and prospects. They do not push product sales!

Ok, so that depends on what stage of the customer journey that the Facebook Group supports in any business.

How does a business owner build a successful Facebook Group?

This is the very topic that was discussed and presented during a recent Digital Marketer Meetup in Chicago, hosted by Viral Solutions, which Suzi Nelson [Community Strategist] gave as a presentation called “Next Level Social Media: Building Successful Product Communities with Facebook Groups.” This article was curated based upon Suzi's presentation.

Building a successful Facebook Group is part and parcel of knowing where your community fits in the customer journey. Some groups fuel the brand awareness and prospective customer engagement path. Many Facebook Groups attempt to excite a customer that may have purchased a tripwire and the group exists to ascend the relationship into a deeper product mix. Other Facebook Groups feed into the customer excitement and brand advocate portion.

Successful groups do NOT do all of those phases!

“The role of marketing is to move prospects and customers seamlessly through each stage of the Customer Value Journey. No one community can move people through the entire value journey.” ~ Suzi Nelson

What effect does a Facebook Group have on a businesses metrics?

Well, at the beginning of this article we through a dig at business owners that only evaluate the success of Facebook Groups based upon lowering costs and increasing revenue. LOL – ok so we agree we just do not see that as being the first measurement of a great group. Therefore, now we are going to give you two quotes shared at the Chicago Meetup of DigitalMarketer.com.

“Sephora's Beauty Talk members spend 2x more that their average customer. Superfans spend 10x more that the average community member” – Lithium

“Udemy instructors are 4x more likely to create a course if they are members of their online community.” – CMX

However an organization measures the success of its Facebook Group make sure it does so based upon the goals of the group and not based upon the group of another entity.

What basic human need does a Facebook Group meet?

A sense of community belonging! According to Suzi, a community is defined as a segment of people who form relationships as a result of shared goals, experiences and interests. She further explains that a Community Manager's role is to facilitate, encourage and maintain those relationships.

The basic human need to form relationships with each other, not just with a brand!

Successful Facebook Groups are not about the brand, they are not about the organization and they are certainly not about the administrator of the group.

A Facebook Group is a community and is NOT an audience! If your Facebook Group is mainly a discussion between the organization and the members of the group, that's an audience, not a community. However, if the conversation is mainly between the group members themselves, that is a community!

Indeed your Facebook Group should be a community of those who represent the segment of your market that the group would appeal to. They will have a common interest, life experience and objectives that correlate to your brand and products. But it primarily exists to enhance an engagement with each other and not the brand directly.

This is the basic element of the human need of a relationship with a another person. Something that technology has lost, human-to-human communication. The social side of social media. Your group members should recognize each other as a special tribe.

In our next article we will continue this discussion by sharing Suzi's ten lessons learned on building a strong customer community.

Copyright 2017 Viral Solutions [with permission from Suzi Nelson at DigitalMarketer.com]

Filed Under: Social Media Tagged With: customer loyalty, customer value, engagement rates, facebook, facebook targeting

About Lindsey Perron

As Thomas’ daughter, Lindsey was introduced to the world of sales and marketing at an early age. Curious about what her dad did, Lindsey would jump at every opportunity to help and ride along on sales calls. Always quick to take charge and lead the group—a trait that has only grown with time—Lindsey was frequently told by her parents that she was destined to be a manager or CEO of some sort. While working toward earning her bachelor’s degree in human services from the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, Lindsey interned with the UW Office of Equality and Affirmative Action and served on several councils, which gave her the opportunity to develop her persuasive writing skills, researching skills, problem-solving skills, project management skills, and more. After working as the lead teacher of the 4-year-old room at the local daycare center, Lindsey decided to switch gears and join the Viral Solutions team. In her position, Lindsey is able to help clients think through an end goal and reverse engineer it into the steps needed to achieve it.

When she’s not working, Lindsey loves spending time with family, be it traveling somewhere together or just hanging out at home.