Own Your Community: The Problem with Facebook Groups

Facebook groups seem like a good idea, until you have features missing or, worse yet, privacy issues. Let’s talk about why you should own your community — on a website you control. Owning your own content is a mantra in WordPress, so why shouldn’t it be the same with your group?

If your community is something important to your business – take the time to build it yourself and build it on your own property.

Greg Fin

The Problem with Facebook Groups

What’s the problem with Facebook groups? It’s simple. They’re great until, well, they’re not.

So it seems like Facebook is too big to quit. But is it? I mean, really, if you can make your own social network wherever you want (you can with PeepSo), why would you want to be dependent upon Facebook?

Who knows what’s going to happen? Maybe it will be shut down. Maybe your users will leave. Maybe your group won’t have good retention. Maybe your entire group won’t be allowed, especially if it’s against the terms of service (think CBD oil). Maybe you want to protect the privacy of your members (think support groups).

Either way, it’s good to build your community on your own website. Here’s some great tips.

Groups still works much like it did when Facebook introduced it a decade ago—and without significant improvements, the company doesn’t give people much incentive to use it as Zuckerberg envisions. He’s done nothing to make the tool do anything more than a way of bringing families, book clubs, and kickball teams together.

Davy Alba

Brand Ambassadors Are Your Advocates

When you build a community around your brand, you are gathering super fans with your new customers. Building community around your brand ambassadors is an effective way to allow your members to help one another. Not only is this beneficial for the community as a whole, but it can also help relieve your support department.

One of the best parts of hosting an online customer community is seeing the power of unleashing the creative energy and altruistic behavior taking hold as members ask questions, answer questions, and share best practices.

Chip Rodgers

Not only are you facilitating discussions around your products and services, but you are keeping them on your website. This is a great ranking signal because it produces trust and demonstrates authority. Your online community also encourages brand ambassadors to browse your content and product catalog.

One of the major plus points of a forum for me is that it keeps a member on your site, which also increases the likelihood of them consuming your content whilst they’re there.

Callie Willows

Subtle Marketing is The New Black

No one likes the aggressive kiosk guy who chases you down as you’re intentionally walking toward the Apple Store. So why do we do it online? Just stop. We have to navigate two to three pop up ads, an exit intent pop up, emails from cart abandonment, and then email marketing that never stops.

When building your brand’s community, don’t commit community suicide with marketing. Be subtle. Be polite. Be helpful. Listen, learn, and connect.

Fostering a legitimately helpful and delightful online community builds a lot of trust in you and your brand. It shows them that you aren’t all about cramming spammy marketing messages down their throats. Instead, you are genuinely interested in learning what they want, getting them together with other like-minded people and facilitating a real two-way conversation.

Assya Barrette

Own Your Online Community With PeepSo

Own your brand. Own your community. You have all the tools you need to start your private community right here with PeepSo. Create your community your way. There’s no reason why you shouldn’t start today.

Brought to you by Bridget Willard

Marketing Consultant & Strategic Partner. Keynote Speaker. Author. CEO. I’d love to train your team how to effectively use social media.