You Can Now Link Your Facebook Page to a Group (and why you may want to do this)

Facebook recently announced that ALL pages can now link their page directly to their group. How awesome is that? This is so exciting for many reasons:

1. It Is Hard to Find New Groups on Facebook

Unless you know the exact name of the group you are looking for, it is hard to find them in the Facebook search. Now that you can connect your groups directly to your page, this will allow patrons to easily locate your groups. All they have to do is visit your Library Page, and go to the left side. (For how to link your groups to your page, visit this handy article from Grytics!)

2. Groups Work Differently than Pages

If you ever considered making a group for your library patrons, now is the time to do it! It could be ideal for many reasons:

1. Groups get higher priority in the news feed than pages (so, patrons are more likely to see your posts).
2. It'll allow you to divide your followers into appropriate groups. You can make a group for teens, another for parents/caregivers, another for adults and only post the relevant information into each section. It may also provide a way for patrons to connect with each other -- a local community with people they wouldn't normally have a reason to reach out to (especially if your town/city DOES NOT have a special Facebook group for residents).
3. You will have the ability to comment and like as your page in your groups, which will help patrons know it is "the library" that is responding.
4. Facebook acknowledges that it can be time consuming to accept people into groups, so they added a filtering feature where you can easily sort the requests by location and accept/deny at once. You can also add a questionnaire with up to 3 questions that new members must answer before they apply if you want to expand your reach beyond what locations they have listed on Facebook.

3. Bump Your Post Reach With Targeted Marketing

Not only can they easily find the link on your page to your group, you can also easily share your relevant posts to this group. Targeted Marketing! When people respond to your post in the group, it'll bump up your post reach on your page as well. And, as we all know by now, when your current post gets interactions, it'll do better and increase the reach on your next post. That's a win/win!

4.  Group Analytics

With targeted advertising, you'll be able to see what posts are working for your specific groups: the demographics as well as the days and times they are active online. This is valuable info that you cannot parse from a generic Facebook Page which all patrons follow. And new to Groups: Admins and moderators can create and schedule posts to publish at a specific day and time!

Do you have a successful Library Facebook Group? If so, please share in the comments! We'd love to hear what types of groups have worked for you.

Additional Info:
Our First Communities Summit and New Tools For Group Admins
3 Reasons Why Facebook Groups May Offer New Opportunities for Brands
How to Link Your Facebook Groups and Pages
Facebook Groups Can Now Screen New Members With a Questionnaire