- Wondering how to create a Facebook group?
In this video I'll walk you through step-by-step
so you can not only get your group set up the right way,
but have it working well for you right away.
All right, let's get into it.
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My name is Jerry Potter and today we are talking about
how to set up a Facebook group.
I'll walk through the privacy settings in a Facebook group
because even though they've gotten a little bit better,
they're still kind of confusing sometimes.
And I'll show you the four primary ways
to grow your Facebook group
once you've got it up and running, all in this video.
From facebook.com, so just the main Facebook website,
you're gonna click this little grid thing up here.
This is the menu on Facebook.
And then under this create menu here,
you can see there's a lot of different things you can do.
We're gonna come down here,
we're gonna click on create group.
So that's how you'll get started.
Another way that you can do it.
I just like to always show a couple,
in case Facebook changes something.
Over here on the left, I can click groups in this menu
and then I can click create new group right here.
So hopefully one of those looks exactly
like what you're seeing in Facebook right now,
but we know how they like to change things.
So here's to create group screen.
The initial stages are really quick.
You're gonna name group.
For this tutorial I'll call this
Social Media for Streamlined Entrepreneurs
which happens to be the name of my podcast,
if you want to check it out.
Next, you're gonna choose the privacy level.
So you have public, which means anyone
can see who's in the group and what they post.
So this means nobody has to join your group
unless they want to actually comment on things.
They can read absolutely everything.
Private means only people who are in the group,
in other words, they've requested to join
and you've accepted them, can see the posts
as well as who is in the group.
Now I generally do private.
Obviously, if it was a paid group,
you definitely wanna do private.
But private gives a little bit more intimacy
for groups and things like that.
And if you are trying to grow an audience using a group
then you definitely want to be private
because you want people to have to join,
generally, before they're able to kind of see
and engage with everything.
So for this, I'll go ahead and choose private.
Next, I've got this other option.
Do I want the group to be visible or hidden?
So if it is visible, that means
anybody can find the group and request to join.
Hidden means only people who are in the group
can find this group.
So you'd wanna do that if you're doing
something very personal, like for family
and you were just inviting people
that you were Facebook friends with to the group.
I can tell you if you're not
Facebook friends with the people,
it can be hard to even get them into the group.
Now, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.
I just wanna let you know that I found that to be buggy.
So unless you have a really good reason
or it's super personal or private,
I always go visible in terms of this.
Next, here in this box,
if you have some friends you want to invite to the group.
If I look over here in the middle
you can see it says one member.
That's gonna be me.
You're the first member of your group.
But if you wanna invite some other people right off the bat
you can type their names in there.
And if you are Facebook friends with them,
they should be able to pop in.
Now I'm gonna come down here and I'm gonna hit create.
And that's literally it.
That's all it takes to create
the Facebook group, technically.
Like the groups here now.
However that's not where you wanna stop.
Let me show you a few more important things.
First, I do recommend uploading a cover photo.
It could be something that you created in a program,
like I like to use Canva Pro.
And if you're interested in Canva Pro
you can check out the description for a link to that
where you can get a 45 day free trial.
But it could also just be a photograph
or anything like that.
And so you just click edit
and then you're gonna choose upload photo.
And then you can upload a specific photo for your group.
Just another way to make your group stand out.
If somebody does find your group in search
they won't be able to see your posts
if it's a private group like we talked about,
but they will be able to see your cover photo.
So it's just, again, another way
that you can brand your group.
If we scroll down here, you can see
a few options here that they've described.
Invite members, we talked about.
Add a cover photo.
I do recommend adding a description.
So you're gonna click here
and you can actually type quite a bit here,
multiple paragraphs.
But again, if somebody finds your group in search
or gets recommended to your group,
this is where they're gonna know
what your group is all about.
Hopefully your name makes it clear
somewhat what the group is about.
Your group description is really good
for attracting the right people to your group
as well as rejecting, not like technically rejecting them,
but letting people know sometimes who it's not for.
So they won't bother to join and waste your time
if it's not a good fit.
Now, a few more important settings
I wanna show you in this group really quick.
Right here, under membership questions,
you can have people answer questions
before they come into your group.
