Facebook groups have become the norm in creating and sustaining communities where people of the same interests and circumstances connect. We all create or join Facebook groups for different reasons. Some of us seek to compartmentalize our contacts to make collaboration easier, while others desire to be part of an online community that share our passion. However, group membership and administration can be challenging when we are constantly faced with seemingly endless flow of information and notifications.
Below are tips to effectively manage your Facebook groups:
This is arguably the first and most important step when creating new groups. There are three options to choose from: public, closed, and secret. Setting the group to public allows anyone to search for the group and see posts from members. Closed groups can be searched, but only members can see group posts. Lastly, secret groups cannot be searched and only members can see each other’s posts.
Group membership can also be customized. You may choose to allow any member to add people to the group or solely rely on group administrators to approve membership requests.
Take note that these privacy settings can be adjusted anytime. Simply click on the gear icon located at the top right of each group icon to adjust settings according to your preference.
Sometimes, it can be quite overwhelming to receive multiple notifications from the different groups you are part of. Let’s be honest, not everything you are notified on is important to you.
Go through your groups and customize the notifications you receive. Simply click the gear icon and select “edit notifications”. By default, you are notified on all posts, but this option allows you to choose to be notified on highlights, friend’s posts, or none at all.
As group admin, you can also control how you receive notifications from selected posts. Simply click on the icon next each post and click “turn off notifications for this post”. Regular members can subscribe to get notifications from specific posts by clicking “turn on notifications for this post” from the icon as well.
- Get quicker access to frequently used groups.
You may have noticed that the top groups under your “groups” sidebar have the most members. However, number of members does not necessarily reflect higher degree of importance, especially when you have smaller groups primarily used for project coordination, or communication within a select group of people – like your family or barkada.
Luckily, you can use the “favorites” sidebar tool to swiftly access frequently used smaller groups. By expanding the “groups” option and clicking on “add to favorites,” you can now easily spot a group through the sidebar. This can come in handy especially when you need to urgently post in groups that you run.
- Pin important posts.
Ever created a poll in a group that didn’t quite generate the number of responses you expected? Or perhaps posted a reminder that wasn’t seen by everyone? That’s probably caused by the numerous posts also “competing” for attention in the group. As admin, you can pin posts so they appear on top of the group feed. Simply click the icon next to the post and select “pin post”. While this is convenient, you may only pin one post at a time. Treat this as an exercise on prioritizing posting.
As our priorities shift over time, certain groups become inactive. Groups that have lost relevance to you may suddenly pop out with notifications that no longer stay true to the group’s established function. There is no cap to the number of groups you can be a member in, but a little housekeeping goes a long way especially when you have a lot of active groups.
Through these tips, Facebook hopes that you more effectively utilize your groups to increase productivity and create more dynamic communication environments.
