Facebook recently launched a set of new analytics features for groups, enabling group admins to get a better understanding of key trends and behaviors in order to help optimize the groups experience.
Facebook has been putting increased emphasis on Groups of late - last year, Facebook reported that over a billion people use Facebook groups every month, and that it was an 'under-appreciated' product which deserved more focus.
These new features are the most significant updates groups have seen - here's an overview of how the new analytics tools and features work, and what they can be used for.
1. Group Insights
In Group insights, you're able to access the following data
New members
Under the 'New Members' header, you can track the number of new members added to the group in the last 28 days. You can also view comparative statistics of what percentage increase, or decrease, was observed in new member requests.
You can utilize this data to better focus your promotional activities. For example, in the last week, if you gained a lot of new members, you can analyze the activities that have been carried out in that time frame, enabling you to double down on the elements that are working to drive interest in your group.
By clicking on the "More Growth Details" link beneath the main chart, you can further examine the last 28 days data and explore new areas for improvement.
Another helpful graph is the audience growth over time (again, up to 28 days in retrospect).
Post engagement
In post engagement section, you can check out the number of posts added to your group, and the relative engagement they've seen. You can use this data to create a more effective posting strategy to optimize group engagement.
The 'Top posts' shows you the posts which have generated the most engagement in the group, along with the specific Likes comments and views data for each.
This can help you hone in on the most relevant posts, again adding to your capacity to understand what's working, and focus more effort on the similar.
You can also check out the number of actions people took, and the number of active members within your group.
In addition, you can also find the best times to publish new posts to your group in the 'Engagement' section.
Members
This is the most important section. A key to maintaining your group engagement, and maximizing your opportunities, is to remain aware of the value your most loyal group members bring.
You should maintain awareness of the top contributors present within the group, and what they're interested in, in order keep them engaged, and encourage them to be more active. You can also give them the recognition, and reward them for being the top contributors, which can help people remain motivated to be the member of the group.
For example, in the below image you can see that 69% of the audience are females - as such, it goes without saying that if you want to maintain and boost group activity, you should consider a more female focus to your posting (dependent on context).
As you can also see in the below image, the highest percentage of members come from the 25-34 age bracket in this group, helping to further refine your focus and provide more understanding of your target market.
2. Membership request filtering
Facebook's also added a new Membership Request Filtering section, in which you can find all the membership requests for your group, and whether they've been "Approved", "Declined", or "Blocked".
It also highlights the pending requests you need to action in a separate field.
You can filter your group requests to more efficiently manage your requests - which, as your group grows, can quickly become a time consuming process.
You can take a glance at each requesting member in the profile tab, and filter their specifics by various qualifiers, including location and gender, to ensure they're the right fit for your group before letting them in.
(Image source: TechCrunch)
This is not only another time-saving measure, in that you can now filter through requests more efficiently, but it also acts as a spam filter, of sorts, helping you quickly, and easily, weed out undesirable candidates (thus improving your group make-up).
3. Removed member clean-up
Facebook's also making it easier to remove members who've got through, with a new tool that not only removes the member's access to the group, but also deletes all their posts within the group conversations in one click.
(Image source: TechCrunch)
You can use this feature to remove any bad actors from the group - which includes those spammers who only seek to get in so they can flood your community with promotional links.
4. Scheduled posts
Facebook introduced scheduled posts for Pages several years back, and now they're bringing the same functionality to groups, further enabling you to enhance your communications, and optimize based on member activity.
(Image source: TechCrunch)
Combined with the aforementioned ability to track user activity within you group, you can now tap into these behaviors to post at the right time to increase such engagement.
5. Group to group linking
Have you ever noticed that when you like one Facebook Page, you get a listing of similar Pages? Now, a similar feature is being made available for groups - when you join a group, you'll see a listing of recommended, related groups also, which Facebook calls 'group discovery'.
(Image source: TechCrunch)
These features address some long-standing issues with groups, and will be welcomed by Facebook group admins. As noted, digital groups and communities are growing remarkably, and tapping into these trends with new tools and options can only help Facebook increase engagement and get more people involved.
In addition, the new options have a range of benefits for brands - if you've not thought about how groups could be utilized in your social marketing efforts, maybe now's the time to do so.