Several new Facebook/Meta group initiatives were released at the Facebook Communities Summit in October. Meta revealed a handful of new Group features designed to improve user engagement and make it easier for group owners to actualize their following.
Among the new group features announced were the following:
- Facebook Event Syndication through Instagram. We’ve all been there, wishing we could share a FB group event on Instagram. This new feature expansion offers exactly that, expanding reach across platforms
- Reels in Groups, which allow Group members to upload and share Reels within a Facebook Group, will provide a general enhancement to the UGC capabilities of groups.
And these are the new features currently in testing:
- Expanded Group profiles will finally provide the ability to thoroughly explain the group offering, and will have more room for information in the “About” section and “open to messaging” tags that users can add to their profiles.
- Top Contributing Members Designations. Anybody remember the Myspace “Top 8?” Well, this is like that, except group owners can highlight their top engaging users and track engagement with a points system.
- An Admin Assist feature will help group mods focus upon what’s important, or at least what’s emergent, by allowing group members to call moderation attention to certain things. Flagging inappropriate comments, for instance.
- A Flagged by Facebook Override feature. What’s this? The democratization of adjudication? This feature allows certain admins in specific Groups to override a Flagged by Facebook status on posts in the Group, especially content flagged as bullying or harrassment
- A new “socializer” role for members, which recognizes members whomajor in participation, or who roll out the red carpet to new members, for instance.
Stay tuned for more updates on the future of Facebook Groups and how to use them to grow and engage your social following. As facebook reaches peak adoption, they will need to create more and more incentive for advertisers to stay rather than jumping ship to, say, TikTok.
