Three Ways to Increase Engagement in Your Facebook Group

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If you feel like your Facebook group isn’t working for you, this is your podcast episode. Listen in as community builder and engagement expert Elizabeth Henson shares three easy ways to optimize your Facebook group and build an excited and engaged community.

Elizabeth Henson helps online entrepreneurs build and scale communities in Facebook Groups and beyond. Her five step process to community growth and management is a game changer for anyone who runs a community or social media platform.

Website // Instagram // The Community Builder Facebook Group // 25 Facebook Group Conversation Starters

The episode:

Katrina Widener: Hi everyone and welcome back to the Badass Business Squad podcast. I'm your host Katrina, and today I'm really excited to bring you Elizabeth Henson as today's guest podcast expert. Elizabeth and I met through a former podcast guest. And I think that this is probably one of the most aligned introductions that has happened because we are both just the biggest community people. If you guys listening know me at all, you know that I'm obsessed with community and building communities and fostering communities. And Elizabeth is equally obsessed. So I'm really excited to have her on the podcast. Thank you for coming today.

Elizabeth Henson: I'm so excited to be here and I couldn't have said that better myself. When we met, it was like, "Okay, we have so many things in common and so many aligned values around building community." It was kind of a match made in heaven. So I'm excited to be here.

Katrina Widener: I'm really excited because Elizabeth is going to specifically talk about Facebook groups, which I know that so many people are utilizing both in the form of their own Facebook group, but also participating in other people's Facebook groups. But before we dive into the topic, I was hoping Elizabeth, that you would quickly introduce yourself and your business for everyone listening.

Elizabeth Henson: Yay! Okay. So my name is Elizabeth Henson and I am located in Virginia Beach, Virginia. I feel like we forget sometimes to actually say where we're from in this digital space, whether it even matters. But east coast time! I am a busy mom. I have three kids. But really what lights me up is the community. And I have a super power in community and leadership, but what I learned really quickly was that people don't wake up in the morning needing community and leadership. Well they need it, but they don't know they need it.

So people will say things like, "Oh my community, my Facebook group is not engaged. Or my Facebook group is really quiet or I haven't done anything in my Facebook group in six months." Those are the things that they're actually saying. So that's how I landed in Facebook groups. And what we do at Elizabeth Henson Co. is I have a community management agency that really specializes in helping people grow communities around their brand in an organic way so that their customers and clients are raving about them. And it takes some of that like marketing pressure off of the visionary or the CEO. And we don't really specialize in ads. It's all organic community based marketing.

Katrina Widener: I love that so much because I am definitely one of those people who used to have their own Facebook Group. But I think that's something that a ton of entrepreneurs struggle with is "Okay, I've started my own Facebook group. How do I really optimize it?" Or even just like "I'm in Facebook groups and I'm not exactly sure what I'm doing here." So I'm really excited to dive into that today.

Elizabeth Henson: That's such a great point. And I mean, I have a couple that I'm not interacting in too! I have a couple that are asleep, a couple that are archived you know. But I will say there's so much power and magic in having a group full of people that have raised their hand as wanting to listen to what you have to say. So I kind of had this choice when I started my group this year, I was like "Well I could just rebrand an old group. Oh, then I'll have like the numbers and everyone will think that I'm so great because I'll have numbers." And my team really kind of pushed me like, "I really think you just need to start one from scratch. Your messaging has changed. Your business has matured so much. You're talking to different people than you were when you had that group." And so we did, we started a group at zero. I can't even tell you how happy I am that I did that because everybody in that group wants to talk about Facebook groups. It's a group about groups! So they're all there to hear what I have to say about groups, and that has been so magical. I know that wasn't even the question, but I figured that was a good place to kick this off.

Katrina Widener: Yeah, no, that's awesome. And you know what? That's what this space is here for. Let's normalize this for everyone. Let's be like," Hey we're just like you, everybody's in this together." I think like when we talk about Facebook groups, one of the biggest questions that people have is really just, "How do I make my own Facebook group work well. How do I grow it? How do I build it? How do I optimize it? And make it have a purpose almost."

Cause I know that there are a lot of people that it's like "Why should I create a Facebook group when there are so many out there already, what's going to get people to come to mind as opposed to someone else's?"

Elizabeth Henson: Yeah. And I love that. You know, hanging out in other Facebook groups is just as valuable. And we'll talk about that part in a minute. So make sure we circle back to how to get the most out of being in someone else's Facebook group. But to optimize your own Facebook group, first of all we can let go of like "content." People think I can't have a Facebook group because now I've got to have content for five days a week.

