Latest Facebook Group Features Update: February + March 2021

Hello there!👋🏻

Brace yourself as I’m going to present some fantastic Facebook group updates that are currently doing the rounds.🎊

All of these were shared and discussed by admins in our Facebook group in February and March.

This edition of Facebook group updates includes:

• Three features to improve Facebook group engagement
• Two features that explain Facebook’s new interface
• Three features that ensure tighter moderation
• Three new features added exclusively in Private Facebook groups

Additionally, I’m also going to tell you about the ability to monetize Facebook pages.💰

So, let’s dive right into them!

P.S. In case you missed out on the January edition of Facebook group features, you can check it out   👉🏻 HERE 👈🏻

Facebook Group Updates February & March 2021

Improve your Facebook group engagement 👥

1. Q&A feature available for members 

Facebook is continuously enhancing the communities’ experience for members and trying to keep them engaged.

The social media giant has rolled out the ‘Question and Answer’ feature or ‘Ask me anything’ feature for the members, which was earlier available only to the admins.

It is yet another excellent feature that encourages members to participate in Facebook group discussions.

When someone announces to host a question and answer session in the group, everyone in the group can post their questions and interact in real-time with the one who’s hosted it.

Check out how Sapna Sengar, admin of Brain and Physical Development Activities for Kids, hosted a question and answer session on infant digestion.

Members shared their concerns/queries with her, got solutions to their problems, and learnt from each others’ issues.

You can also identify the things that bother your members, host a Q&A session, and address their queries. Your members will be more than grateful.

2. Create individual welcome posts for new members

We all know how welcoming new members is a great way to make them feel like a part of the community.

And that, Facebook offers the ability to create a welcome post by automatically tagging all members from a laptop in a private group and from a mobile in a public group.

Here’s a catch for new groups having less than 1000 members.

Facebook gives admins of those groups the ability to welcome new members individually. Have a look below.

“It is a very thoughtful and intuitive feature by Facebook,” says Rinku Shah, Admin of Fitness2Flash.

All those with groups less than 1K members – You can make the most out of it by adding member photos and making them feel even more special.

3. Units renamed as ‘Guides’

Honestly, I haven’t come across as many groups who use units to educate their members.

A popular reason: Admins and members don’t know it exists and if they do, they are not clear as to how they can use units in the group.

Which makes a strong case for Facebook renaming it to ‘Guides’. This is a much more simple term and conveys its actual meaning.

If you too haven’t used guides until now, do check out this writeup on how to use units (now guides) in your Facebook group.

Facebook’s new interface🤩

1. New User Interface

Facebook is constantly rolling out updates relating its interface, improving user experience.

As per the latest update, we can see these categories:

1. To review: Easily review pending posts, member requests, reported content, and moderation alerts from here. You can even see the number against each of them.
2. Tool Shortcuts: Easily jump to member list, group growth, engagement, scheduled posts, and more.
3. Settings: To change any group settings
4. Support: To write to Facebook for any help/support

This seems more intuitive and clean.

2. Pending posts, member requests available under ‘Manage’ tab 

In addition to the previous change in Facebook’s UI, here’s another one that an admin shared in our Fb group.

As part of this enhancement, Facebook has bought all admins tools under a single umbrella, i.e. ‘Manage Tab’.

3. Members’ names now appear under group names

While scrolling through your Facebook news feed, when you come across a post from any of the groups, here’s how it appears now.

Group name on the top and member name under it.

Tighter moderation enabled⚔️

1. Take action on multiple posts at once 

To make things easier for group admins (especially those managing multiple and large-sized groups), Facebook has come up with the ‘take action on multiple posts at once’ feature.

That said, now Facebook categorizes the pending posts as:

1. The ones you are likely to decline (as they appear similar to the ones you have declined earlier)
2. Duplicate posts (the ones with many URLs or are simply reshares)

This way, you don’t have to spend time going through every post to see if it fits the group’s standards or not.

2. Tag group rules in comments and posts 

Facebook has made it easier for admins to remind members continuously of the group’s rules.

