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Suppose Freddy Fletcher has 400 friends on Facebook. Freddy wants to share photos and news of the Fletcher family reunion on Facebook with immediate family only, rather than a hodgepodge of high school pals, college fraternity brothers, ex-girlfriends and softball teammates. And the following week, Freddy wants to share photos of that wild bachelor party for all of his buddies (and only his buddies!) who couldn’t make the trip to Vegas. What is Freddy to do?
Mark Zuckerberg & Co. recognized Freddy’s dilemma and did something about it with the recent launch of Facebook Groups. This simple, user-friendly enhancement meets a genuine need to share information with subsets of friends on Facebook.
But here’s the inconvenient catch for communicators: for the time being, Facebook Groups can only be created on personal pages, not company pages. So it’s going to take a little while for organizations to figure out how to leverage this powerful new tool.
Here are four areas that you should consider when exploring Facebook Groups:
â–¶ Wear your marketing hat when developing lists of potential groups. Do a thorough analysis of the folks who “like” your organization’s Facebook page by leveraging the Facebook Insights dashboard. Also click on the info tab of page “likes” and see if you can identify clusters based on demographics, hobbies, areas of interest and geography.
Regarding hobbies and areas of interest, suppose company XYZ makes an adhesive product that appeals to both crafters and home improvement contractors. Consider separate groups that target each of these audiences.
â–¶ Identify and reward brand ambassadors who build successful groups. Because organizations can’t create Facebook Groups on their own, they need to identify and turn to trusted, outside ambassadors to establish and nurture these groups. These evangelists can be rewarded for creating and managing a Facebook Group through a host of incentives, including cash and in-kind donations, product discounts, “test driving” new products and services, gaining access to top company executives, etc.
Encourage these ambassadors to think long and hard about whom they invite to join the group. Here’s why: Once invited to be part of a Facebook Group, anyone in that group can invite others to join the group. What does this mean for companies? To put it bluntly, it’s very easy for the bad apple in a group to invite other bad apples. How would Pepsi feel if a Coke employee was invited to a Facebook Group page created by Pepsi fans?
â–¶ Exercise good manners and respect the rules of the road. As Zuckerberg points out, it’s easy to remove yourself from a Facebook Group. But that’s somewhat beside the point. Imagine that instead of receiving an offer for one of those ubiquitous 0% interest, no fee credit cards in the mail and opting-in, the credit card company would automatically sign you up for a new card without your permission and put the onus on you to opt-out.
So it’s true that Facebook Groups that add others to the group without permission run the risk of alienating company loyalists. Thus, encourage group members to use an opt-in approach when inviting new friends to join, via a direct message on Facebook in which the newly invited member grants permission to be added to the group. An invitation to a small, exclusive Facebook Group can be positioned as a reward or badge of honor.
In addition, companies should consider developing informal guidelines to share with creators of Facebook Groups to help ensure that the group runs smoothly. Along with these rules of the road, include suggestions for how to take advantage of the unique features offered by Facebook Groups—most notably the heralded group chat.
â–¶ Pay close attention to privacy setting options. Facebook clearly listened to its critics in developing the three privacy settings for Facebook Groups: (a) open —members and content are public; (b) closed —members are public, content is private; (c) secret —members and content are private.
An open setting is ideal for groups seeking an open dialogue with fellow brand ambassadors. A closed setting may make sense for small companies wishing to utilize Facebook Groups internally. A secret setting would be appropriate if members feel that having their names publicly affiliated with a given group could compromise their privacy.
While the power of Facebook Groups is still being realized, getting familiar with the feature and strategizing around it will give you a jump on the competition. PRN
CONTACT:
Jason Winocour is social and digital media practice leader at Hunter Public Relations. He can be reached at [email protected].