When you set up your Facebook group, it’s important to share the group’s purpose and make sure group members are aware of it when they join.
Define the purpose or intention for how your group will be used; what kinds of information, topics, and content will be shared; and what your group hopes to do for its members. If members join your group believing it will offer useful advice on publishing a book, they’ll be disappointed if they find lots of posts from authors promoting their own books.
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After you outline your group’s values or mission, make sure you convey this information in the group description and share it when new members join the group. The description will be visible to non-members if your group is public or closed and they’ll be able to see what your group has to offer.
Now let’s look at two ways to align content and conversations with your group’s mission.
Enlist Moderators
Managing a Facebook group gives you an opportunity to develop a unique community. If you post the same content on your Facebook page that you do in your group, you’re not increasing the value it provides and giving people a reason to join. Groups provide an opportunity to focus on a topic or shared interest and explore it in much greater depth than on a public Facebook page, and your content should reflect this.
To ensure posts and comments stay focused on your purpose, you need to moderate them. As with group admins, moderators can also approve, deny, or remove posts.
To assign the moderator role to a valued member of your group, click the Members tab and find the relevant member.
Click the ••• button next to their name and select Make Moderator from the drop-down menu.
In the pop-up window, click Send Invite. The member will then receive an invitation to become a group moderator. Once they accept, they can start helping moderate posts and comments in the group.
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Set Up Rules for Group Interactions
When adding new members to the group, you can make a set of rules or community guidelines available to clarify the function of the group. Creating a set of rules allows you to outline the expectations for how group members should interact and clarify the behavior you expect.
To add rules to your group, from left navigation menu, click on Group Rules.
Then click the Get Started button.
In the pop-up window, you can
choose from a list of pre-written rules for groups.
If you prefer to create a custom rule, click Write Your Own Rule and add a title and description.
Managing Group Posts / Members
If you discover that a post has violated one of your group rules, an admin or moderator can remove it. To do so, open the post and click the ••• icon in the upper-right corner of that Post.
You can choose to Remove post to remove it as well as reach out to the member and explain why you did so. You can also choose Delete post and remove author if you find that it's a repeat offender. You could also choose to Turn on post approval for the member as a probation period. You could also choose Turn off commenting to mute any comments in that Post.
Finally, if you feel a particular Post needs to be reported to Facebook for further action, choose Find support or report post.
A well moderated group can grow healthily and as Page group owners, it is your responsibility to ensure everything is working well for all members.