You actually don't need content in a Facebook group because people are showing up there wanting to engage and ask and answer questions and talk about themselves. So it really feels effortless once you kind of master how you want to show up in there. You just ask questions. That's the best thing that you can do in your Facebook group. Is just ask people "What was really hard this week?" Or "What's one thing that you've always wanted to do that you've never actually had the courage to do?" Asking them questions. And you're going to learn about your audience, which means you can better serve them.

There are a couple of little tips I can give for optimization really quick. What you call your group is an opportunity for SEO. So like rather than "Elizabeth's Great Group", we want to name the group something that people are actually searching for. And then the description is obviously important. That first sentence, because that's what is going to show up in search. And the Questions to Enter are like one of my non-negotiables, because again that's an opportunity for you to learn about your members and joining members. And the best thing that I did and that I have people do with their groups, is align a great freebie with the group.

So whatever topic it is that your discussing, so mine's like Facebook Groups and how to get more engagement, I have a really great freebie that aligns with the group. So if you download the freebie, which has 25 conversation starters, it also prompts you to join the group. Or if you find the group, it also prompts you to download the freebie. And I call this like the "boom bam", because you've got these two things to talk about that drive people to the same place that solves the same problem. And that freebie is like your content. So I have twenty-five prompts. I have 25 things that I can talk about without even having to think or generate content because people are in the group to learn more about the content that's in the freebie. So that has been the best thing. Because it really keeps people joining the group. It keeps people who join the group having things to talk about.

And I think that wasn't really talked about with Facebook groups five or ten years ago. You know, now it's getting a little bit more difficult to be appealing. And I think having a great freebie and like really, really clear messaging about what problem your Facebook group solves. People aren't creating groups just for the sake of community anymore. There needs to be not an agenda, but a transformation just from being in the group.

Katrina Widener: There are so many things in that answer that I feel like are really, really important. But before I dive into any of them, I want to tell everyone listening: I will link that 25 conversation starters for your group or social media in the show notes. So if you're like, "Oh my gosh, I want this." Don't worry. We'll make it really easy for you to get that freebie. But also for myself as someone running a Facebook group, both for my business but also for the Tuesdays Together group here in the Twin Cities, getting people to engage I feel like has always been like that biggest challenge.

So I love that you mentioned just asking questions, right? Just really being that person. Who's sparking the conversation and giving them a place to speak about what's coming up and to speak about, "This is my challenge from this week." Or, "This is what I have going on in my business right now. This is my plan for the end of the year." Right. Whatever that question is. And I do think that's one of the biggest challenges that a lot of Facebook group facilitators find. Is just like, "No one's engaging. No one's engaging. No one's engaging." So I really love that you just tackle that right off the bat. Of like, "Well here's an easy way to get people to engage."

Elizabeth Henson: Yeah. And usually if they're not engaging, it's because they're kind of treating a Facebook group like Instagram or their Facebook page. Where these longer paragraph golden nugget content is kind of the standard. But I always tell people, "Take a paragraph from Instagram and then just pull one sentence to be your Facebook group question." Like 80% of your Facebook group prompts can be one sentence or less. That is an actual expert fact that I learned out there from all the other Facebook group experts as well. So "What are you having for dinner tonight?" in one of those big ugly text boxes, is going to do so much better than, "Oh guys, I found this new recipe and it's so fast and easy, and it allows for me to know cook for my kids, blah, blah, blah."

That would do really well on Instagram. Nope. Facebook loves those big ugly text boxes and just get the conversation started. And from the business standpoint, when we ask a question like "What's one thing you wanted to do last week that you didn't get done?" Then someone might say, "Oh man I really wanted to create X, Y, and Z for my business." Then I have an opportunity in the comments to really have a meaningful conversation as the facilitator or the expert, or just as a member of the community. So the problem solving happens in the conversations rather than in the content itself, which is so much easier for someone like me that would just rather be in a room with somebody.

Katrina Widener: That makes so much sense.

Elizabeth Henson: Yeah!

Katrina Widener: My next question is really in regards to those people who are like, "I want a Facebook group for my business because I want to be driving traffic." And so I love that you mentioned linking it to a freebie because that's obviously a great way to build up your email list, get people to opt in, create a warmer audience even, than just the Facebook group. But what kind of recommendations, or what answer would you give to someone who's sitting there being like, "How do I make my Facebook group work for my bottom line? Right? How do I make it actually make money?"

