Facebook Expands The Reach Of Public Group Conversations

Facebook is continually updating its group discussion methods, and the latest in that effort is adding public group discussions onto people’s news feeds, a way to expand the reach of public group conversations. This feature helps to get more people involved in group discussions as it pushes relevant discussions onto a user’s news feeds.

The social media giant is making these changes in the midst of the 10-year anniversary of their Facebook Groups. The company is hoping to remind everyone of how online communities turn to be a lifeline when people can’t be physically close. As per their records, more than 1.8 billion people use FB Groups every month, and there are tens of millions of active communities on FB. 

Here, people come together to converse about their interests, find out new things, be entertained, and make connections. So, to further help communities connect with people – without any glitch – the company announced multiple updates including automating moderation and adding group discussion elements to news feeds.

Related Discussions in News Feed

The new feature is said to roll out in a couple of months for testing. If someone posts a link or shares a re-post, people in their friends’ list will be able to view related group discussions in their news feed, beneath the post. There will be a link which users can click on and view the on-going public group discussions regarding that particular post. However, users can then also join that particular discussion without actually having to join the group.

Updated ‘Groups’ Tab

Facebook will update its ‘Groups’ tab to surface content from public groups that are correlated to the user’s interests. That is, when a user visits the new group tab, they would be able to view posts from Public groups’ related to their interest as well as popular posts across Public groups, recommended to them. Users can directly join a recommended group or a discussion that they like or what they feel like is relevant to them. They might also start to see conversations from Public groups more outside of the Facebook app, like when they are searching the web.

 

Facebook had introduced the Group tab in 2010, and since then, it has been widely used. Groups are a way for people to engage with others with similar thoughts and ideas.

What Role Will The Group Admins Play?

The FB Group admins will have controls over their group settings, on deciding who can post and comment without approval. They can retain their public status and yet, control what non-members can see. To ensure that their community culture stays strong, FB Group admins also show users the group rules before they post any content on its platform. Most importantly, the Facebook Group admins will have the choice of including their groups in this new Public Groups’ experience.

Along with expanding the reach of groups, the FB Group Admins will also receive several new tools to work with.

“We’ll start to surface related Public group discussions to you across the Facebook app, including in News Feed and in the updated Groups tab. People will also be able to join Public groups without having to wait for approvals. However, admins of those groups will still have control over who participates in their group, such as with the new Admin Assist feature,” read Facebook’s official blog post.

However, admins jobs are becoming more important for Facebook, as they are considered to be the main gatekeepers for content. So it has become essential to keep them empowered and informed.

Latest Tools for Group Admins

To make it easier and more efficient to manage active communities in Facebook Group, the company is rolling out new tools for admins. They are:

• Admin Assist: It helps to set rules so that Facebook can automatically moderate posts in your group for you. For instance, a user can decline posts with certain keywords, ban posts from users who haven’t been in the group very long or whose posts have been reported in the past.

 

• New Topics: Group Admins can manage content by topic with hashtags. They can also pin a topic to the top of the group to highlight it for everyone.

 

• Brand Collabs Manager: To make money from your Public groups, use the Brand Collabs Manager tool. This tool helps by connecting with brands that are looking to promote their products and services.

 

• Community Management Certification: Through this tool, you can now learn from a certified course on how to build, grow, and support your Facebook group effectively.

New Group Features to Engage With Your Community

Lastly, Facebook Groups will also introduce a number of new features to encourage more engagement between members in the community. The features are:

• Chats: You can now create and join real-time conversations within a group.

• Prompts: Initiate conversations with a new type of collaborative post where you can share images about a specific topic and swipe through everyone’s responses.
• Q&A: Admins can organize question-and-answer sessions (text-based) that are easy for the community to take part in.
• Customize your profile in groups: It helps to change the way you show up in different groups by setting a custom profile photo and sharing info that’s relevant to each community.

Facebook has been continuously blamed for its spread of harmful and misleading content. As Facebook Groups need to be safe for everyone, the company said that they have made necessary changes to reduce harmful content and misinformation from circulating around on the platform.

It’s not a secret that Facebook wants its users to spend as much time on the platform as possible and to achieve that goal, the social media giant has come up with innovative ways of engagement. With the latest update of surfacing public group posts into users’ News Feeds and rolling out new tools for Facebook Group admins, the company wants to help people stay engaged and entertained on their platform. 

Facebook is a great marketing tool for businesses. So, utilise it to help your business grow. You can either do this by yourself or have experts do it for you.