Admins and moderators can now use @ to tag the group rules in group posts and comments. Whenever any member clicks on it, they are taken to the group rules page.

This is an awesome way to maintain the group’s atmosphere and policies. And sure, an easy way to enforce rules which admins often struggle to.

Exclusively for Private Facebook Groups💛

1. ‘Share’ option replaced by ‘Send message over Messenger’ for posts in Private groups

A few months back, Facebook had introduced a ‘share’ option under posts for private groups. Due to the backlash it received from the admins and members, Facebook removed it.

I had mentioned it in my Facebook group updates edition of October 2020. You can read more about it there.

Now, Facebook has introduced a ‘send message over messenger’ button for posts in private Facebook groups.

When you click on it, you can:

• Send a message to that person in reference to that particular post
• Send a message to anyone in your friends’ list along with that post link

After reading the admins’ views in our Facebook group, it seems like a majority of them aren’t happy with this latest addition.

Here’s why.

When you are able to send a message over messenger to the person posted, these things will likely happen:

1. The message will land in the person’s ‘message requests’ inbox if you are not friends with them on Facebook. Hence, they are less likely to open it.
2. The person tends to get bombarded with a lot of such message requests from other members too.
3. The group members might start texting each other instead of commenting on the community’s posts, which kills its purpose, i.e. to connect and interact with a tribe.

On the other hand, when you send a message to anyone in your friends list along with that post link, they will not be able to view the post if they are not a member.

When this happens:

They will either join the group if its purpose and values align with theirs, thereby helping the group grow

They will not bother about the post or the group

However, this feature tends to exploit the purpose of private groups, i.e. people being able to share their hearts out in a private space. Since they can share the posts with others, the idea of privacy fades out.

Here’s what Tamanna Dhamija, CEO and Co-Founder of Convosight had to say about it:

“This may work very well in buy and sell groups to directly establish 1-1 contact between buyer and sellers.”

2. Follow button available for question posts

In all the posts that feature a question, Facebook has introduced a ‘Follow’ button.

Instead of the usual ‘Like’ button that allowed people to react on posts, they see the ‘follow’ button like the one shown in the image below.

Apparently, Facebook did it for the sake of people who used to comment F or Follow in the comments section of posts to get notified of the latest comments on it.

Since members of a few private groups can see the follow button, I’ll tell you where the like button can be located now.

When you click to answer that post, you see all the emojis coming on the top right.

3. Check who invited a member to your group on Facebook app

When you go to the members section in your Facebook group from the mobile app, you can see the filter of ‘invited to join’. When you apply it, a list of members along with ‘invited by abc’ appears below it.

Until now, this feature was only available in the laptop.

It’s a great way to keep a tab on who invited whom in your Fb group. However, the number of members invited by a person in your group needs to be calculated manually.

That’s about the Facebook group updates.

Now, coming to one of the best updates (at least according to me) in the past few days.

Monetization of Facebook Pages💰

Those of you who also own a Facebook page, here’s your chance to multiply your earnings.

This feature although still in the beta version has been made available to a few Facebook page admins.

Here’s how it works:

When you host a live video on your Facebook page, your page followers can buy ‘Stars’ and send them to you.  When people send you stars on your video, Facebook pays you 0.01 cent for 1 star.

That means, if you received 10k stars, Facebook will give you $100 USD.

Amazing, right?

Check out this blog if you’d like to know how to enable stars.

With this, it’s a wrap! 🙌🏻

Do let me know what you think of these features and which one according to you is the best.

You can share your answers in the comments section below or write to me in our Facebook group where thousands of Facebook group admins are discussing this and everything else about community building.🙂

Simran Grover

Creating value in the lives of others with my content, little by little.✨

Working at Convosight, I do more than just wrangle commas. I’m passionate about innovating new ways to create super valuable and actionable content about Communities and Community Marketing at large, and sharing it with the right audience.
I also happen to manage a global community of power admins on Facebook, and that’s where most of my learnings come from.

Do check out my latest blogs and feel free to share them! 💛