Facebook Users vs. Communities: One Door Closes While Another Opens

Wherever you’ve landed in the recent debate over the usage of Facebook, it’s difficult to deny just how massive the platform is. Steadily blossoming out of a tiny algorithm in a Harvard dorm room into a global social media phenomenon, Facebook’s numbers are simply astounding.

Take this exchange from the 2010 movie, The Social Network to illustrate the growth of the Zuckerberg network since its inception:

Marylin Delpy: What are you doing?

Mark Zuckerberg: Checking in to see how it’s going in Bosnia.

Marylin Delpy: Bosnia. They don’t have roads, but they have Facebook.

With nearly 2.5 billion monthly active users, Facebook would boast nearly a third of the world’s population were it a country and not a website. In fact, add in the other networks owned by Zuckerberg (WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger) and you push those MAU numbers to more than half of the world’s population. HALF.

There is one little problem, though. With each passing day more and more people are losing interesting in the social media giant. Whether it’s the younger generations leery of their dinosaur parents’ use, or data-breach-wary users who have been freaked out by recent security breaches, Facebook isn’t growing as rapidly as it used to.

In fact, despite its enormity, Facebook’s numbers are actually shrinking.

Back in January, CNBC reported that Facebook’s daily active users (DAUs) dropped for the first time ever in Q4 2017, and a recent survey reported that nine percent of Facebook users deleted their accounts (yes, a survey is obviously not on the same level as actual data, but still…).

From a macro perspective, it seems like this is the beginning of the end for Facebook. But taking a more micro perspective, there appears to be a resurgence in the site’s analytics. Both casual users and social media managers are noticing an upward trend on Facebook, despite any drop in usage and countless articles calling for you to delete your Facebook account.

This uptick is coming in the form of Facebook Groups.*

Want to see an awesome Facebook Group in action? Join the Powtoon Premium Club!

The Great Newsfeed Debate

Even without considering recent scandals or data breaches, many Facebook users were getting fed up with the news feed (pun only slightly intended). People were being served too many random videos, content from publishers they didn’t care for, and completely unrelated information manifested in a post that was liked by their cousin’s friend’s sister.

Regardless of any changes that Facebook might make to the newsfeed algorithms and how the site works in general, however, your feed is still going to be filled with stuff you only marginally care about. Whether it’s a Group you liked once and have some interest in or the official page of your favorite sports team/band/actor. Who’s really going to unlike or unfollow those pages? Let’s be honest, not you.

Enter Facebook Groups. By nature, they beat the feed. Hands down. No contest. How can Groups actually be winning the Facebook newsfeed battle?Because of the simple concept of community.

The Power of Community — Why People Join Groups

I’m a big (*HUGE) sports fan. I follow all my top teams, and many, many others across all available social media platforms. I love to consume content about the goings-on with my teams, regardless of what type of content it is.

That being said, I choose to seek out information about my teams not from the “official team pages,” but rather from those places where the content is presented from the fan’s perspective. The fan-created Instagram accounts, blogs and of course Facebook Groups.

Whether it’s the collective excitement after a win or a sometimes-too-intense argument about what direction the team should be headed, the value of the content I receive from those Groups is much greater than that of the regular pages.

Why? It breaks down into four simple areas:

• Two-way communication
• Feedback and accountability
• Singular focus
• Community

Two-way communication

Belonging to a Facebook Group means participating in two-way communication. Continuing with the sports example from above, a team’s official page on Facebook has one purpose: to broadcast information about the team. Game schedules, score updates, news briefs, photos, etc. You head to that page to check out information, not opinion.

In a Group, there is a lot more than just one voice stating an opinion and, more often than not, you’re either inclined to applaud that opinion or argue it. Either way, you’re engaging in a reciprocal conversation instead of passively receiving information.

