Meta: New Tools To Empower Community Builders in Facebook Groups

Meta has hosted the Facebook Communities Summit and has announced new tools in Facebook Groups to empower community builders. Let’s have a look at what’s new in store for everyone.

As communities continue to evolve, Meta wants to make people collaborating easier in new ways, in addition to that, they should also have fun while doing so. Meta is also continuing investing in new ways to keep groups on the platform safe.

Build the Community You Want and Strengthen Culture

Meta believes that every group develops its own culture. Thus to make their groups look unique admins will be able to do the following:
(Source: Meta Newsroom)

• Easily customize the colors, post backgrounds and fonts that display in groups, along with the emojis members can use to react to content.
• Use feature sets to select preset collections of post formats, badges, admin tools and more that can be turned on for their group with one click, so that communities can engage in the ways they want.
• Suggest preferred formats for members to use when they post in their group. This will appear in a new posting button that stays with members as they browse the group, eliminating the need to scroll back to the top when they’re ready to post.
• Create a unique greeting message and share group rules that new members will automatically receive when they join a group, so they can develop a sense of belonging sooner.

Soon, members will also be able to give community awards, like Insightful, Uplifting or Fun, to content that they find valuable.

These awards bring in more engagement by making the content more visible and they also help demonstrate the group’s content at its best.

Deepen Connections

Meta is testing the ability to create subgroups within the groups  for specific topics, regions or occasions that can be managed in one place. This will allow all the members to easily find content of their choice and engage with their preferences accordingly.

Meta says: When people want to connect in real-time, they will soon be able to use Community Chats in both Facebook and Messenger, as well as create recurring events when they want to get together more regularly, either virtually or in-person.

Manage Your Community

These new tools will help make it easier for admins to manage their groups:
(Source: Meta Newsroom)

• Admins can pin announcements and choose the order in which they show up in a new Featured section at the top of groups, to ensure their community sees the most important details first.
• Meta is updating Admin Assist to give personalized suggestions on criteria to add, provide more information around why Admin Assist declines certain content and make Admin Assist accessible across all platforms with availability on Facebook Lite.
• Community Chats will allow admins to create a chat for the admin and moderator team so that they can better coordinate decisions in real time.

Sustain Your Community

A suite of tools is being introduced by Meta to help admins continue their efforts and advance the purpose of the group. Meta says that it is testing the ability for admins to:

• Create community fundraisers to raise money for group projects, to offset the costs of running the group or to enable members to show their appreciation for their admins and moderators.
• Sell merchandise they’ve created through a shop in their group, enabling members to show their support and deepen their sense of community.
• Create paid subgroups that members can subscribe to for a fee to gain exclusive access to more content, experiences like coaching or networking or deeper conversations.

A New Vision For Communities on Facebook

There are some communities which use both Groups and Pages to connect with people. Meta believes that this can be time “intensive for admins to manage and unclear to members where to go for what.” Hence it is introducing a new consumer experience which will bring the best of Pages and Groups into one place.

Meta says: For admins of Facebook Groups, the new experience will allow them to use an official voice when interacting with their community. For admins of Facebook Pages, the new experience will help them build community in a single space for members to participate and engage. Admins of Pages will also be able to take advantage of the moderation tools that Groups have today. This new experience is in early testing over the next year, before it becomes more broadly available.

To know more about what’s happening at Meta. Click here.