Elizabeth Henson: Yeah, that's such a good question. And I think again that warmer audience, there's definitely some gold there. But I always encourage people that your freebie and your Facebook group are solving a problem. So the community builder is all about double your engagement in two weeks. I can guarantee that because I've done it for so many people. But then the group itself, or the freebie is like a bandaid, right? Like it's your ibuprofen for your headache?

Katrina Widener: Yes.

Elizabeth Henson: But what you're selling. Your program, your course, your service, whatever it might be is that long-term solution, right? That's like the surgery or whatever it takes to fix the headache permanently. The diet change, the lifestyle change, whatever your program is or product that you sell is the long-term solution. But your group is really focused on those five minute headache fixers.

Katrina Widener: That makes a lot of sense too, because then it becomes really easy to say, "Hey. We solved this little symptom of the problem in the group. But if you're like really looking to make the big shift, or if you're really looking to make this work for you. Or to solve the cause of the symptom, come and work with me in these capacities or come and work with me in these available opportunities. And I think about some of the Facebook groups that I interact with the most, or that I actively show up in myself and it really feels like, "Oh okay." So we have this ability to move past the Facebook group by doing things like talking about the freebies, but also by talking about your services and saying, "Oh, I'm seeing a lot of people are having this issue. Do you want to go live on that topic? Great. I'm live on this topic. Now I can mention my coaching or my courses or my programs." Right? It just makes sense.

Elizabeth Henson: And Facebook groups, people are going to see so much more of your stuff than Instagram. So like the healthiest Facebook groups that I'm either a part of or helping or behind the scenes keeping track of their analytics, between 40 and 80% of their members are active. And that is so much higher than any other platform. Right? But a lot of times people will make the assumption, "Oh nobody is responding to my posts. So no one's engaging. So my Facebook group is a failure." And I'm like, "Well have you actually looked at your active members? Because if you have 75 active members out of a group of 120, like that's fricking amazing."

And an active member is anybody who's scrolling, clicking, read more. They're physically visiting that group. So that is like your reach. Engagement itself, whether people are answering a question, it doesn't really measure anything, except give you data about what they do and don't want to talk about. But the goal that measurement that you really want to pay attention to is the active members. Because that's going to tell you how many people are seeing what you're doing, and that's so much higher than Instagram or your Facebook page or LinkedIn or whatever it might be.

Katrina Widener: I appreciate that mindset shift too for people. Of like, "Oh it's not necessarily about getting someone to comment on my conversation starter. It's about getting someone to actively read and look at the content in my group." And I think we talk about this often with other social media or other platforms where it's, "Okay. I might have someone who has followed me for two years and has never commented on anything. Never sent me a DM or anything like that. And yet they convert into a client because they have been interacting and actively reading the things I'm posting or looking at my stories and those sorts of things." And we often think that that engagement is like the end all be all.

But I love that mindset shift. It reminds me of what I worked for Better Homes and Gardens. Ad space on that website was not purchased based off of website visits. Right? It's not click-throughs that we're getting the people to put their advertising on the Better Homes and Gardens website. It was reach. It was just how many people landed on the page that this ad was on. And how many views there were. And not even actively spending a lot of time looking at the ads on that page, but just people who landed on the same page as the ads. That's what advertisers wanted to purchase based off of those numbers. Thinking about our Facebook groups or even our social media platforms in the exact same way is such a huge shift of the way that we're viewing it.

Elizabeth Henson: Yeah. It's just that brand awareness piece. And a lot of times people just aren't aware of their numbers, right? They're going on like this intuitive feeling of like, "This program no one bought it or whatever." I'm like, "Okay well how many people showed up to your webinar?" And they're like "12 and only one person bought." I'm like, "That's actually a really great conversion rate. Imagine if you had 500 people." Right? And then they're like, "Oh!" So like one person buying doesn't mean that your launch or your whatever is a failure. You have to put that against how many people saw it. So I just, I love that point and it always brings me back. It doesn't matter how many people are in your community. As long as you're wanting to lead over influence. I love talking about the difference in like leaders and influencers. Then it doesn't matter if it's 10 people or if it's 4,000 people. You're going to get the same or even better result.

My Facebook group is small. We're probably going to hit 200 members this month, but my active members are healthy. They're buying. My conversion rates are great. I freaking love them to the moon. And I'm like, "It doesn't matter how many people". If anything, I think Facebook groups tend to have a really great heartbeat when they're like between 400 and 1200 members.