For example, you could collect their email address
if you wanted to offer them something
to join your email list.
You can ask them where they heard about the group.
You might wanna just ask them
you know why they're joining the group.
So you can have that as a way to screen people
to make sure you get the right people in the group.
Down here, I'm gonna click on grow group.
Facebook will suggest your group.
Now they don't most groups, obviously
unless they get a lot of engagement.
But this is a thing you can turn off
if your group is designed to be like super, super private
and you don't want them to suggest it to anybody.
And then let me show you the key group settings down here.
A lot of the stuff you can kind of figure out on your own
but if you wanted to change the name or the description
or the privacy, all of that is under here.
If you want to customize the address.
So this group that we just created
is facebook.com/group slash this big long number, right?
So I might want to come in
and since I named it after my podcast
I might wanna call it streamliners podcast.
And if the name's available,
it'll give you that green check mark, and you can hit save.
You can change the color theme for your group if you want.
Here's one thing you're going to wanna look at,
who can join the group?
By default, it's just personal profiles
but if you wanna let pages join your group too,
business pages, you can check that.
Here's another important one.
By default, anyone in the group can approve member requests.
So if you want to be in charge of who's joining your group
and who isn't, who can't, then you want to click that.
So it says only admins and moderators.
The rest of these are mostly self explanatory
but I do have a video all about Facebook group settings
and I'll link to that in the description of this video.
So once your group is set up
and you're gonna go do that today, right?
Once it's set up, how do you grow it?
How do you get more people in there?
Here are the four primary ways to grow your Facebook group.
Number one, with outside sources.
So this is generally where everybody starts.
But anything else that you have,
like if you can post on your personal profile,
if you've got an email list, anywhere else
you can tell people about the Facebook group.
But I'll tell you the most important thing
when you're doing this.
If you just say, hey, I've got this Facebook group
I think you'd like to join it,
cause here's what we're gonna do.
You might get some people.
But at this stage most of us that are on Facebook
are already in too many Facebook groups,
more than we can track of, right?
So give them a very specific reason.
Hey, I've got this new Facebook group
and next Tuesday, I'm gonna do a Facebook live
about whatever problem you solve.
Or next Tuesday, I'm gonna start sharing
my five favorite tips for whatever problem you solve, okay?
Give them a very specific reason
that makes them want to be there,
makes your ideal person want to be there.
Second primary way to grow a Facebook group
is through member referrals.
So ask your current members, once you have some,
to refer their friends.
Now it works best if you do this in very specific ways.
Like maybe once a week, you say
hey, do you know one friend?
As opposed to invite everybody you know
to follow this Facebook group.
The other thing to keep in mind
is you don't want everybody's friends.
You only want the people that your group is for.
So similar to what I said
in the first way to grow a Facebook group,
give them a specific reason.
Hey, next week in our group
we're gonna be doing this, this and this.
If you know somebody else that could benefit from that,
would you take for five seconds
and invite them to join our group?
Third primary way to grow a Facebook group
is gonna be through being found in search.
So when you are deciding what to name your Facebook group
as we talked about earlier,
if you have a name that it's very clear who it's for
and what they're going to get.
Then you're gonna be a lot more likely
to get clicked on in all of those search results.
So for example, if you had a Facebook group
that was, I don't know,
accounting support for small business owners,
Well now I know exactly who it's for
and I know what I'm gonna get in there.
If that's what I need,
then I'm gonna request to join your group.
So think about that again, when you're titling your group.
And finally, the fourth way to grow your group
is to have a highly engaged group, okay?
Even if you've only got your first nine people,
Be asking questions, getting them involved.
The more people engage, a few things will happen.
First of all, your posts will come up
in the feeds of other group members.
So that'll keep your group relevant
and then they'll hopefully engage in those posts as well.
Also, the more engagement your group gets,
the more likely Facebook is to recommend it to other people.
Hey, you might like this group.
And finally, the more engagement your group gets,
the higher it's gonna come up in search results
if somebody searched for the topic
that your group is all about.
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Hey, if you're frustrated with the way your social media
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where you can get more results with less work,
check out my free masterclass,
3 Secrets to a Streamlined Social Media Strategy, okay?
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