Why removing your “unavailable” members from a Facebook group could be one of the best things you could do for your community.

Facebook has recently launched a new feature for Facebook group admins that allows you to see your “unavailable” members. These are members who may have deactivated their account, blocked an admin or have pending status within the platform.

These members, however, are still added to your total member count despite not being currently active (if ever at all).

So why take the time to remove these members from your community?

Facebook is working hard to draw focus to groups to bring people together and foster connections and will often promote groups through the “suggested group” feature on newsfeeds. They say that the more engaged your community is the more likely Facebook will promote it for you and we all love a little organic growth.

Let's work out some math.

If you download the engagement details from Facebook Insights and work out the average number of active members across the month we can put this into perspective.

1. Highlight the values in the “active member” column
2. Click the Σ (sum) followed by average, it will give you your average actives members that month.
3. Divide it by your current total members to get an average % of current active members in the community.

Hopefully, you have a good percentage already active but imagine how that can change if your “unavailable” and inactive members were not there.

Now if you are a community builder that is required to present data each month, this is a great way to show an increase in engagement and at the same time keep on top of what I am going to call ghost members who are bringing no value to the group at all and focus on making sure those that are there want to be and want to participate.

The process of removing the unavailable members from your community can be tedious as you have to do one by one, but I guarantee in the long run this will help your community engagement numbers.

1. Go into your community and click “members”
2. Click “unavailable” on the right-hand side
3. Click the 3 dots next to the member and select “remove from group”

Of course without the right content in the first place, your community will not engage or participate so continue to come up with relevant, thought-provoking content that will bring value to your members and keep the momentum going.