Facebook looks to build more meaningful groups

Facebook launches new tools to make group admins lives a little easier

Facebook has rolled out some great new tools for group admins that will help them manage their groups more effectively. The aim of rolling out theses changes are to help group admins and moderators to save time and increase the amount of meaningful content to ensure the groups are adding value for Facebooks users.

Mark Zuckerberg  described his vision of Facebook groups as:

There is a real opportunity to connect more of us with groups that will be meaningful social infrastructure in our lives. More than one billion people are active members of Facebook groups. If we can improve our suggestions and help connect one billion people with meaningful communities, that can strengthen our social fabric.

At the Facebook Communities Summit in Chicago, it was announced to some of the top group admins of Facebook that they are looking to provide more tools for groups now and in the future. The first to be launched are analytics, membership request filtering, removed member clean-up, scheduled posts, and group-to-group linking.

New features for Facebook group admins

Group Insights: Group admins will have access to group insights to better understand what's going on in their groups. Facebook reported the following:

'Now, with Group Insights, they’ll be able to see real-time metrics around growth, engagement, and membership — such as the number of posts and times that members are most engaged.'

By understanding what content is most popular among your group members you will be able to share more of what works.

Membership request filtering: One highly requested change is allowing group admins to sort and filter membership requests. This can be done by category to then accept or decline all at once. This feature would be ideal for those who have a high volume of requests to join, allowing you to filter through requests and bulk accept or decline.

Removed member clean-up: We all need help to keep our communities safe from bad members, group admins can now remove a person and the content they’ve created within the group, including posts and comments, in one step. Trolls can be a massive problem for some groups, therefore having the option to block, delete their content and history is a bonus.

Scheduled posts: I'm sure to many group admins relief we can now schedule posts on a specific day and time. To make the most of this feature use the new insights feature to inform when you schedule, what content you use and what time of day is best to share.

Group to group linking: Facebook is testing group-to-group linking, which allows group admins to recommend similar or related groups to their members. A great feature for those businesses who have multiple groups and pages they could link to. A great way to bring associated communities closer together.

We would love to know what you think of these new features and whether or not you have them yet? Either comment below or tweet us.

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