Katrina Widener: It's something that I talk about with my clients too. Instagram, you want to have a profitable Instagram, not a popular Instagram. So it's the same thing. You want to have a profitable Facebook group and not necessarily a popular Facebook group. You want something that converts and has really engaged users, right? People who are like, "I'm reading what you're putting out there. I'm responding to the questions that you're asking. I'm actively looking at the information that you're sharing with me." And that's when you get people who are going to convert and turn into paying customers, as opposed to just, "I want numbers for those quote unquote vanity metrics."

I mean, I get it though. There's a huge, huge pressure put on people to be like, "Well how many followers do you have? How many followers do you have? How many people in your group do you have? How many people in your group do you have?" And just like a reminder for everyone listening, that's not the point.

Elizabeth Henson: Yeah. And a lot of the other people who educate on Facebook groups, their messaging is "I can get you to 50k members in this amount of time." And the strategy behind it is like that old school pod strategy where it's like "Sign up for my newsletter and I'm going to give you 50 Facebook groups that you can promote yourself."

Right? And so you go and you've promote yourself in these Facebook groups and you get all these people in your Facebook group. But are they actually interested in what you're talking about? And that's where I'm like, "The magic is not in how many people are in the group, but how well are you taking care of the people that are there. Are they raising their hand and saying, I want to learn about what you're talking about? In a group of 100 people who hands down are excited to be there is so much better than 50,000 that just... we're in a pod.

Katrina Widener: Right?" that just exist. Everybody knows what that feels like to be a member of those Facebook groups where it's just every single person is just promoting their own Facebook group within the Facebook group. And then I'm like, "Well why am I even here? Because this is not beneficial to me whatsoever!"

Elizabeth Henson: Right, right, right, right. Totally. And I was just like, "Man I'm just going to be a fly on the wall in these groups, and really get clear on what makes me different than what makes a lot of other people that are teaching Facebook groups. But it really boils down to being so much more focused on the engagement, right? How do we get twice as many people to be active in your group so that your conversion rates will go up. If it's a lead gen Facebook group. Sometimes people have Facebook groups for students that have already paid. And that looks a little bit different.

Katrina Widener: So we're of course running out of time now, but outside of those three easy things that you mentioned earlier of how to optimize your Facebook group. I was wondering if you could give us one last piece of actionable advice for someone who is running their own Facebook group and looking to really increase just their overall relationships with the people who are in their group.

Elizabeth Henson: Yeah, I love that. And I wanted to also circle back to our personal profile and just making sure that you're engaging in other groups. I like to use my bookmark feature on my computer instead of Facebook's pinned feature. And I have an entire folder on my bookmark for Facebook groups for networking. And I make sure that on my personal profile, it links to my freebie or my Facebook group, either one. And just in the little of time that I've been tracking. The number of people who are clicking and finding my group or my freebie through my personal Facebook profile is like 10x any other platform. Because when we engage in another Facebook group, like if someone is in a Facebook group saying, "Oh you guys no one is answering my questions on Facebook." I'm not promoting myself or anything like that, give them one little tidbit. Or someone else tags me. That happens all the time, too. The first thing people do is click on your personal profile and stalk you out.

So that is such an opportunity. People aren't doing that on Instagram in the same way. They're not reading the comments sections in the same way as they do on Facebook. So just making sure that your personal profile is optimized to point people to your group is like gold. Your question was people who already have a Facebook group and they're wanting to better connect with their members. I would say is to give quick, actionable tips, like what I just did in that group. So my group has a "Five Minute Gamechangers" hashtag so that when people join the group, they can just go to the "Five Minute Gamechangers" and it has tips like that. Has how to get screenshot worthy responses from your members, like really quick wins.

And when people are getting those quick wins for themselves, they're going to continue to come back. Cause that's really what it's about, right? Is creating a space where people feel seen and heard and they're getting what they want. Cause humans are selfish. So it's not about us. It's not about the Liz Henson fancy group. It's like, how can I give you wins for your own community as quick and effortlessly as possible.

Katrina Widener: That is such valuable information. And thank you so much for coming on here and sharing with everyone. My very last question is just where can everyone find you and find your Facebook group after they listened to this episode?

Elizabeth Henson: Yeah, so it's so easy. You can just go to Facebook and search the Community Builder. That's like the quickest way to just find my groups, search the Community Builder. Or you can go to my website, www.elizabethhenson.co. And then on Instagram, I'm @elizabeth.henson. So Elizabeth Henson all the places, but Facebook group is just called The Community Builder.

Katrina Widener: Well, thank you so much for coming on here. People who are listening can't see me, but I was taking notes throughout this episode. So thank you so much, I really appreciate it.

Elizabeth Henson: I love it. Thank you so much for having me. It was so awesome to chat with you.

Katrina Widener: Yeah!