An announcement was made regarding the arrival of a slew of new group tools at Facebook’s 2021 Communities Summit, bringing together various group admins across the platform to facilitate deeper connection and sharing of insights. The tools are no doubt designed to improve community building and audience engagement.
Additions
To start, Facebook is adding new custom color and post background options for groups, along with new custom fonts made by available admins. This update greatly improves an admin’s creative capacity and allows for better distinction in and between groups they’re in. Admins will also be able to set emoji defaults within groups, not adding something new, but rather allowing for more specific emoji use, such as a brick emoji default ‘heart’ reaction icon for a masonry group.
Going further, admins will also be able to use what are called ‘Feature Sets’, which are essentially a preset collection of different post formats and badges, with Facebook also adding in automated greetings that allow group managers to outline rules and regulations to new members.
Welcome posts themselves are receiving a full redesign, providing members with even more opportunities to connect. In line with this, Facebook is also increasing the tagging limit for welcome posts to 500, again allowing for more initial connections. With regards to providing a more entertaining and interactive environment, Facebook has also announced its Community Awards, which enables group members to share ‘Fun’, ‘Uplifting’, and ‘Insightful’ markers to posts and comments within groups that they find ‘Valuable’.
As Facebook explains:
“These awards encourage engagement, make the content more visible to members and help demonstrate the group’s content at its best.”
It would seem that the Community Awards prompt also improves post visibility as opposed to just enhancing engagement. The best news here has to be that Facebook is now opening the feature to all, where it previously was only available to a select few.
Facebook is also testing a new sub-group option within groups to grant admins better profiling and classification capacities. This would make finding more relevant discussions easier as you can search for smaller groups within the main group itself. Take, for example, being the admin of a trading card group; you can then dictate sub-groups as Pokemon, MTG, Yu-Gi-Oh, and more.
Interestingly, however, while there seems to be a focus towards building more interactive elements within group environments, admins can also choose to make their sub-groups a separate, PAID element. While it sounds unattractive, it’s also a new potential avenue for monetization while also passively building FOMO for those on the ‘outside’.
Another new element Facebook dropped is Community Chats, a buffed version of the standard and messenger chats, albeit made more interactive and exclusive for use within groups. This involves a new ‘Columns’ option for those “Long-Posts”, as well as new options for admins to pin announcements and the order in which they show up.
New group monetization tools are also in-bound, so admins focusing on financially building their communities definitely have something to look forward to, especially now that the holidays are almost here.
And lastly, Facebook is building a new, combined ‘Group’ and ‘Page’ experience to allow managers to better integrate and consolidate their efforts.
The Wrap
With all these changes expected and already taking place in Groups, it’s obvious just how much of a critical element they are to Facebook’s engagement and user retention. Groups are likely one of few elements on Facebook that keep users coming back, so it’s only logical for Facebook to act on it, especially now that it tries to win back a younger audience.
To close, Facebook highlights this:
“Groups and communities on Facebook are going to be an important part of [the metaverse] vision. Nothing beats being together. But when we can’t be together in person, the metaverse will help get us even closer to feeling that sense of an in-person connection. So, we’re focused on building bridges from our apps on 2D screens into more immersive virtual experiences. Facebook, and your groups, are going to be central to this.”
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