Join Facebook Groups

Facebook Groups are a great way to meet your community members. You can search for groups to join or create your own. You are limited to joining or creating up to 200 groups, a much higher limit than, say, LinkedIn, which limits you to 50 group memberships. The Groups application page displays updates from your groups as well as groups your friends have joined recently.

You can join or create a group by clicking on the Groups or Create Group links on the left bar of your main Facebook page. You might need to click More in order to see the links. If you’ve joined any groups, the icons, names, and number of members will be listed there, as in the next figure.

 Figure 1 — Facebook Groups Example

You can also see and easily join the Groups your friends belong to by clicking Friends’ Groups. Enter pretty much any term you’re interested in finding Groups for into the search bar and you’ll probably find one or more interesting groups. You can check out the Group and see publicly viewable information before deciding to join.

Figure 2 — Search for Facebook Groups

Click the Create A Group button to create your own group. You’ll see a form like the following figure.

Figure 3 — Create Your Own Facebook Group

Make sure your group’s name and description contain keywords your community is likely to use in a search. After you’ve created your group, invite all your friends to join. You can even create a Like button to post on your Website that will promote the group.

Of course, if you create a group, you need to be the host — or, as we will discuss in the forthcoming post Building Your Community, the experience architect. This means it’s up to you to invite your guests, make them feel at home, and get them talking.