Feedback and accountability

When a team broadcasts its updates, you have to take them at face value. Sure couch coaches sound off on their opinion in the comment sections, but unless you read those you’re just consuming the actual information itself. The feedback in the comments has less of an impact, and there is no accountability for disruptive trolls!

With Groups, you can’t just get away with posting anything you want. The content you’re posting will receive feedback from the rest of the community regarding your content’s validity, soundness and/or relevance. If it fails to meet those criteria, then you better believe you’re in for a world of pain from your fellow Group members. The community enforces content-quality norms in the same way that physical communities provide feedback and accountability to uphold behavioral norms.

Singular focus

Speaking of accountability, when some troll finds their way into a sports team fan Group on Facebook and posts content rivalling the focus of the Group, that is not fun. Especially when it comes to sports.

The Group was created for one purpose and with one focus and anything contrary to that, however truthful it may be, is strictly out of place. Groups are well curated, with moderators setting rules and addressing conflicts in real time. This helps the group stay true to its organizing focus, and drives deeper engagement for the people who genuinely want to connect with the focus of the Group.

Community

Community is the emergent quality associated with this mix of organizing principles. A community is any collection of people who communicate regularly and reciprocally, and build an emergent culture around a single topic or related set of topics.

The word community has been thrown around marketing and social media for years, but whether I’m attending my home town team’s game with 18,000+ other fans in the arena or I’m discussing it afterwards with 40,000+ fans on Facebook, I instantly feel that sense of community.

And the Groups that engage me the deepest are the best at cultivating that special feeling only a community can give you.

The Community Formula For Your Business—Why You Must Build a Community

Here’s a question, why should your company’s Facebook Groups be any different than those sports Groups that I’m actively a part of? Well, good news! If you apply the above 4 principles properly to your Group then success is right around the corner.

Two-way communication

One of the basic methods of success on social media is to not be a broadcasting service. Yes, I just stated that I follow my sports team pages that are built purely on broadcasting information. However, the difference between them and you is that no one cares about your content (initially). Sorry if that’s harsh, but that’s why you’re here, right? You want to know how to get those page views and comments.

Utilize your Facebook Group(s) to create a two-way dialogue with your users. Ask their opinions, come to them first with updates or beta testing, run giveaways, engage. Your page is for blasting out your content, your Group should (and can) be so much more. Create a conversation and your numbers will grow.

Bonus benefit! Not only will two-way communication get your customers more deeply engaged with the group, it will also provide you with an instant focus group of customers and potential customers. That market data is invaluable to your business!

Feedback and accountability

As I mentioned just above, Facebook Groups are an excellent place for feedback from your customers. At Powtoon, we created the Powtoon Premium Club for our users to suggest new product features, offer tips and tricks for using our platform and have a central location for providing feedback — both positive and negative.

Accountability comes into play with that invitation for feedback as members in your Groups will not hold back when it comes to keeping you accountable about your product/service/brand/website. That’s the way it should be, despite how rough it can get at times.

Singular focus

“Creating a group for a brand, you are inviting people to talk about it.” — Alec Piliafas, Social Marketing Director at 360i.

This Group is all about you. You choose who to allow into the Group (pro tip: use questions that each user must answer before being allowed to join). You drive the discussion. Without posting content and engaging the users the Group would die, so it’s on you to keep the conversation alive. And when the whole focus of the Group is on your brand, why would you ever run out of content for its members?

Community

At Powtoon, we call our community our Tribe. Whatever synonym you use, however, the point is that this group of people is special and should feel a closeness to your brand and other tribe members. You’re actively seeking out their opinion on company updates and features. They’re using your platform to solve their problems and you want them to have the most seamless experience as possible.

Creating an actual sense of community within your Group is paramount to its success, and will ultimately spill over into success for your brand across social media as a whole.

What Are You Waiting For?

There’s no time like right now! Set up that Facebook Group today and start cultivating a true community of brand fanatics!

*Author’s note: I capitalized Group throughout the article to single out Facebook Groups from other forms of online social communities.