Facebook is making that easier to do. It recently introduced the ability for business pages to create and manage Facebook groups. You can both link an existing group to a business page, (making the page an administrator) and create new groups without the need for your personal Facebook profile.
The feature was first tested in March, TechCrunch reported, but is now rolling out to all page managers.
Chris Cox, chief product officer at Facebook, shared the news in a Facebook post:
In the post, Cox wrote that the feature was spurred by the success of The Washington Post’s group of engaged readers:
Like so many things we build, this came out of a pattern of emergent behavior on Facebook that was new and interesting – and in retrospect, obvious. Terri Rupar and Teddy Amenabar at The Washington Post started a group called PostThis – from The Washington Post , where reporters talk directly to the most avid fans of the paper about how stories come together. It was a digital version of letters to the editor, but with ongoing real-time discussions. The fans loved it and we heard from the Post that it was a success, connecting the newsroom with their most avid readers, and their avid readers with each other.
This is one of thousands of interesting examples we heard of super-fans who wanted to be a part of the day-to-day discussion of the decisions inside the walls of an organization they care about, and more importantly to connect with everyone else who felt the same way.
Facebook’s co-founder and chief executive officer, Mark Zuckerberg, also posted about the feature:
Though the feature enables brand managers to build active communities and interact with passionate readers, fans, viewers and customers, communicators can also use it to create groups that cater to a plethora of initiatives, such as helping people overcome addiction.
Zuckerberg wrote:
Some of these groups will be lighter -- like people who follow sports teams or TV shows. Others will be more serious. Dealing with addiction can be isolating and AddictionUnscripted.com is a place for people affected by addiction to come together. Now if you join their page, you can request to join the Affected By Addiction Support Group to connect with people who are going through the same thing. So far, more than 45,000 people have joined the group to share their stories and offer support.
In today's world, we all get support from a few sources: our family and friends, our communities, and our social safety net. In our civic discussion we most often focus on our social safety net, but I've found that our communities are often just as important for taking care of us, and we need to focus just as much time on building them.
For Facebook users, the groups offer the opportunity to post about and dish on topics that matter to them.
[RELATED: Join us for the Employee Communications, PR and Social Media Summit at Microsoft.]
TechCrunch reported:
… Since the News Feed prioritizes showing content that gets lots of clicks and Likes, niche content could often fall flat and reach few people. Plus there’s the issue that Trump’s polarization of the United States has made sharing political content to Facebook a minefield of angry relatives and extremist high school classmates.
By pushing users to join and participate in Groups, Facebook gives them homes for the different sides of their prismatic identities. If you define yourself by the band you listen to every day, the brand you wear or the person you vote for, your enthusiastic posts about them might get a more positive and less contentious reception inside a Facebook Group.
For PR and marketing pros, groups offer the chance to cultivate relationships with your most passionate fans and further understand their needs and desires. (You can join PR Daily’s #RaganChat group here.) The feature might also help you identify brand ambassadors.
All these efforts can be accomplished through an organization’s page, instead of by individual employees using their personal Facebook profiles.
For Facebook, the feature is yet another way to keep users on its platform for as long as possible with each visit—a highly sought prize as social media sites fight for advertising dollars. Facebook will also probably find that the move gives them access to another trove of data.
What do you think about the feature, PR Daily readers?
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