5 Hacks to Save Time Managing Your Facebook Group
Hosting a free Facebook group for your ideal clients, is one of the best marketing strategies you can use on social media because it helps your members get to know you and see you as a trusted resource. One common question we get is how to manage a group without it taking up too much time, so today we are sharing 5 hacks to help you save hours in your group each week.
Karen and I have been running groups for several years now, and when I was a health coach, it was one of the ways I enrolled new clients. They got to know me and when I opened enrollment for my programs, some of the members joined. It was an easy decision for them because they already knew me and felt a connection to me. That is the power of having a FB group that is specific to your niche.
Because I know how effective groups can be as part of your marketing and client attraction strategy, and it’s one of my zones of genius, I have put together a workshop series called Group Accelerator.
You’ll learn my top strategies for Growing a Facebook Group Full of Your Ideal Clients and Turning Them into Paying Clients.
If you have a group but it’s not growing or getting engagement and/or it’s not leading to new clients, this is for you.
Let’s dive into the 5 Hacks to Save Time Managing Your Facebook Group.
These tips can save you several hours each week, so pick one or two to start with this week and then move on to one or two more.
- Schedule your posts ahead of time. Schedule at least 1 week of content in advance (ideally 2-3 weeks in advance but start with 1 if needed). You can do this inside your group, or you can use a social media scheduling app. By scheduling your posts ahead of time, you won’t be scrambling to figure out what to post each day and you can be more intentional with your content. It saves time to batch your content, and when you know you only have to do it once a week or once every 2 weeks, you can take that off your plate as a daily task.
- Don’t spend hours in your group. Plan on 30 mins or so a day and set a timer if needed. This can either be broken up into two 15-minute blocks of time or one 30-minute block. If you need to be in your group for more than 30 minutes a day, it may be time to bring in another admin to help. This could be a virtual assistant who can answer some of the basic questions such as where to find things on your site or in the group or approving members. People think it takes a lot of time to manage a group, but YOU get to decide how much time you want to spend in it.
- You don’t need to post in your group 7 days a week. Scheduling posts 4-5 times a week is good, unless you’re running a challenge where you will have posts each day of the challenge. See what posts do the best and do more of those (check the insights in your group for this under the Insights tab and then scroll down to engagement). Focusing on the quality of posts and what gets conversations going is the most important thing rather than thinking about posting every single day.
- Repurpose previous posts. Look back at some of the popular posts that are a few months old and use them again. Not everyone sees every post the first time around, and people don’t mind seeing things again every once in a while. You can go to your “Engagement” tab in your group and scroll down and look for popular posts from a few months ago. Change the copy in the post a bit and/or use a different image to change it up.
- As your group grows and it takes up more of your time, you will want to find someone who can help manage your group. Look for someone you already know or find a virtual assistant for a couple of hours a week to start. You may find other tasks the VA can do for you in your business too. For your group, they can approve members, do a weekly welcome post, keep an eye on what’s going on in the group and direct members to your existing content to answer some questions (your blog posts for example).
If you want to learn more about starting and growing a Facebook group full of your ideal clients, be sure to check out my Group Accelerator program workshop series.
Resources and Links mentioned on the show: