How to Strategically Post to Facebook Groups with Agorapulse

 

Do you manage Facebook groups for your clients? If so, consider using Agorapulse to post to Facebook groups and save time and energy.

Whether your Facebook Group is just getting started or is well established, you can post to it via Agorapulse. So, you can be more strategic and targeted as you manage your groups. Doing so can create more growth and engagement for your group, and help you reach your goals more effectively.

As an admin of several Facebook groups, the enhanced productivity alone is worth it. The ability to schedule Facebook posts in my groups helps me further streamline my work. Rather than needing to manage my pages in Agorapulse and then log into Facebook to post my content in my groups, I can do it all in one place.

How to Post to Facebook Groups with Agorapulse

First, add your Facebook Group to your Agorapulse dashboard. This is a simple three-click process.

Next, you need to authorize Agorapulse to post to Facebook. You will have to do this for each new group.

Finally, you’ll get a prompt to add the Agorapulse app to your group itself. If the authorization window doesn’t pop up automatically when Facebook opens, you will have to go through a couple of additional steps. Scroll to the bottom of your settings page to “Advanced Settings.” Click on the pencil to edit your apps.

Now click on “Add Apps” in the window that pops up, and search for Agorapulse.

When you select the Agorapulse app, it will ask you for authorization to post to your Facebook group.

Click “Add” and you are all set! You will be able to go back to Agorapulse immediately and start scheduling content.

The prompts through this process are easy and quick to follow. I took fewer than 2 minutes to add a new group to my Agorapulse dashboard.

Note: You must already be an admin natively on the Facebook group in order to link the group to your Agorapulse dashboard. If you’re not, ask a teammate to make you an admin on the native Facebook group platform. To do this:

1. Make sure you are a member of the group that you need to admin.
2. Have a current admin search for you in the member list.
3. Click on the three dots to get a menu of options.
4. Click to add the new admin.

Using Scheduling Tools for More Strategic Posts

Now that you have your Facebook group added to your dashboard, how do you best make use of all your scheduling power?

You will want to use these primary functions:

• Create categories and queues for your content
• Republish content important to your members
• Add a team member for better collaboration

When used together, these strategies can give your group management a giant productivity boost. 

Let’s take a look at each in turn.

Using Queue Categories for a strong mix of group content

If you are not using content queue categories for all of your social media posts (including Twitter,  Instagram, and LinkedIn), you are missing out.

Queue categories are perfect for groups. You can use them to create predictable posting patterns–such as theme days–so members know what to expect. And you can easily see your schedule at a glance.

Here are a few things you can try out:

• Monday Motivation. Have your group members share something that inspires them or react to something that you create.
• Tuesday Tips. Invite your group members to share tips from their area of expertise or share a tip with them to build credibility.
• Fanpage Friday. Many groups encourage people to help one another by liking each other’s social media profiles. If this is a good fit for your group, try this one out!
• Goal Setting. It can be a powerful thing to encourage your group members to set goals within the group and then hold one another accountable. Consider doing this on a set day of the week or the month.
• Book of the Month. Ask your group members what they are reading, or share a recommended read.
• Quote of the Day. Ask your members to share a quote they love or share one to inspire them.
• Challenges. Set a group goal and then give them the step-by-step instructions on how to get there and have them report back to the group when they are done.
• Question of the Day. Ask a question to help you better understand your audience or get them to connect with each other.
• Check-in Day. If you are goal setting you can also include days for people to report back how they are doing.
• Find of the Day/Week. Share amazing products, services, or businesses that your group can check out. (Remember if you are an affiliate or earning anything in exchange for posting you must reveal that information.) 
• Fun and Games. Memes, silly name generators, and things like “post the 7th picture in your camera roll” all fall under this category. Even if you are a business, it can still be good to add some emotion and fun into your group from time to time. 

These are only the tip of the iceberg.

Every group is different in its needs and interactions.

Some questions to ask yourself include …

• What do my group members most want to get out of this group?
• Are there specific business goals I have in this group?
• Why was this group started in the first place?
• How frequently should we post?

You could easily set up monthly posts on topics like this in a queue and have a solid start to a whole year’s worth of content. The most important word when choosing content for a group is “engagement.” You want to think about what your group cares about and how they want to interact with other group members.

After you have done your brainstorming, go ahead and set up your queues in Agorapulse.

Use Schedule/Republish to get your point across

Your group rules (community guidelines) are a crucial part of your Facebook group’s success–and it’s a good idea to make sure everyone’s up to date with them. Scheduling posts about upcoming meetings and reminders about important information can help everyone keep up.

Sometimes there are things you want to make sure your members see, but that they don’t need to see on an ongoing basis. For that, using the republishing option is a great tool rather than using a queue.

Within this option, you have two choices: republish regularly or schedule again.

The first one is good for a temporary thing that you want to go over a few times. This might be things like:

• Reminders about what to bring to an upcoming event
• A reiteration of new rule
• A reminder that a deadline is coming up
• Information about a sale on your products or services

When you choose this option, select a number of days between posts and how many times in total to post.

Alternatively, you might have a date-based reminder that needs to go up more than once. If your meetings are always on the second Tuesday of the month, this is a fast way to schedule a reminder to go out every month and schedule out for a few months at a time.

Still not sure if scheduling is best for you? Trying to better understand queues? Learn more about the differences between queue vs. schedule here.

Add a team member to coordinate with another group administrator

If you manage a Facebook group for a client or co-lead one with a partner, you know how easy it is to cross wires and post at roughly the same time.

With Agorapulse, all group admins can schedule content in advance so that it’s spread out and doesn’t overwhelm the group. Plus, you can easily see what’s coming up and decide when to add additional posts to the mix.

Don’t forget that if the other person managing the page is not already an admin of the Facebook group on Facebook itself, you will need to add them there first.

Engage new members with this shared resource

How can you make new group members feel part of the community?

With the Agorapulse scheduling feature, you can add the images of your posts to a group photo album. This is great for collecting and organizing posts that new members may be interested in—a bit like a mini on-boarding resource.

Some ways you can use this include:

• Keeping all photos for a single event in one place
• Helping people get to know one another by adding a welcome image that you can add to an album
• Creating an album of tips or important resources
• Creating an album based on different subgroups

When you have your content organized in the group, it will help you grow.

A lively, engaged group

Facebook Groups can be a successful tool if you use a little planning in your process and now it’s easier than ever to do so.

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