It’s no secret that posts to your Facebook page are reaching practically no one these days. Just about all social networks have grown to the point where you have to boost and pay for ads. So with this in mind, where do Groups fit in?

This is Clickstarter, I’m Dante St James. This is episode 47… Making Facebook Groups work for you.

It’s only in the last 6 months that I’ve finally stopped hearing from marketers and small businesses complaining about the death of organic reach on Facebook - in English, that’s the death of simply posting to your Facebook page and seeing tonnes of people respond to you. The real fact is that organic reach on Facebook died it’s death way back in 2015. So, those days where you could start a brand new at-home business and simply grow it via your Facebook page without paying a cent are well and truly over.

But there is another part of Facebook that is getting remarkable levels of engagement and action - and that’s Groups. Last year, Facebook Groups membership grew by 40%. And by October 2018, more than half of Facebook’s 2 billion-strong community were part of Facebook Groups. And if you’re part of some particularly active groups, you’ll notice that a lot of your feed on Facebook is now taken up by posts in those groups, rather than posts from Business pages and news stories. And given that you tend only to join groups that are of similar interests to yourself, it means that you’ll see more from them, because you’re more interested in what they are saying than that random business page you happened to follow unwittingly 7 years ago.

The other reason why you’ll see a lot of posts showing up from the groups you’re active in, is because… you’re active in them. If you were active on the Adidas sportswear business page, commenting and liking everything they did, you’d see a lot more Adidas on your feed. Likewise, you see a lot of your best friend’s stuff on your feed because you interact with their stuff a lot. The common key to what you see lots of when you’re on Facebook or Instagram or LinkedIn for that matter, is that you see more of what you like, comment and interact with the most. Facebook isn’t manipulating your feed, your choices are. Once you understand this, then you start to understand how to make this fact can work for your business on Facebook. And while it might be tempting to try and increase your influence via your page, you’re going to do it faster via Groups.

For example, if your business is a plant nursery and your Facebook page isn’t getting a lot of traction, it’s probably because everything you’re posting is promotional. Buy this. Save on that. We’re open then. We’re closed until. The kind of stuff that, to you seems informational and beneficial. But to your audience it’s just more spam about you, you, you. Not them, them, them. And if there’s one thing we’ve learned about social media, it’s that no one cares about you. They just care about what benefit you bring to them. And your opening hours and sales are not a benefit to them. They are just expected from you.

Where Groups come in for this nursery, is in the realm of expertise and advice. You don’t add value to your relationship with a nursery customer by sending more advertising at them. You add value by helping them with service, advice and expertise with the plants you’ve already sold them. But not every plant is the same. People are quite parochial about their plants. Rose people aren’t Azalea people, Azalea people aren’t palm people. Palm people aren’t perennial people. You get the idea. With a country as big as Australia with so many climatic zones, chances are that the usual plant forums online don’t really cover much info on how to grow things in the tropics. So places like Darwin, Broome, Cairns, Townsville and Mackay aren’t really served by Sydney and Melbourne-centric advice and forums. This is where a local nursery can kick in real advice and ideas for their local region. That local nursery can moderate and run a Group all about growing fruit trees in the area. People can be encouraged to join the group at the point of sale at the nursery where they’ll see there’s already conversations taking place on it as well as expert advice coming in from nursery staff. If there’s stuff already happening there, then the new member will feel much more welcome - and given that you are approving them joining right then and there, they can participate straight away. So you’re hitting that instant gratification target that every customer loves. Rinse and repeat the formula across your major plant groups, make sure it’s manageable by you and your staff, and when conversation and questions are light-on, start up some new ones.

But beware of the temptation to start using these groups as a channel for broadcasting your sales messages. Things like “a big pallet of bonsai just arrived!” or “big reductions on chook poo fertiliser this weekend” aren’t for your groups. Respect the space as a place of expertise and friendly advice. Not sales. Offer help, deliver value in the form of advice, product reviews and even highlight your customers themselves, showing off how great your customers are doing with their plants - encourage them to share photos and videos of their plants. But don’t then turn it in to one big forum of ads for you and your products.

The question I am often asked at this point is along the lines of, “so if I am running these groups and I can’t promote my business in them, then what’s the point?”

Good question. And here’s the answer. Advertising is a shortcut around a lack of momentum in your business, or when your business is new and no one knows about it. It’s something you do more of when things are bad or uncertain. Advertising is a way of letting people know who you are and what you do in a condensed amount of time so you don’t have to wait years for word of mouth and reputation to carry new customers in or previous customers back in. It’s an attempt to short-cut or even cheat your way in to faster growth of your business. And for over 100 years, it’s been really successful at doing that. But we’ve also had 100 years of advertising being full of lies, mistruths, manipulation and over-promising. Older listeners would remember ads on the back of comics promising X-ray glasses by mail order, only to find that the X-ray glasses couldn’t see through a girl’s dress anymore than Seas Monkeys were a race of aquatic people who worse suits and took suitcases to work in the city. This means that advertising is something that people inherently mistrust in 2019. We simply don’t believe anything said in ads anymore. Or we find that everything we see in an ad just won’t match up to our expectations in reality.

When you create a space of safe advice and expertise that isn’t coming from a place of trying to sell something, you’re creating credibility. You’re creating authority. You’re creating a place where people trust you because you’re not trying to sell them something at every turn. Sure. your nursery can be branded as the sponsor of the group in it’s profile pic or cover photo. But if you start posting your specials and “new arrivals” you go from being a credible source of information to being yet another damn business trying to rip someone off.

While advertising might feel like it’s a faster way to generate sales, it’s short lived in it’s effectiveness. Expertise and sound advice from a professional lasts well beyond the day that advice is given. And can drive sale after sale after sale, when it’s known that the advice is being given freely from a business that is known for engaging with customers long after a sale is made - without constantly trying to sell them something else. But, this approach, while having a longer lasting effect on sales into the future, does take longer to work. You could be giving out advice for a year before you see any real return on your investment. But once that wheel turns the once, it’ll keep turning as long a you keep the advice and expertise coming.

Got a topic you’d like me to cover Email [email protected] or drop a message via facebook.com/clickstarter

I’ll catch you over the Easter weekend as we continue to help your small business to get known, get found and stay known.