Hey there!👋🏻
I’m super excited to share with you the 7 amazing Facebook group features rolled out in the months of April and May 2021.
- 5 mind-blowing features to make admins’ lives easier
- 1 feature to stay on top of spammers
- 1 feature to facilitate more meaningful interactions in the group
Along with these, I’m also going to shed light on 3 major updates (with regard to previous features) in Facebook groups.
In case you missed out the previous edition of Facebook group features, you can check it out here👇🏻
Facebook Group Features Update – Feb & March 2021
Now, let’s dive into the features right away!
Making Admins’ Lives Easier 🥳
1. ‘Copy link’ option for group posts
While it has been around for quite some time now, the ‘Copy Link’ option hit many Facebook groups recently, and the admins were thrilled.
Click on the three dots present on the top of a post and you’ll be able to see it.
It is available in both public and private Facebook groups to the:
a. Members – To help them share group posts with fellow members easily for further discussion
b. Admins – To help them share pending posts with their team easily prior to approval
Rinku Shah, the admin of Fitness2Flash, says “The copy link option makes life so much easier.”
2. Button for Admin Activity
Facebook has introduced a ‘You’ button in groups alongside other functionalities.
When you click on it, you can see all the activities (i.e. posts, comments) done by you in that group.
It’s available for both – admins and members.
This has reduced the time and number of actions one has to perform to look at this information. Earlier, one had to go to their respective profile (by clicking on any of their group posts or comments) to see their recent activity in a particular group.
3. ‘Undo’ post approvals
There are times when we accidentally approve/decline a pending post in the group, and wish we could undo it.
Well, Facebook has granted this wish!
Head to your group’s activity log (by selecting the option under ‘Manage Group’ on the left), and you’ll see a list of all the posts and member requests approved/declined by the admin team.
Against the posts, you’ll see the ‘Undo’ button which lets you go one step back. That is, if you have approved a post mistakenly, click on the Undo button, and the post will be deleted from the group. It will appear in the pending posts section again.
4. Make members group experts
The name of the feature speaks for itself, isn’t it?
It allows admins to choose knowledgeable members as ‘group experts’. When they do, members receive a badge which is displayed next to their name on all groups posts, comments, and even the main profile.
The two main benefits this feature extends are:
a. Members know whom to reach out to whenever they need help on a specific topic
b. Admins no longer are the lone wolves when it comes to helping group members
Things to note:
- Only admins can assign group experts
- Members selected as group experts can choose to accept or decline the role
- Admins can remove members as group experts at anytime
- These are NON moderator titles
Another important thing to know as Lyvia Cardoza, admin of Moms of Mangalore, pointed out that this feature is still in the beta version and seems to be rolled out in groups ‘half baked’.
Hence, only the pop up of making members group experts is available and not the option itself yet. (As shown in the snapshot below)
5. Manage button for Admin tools
In the Facebook app, you now have a ‘Manage’ button that takes you to the admin tools page that constitutes all actions like review, insights, settings, group support, posts and comments, and activity.
It’s an attempt to make things simple and clear for new admins mostly. Since the button is placed at a focal point of view, one can easily click on it and manage things in the group.
Note: The star button is still present on the top right corner and one can access the admin tools from there too.
Bid goodbye to Spammers⚔️
1. Limit activity for members
The ‘Limit Activity’ feature is the latest addition in a few public and private Facebook groups that helps admins stay on top of spammers.
You get this option when you click on the three dots given against a member’s name in your group.
In the words of Facebook, with this feature:
“You can now limit how frequently a person in your group is able to post or comment. Select the number of posts per day or the number of comments per hour they’ll be limited to.”
For instance, you can allow new members to just comment and engage in the group, and not post immediately after they join. This will help you keep a tab on the activity of new joiners, identify potential spammers among them, and chuck them out from the group, without them creating much nuisance.
Follow these steps to temporarily limit how frequently a member can post / comment in your group👇🏻
Follow these steps to change the activity limits of a member in your group👇🏻
Improve conversations quality🥰
1. Upvote member comments
If you’ve been a part of Reddit, you probably know what this means!
Let’s just say it’s a huge step by Facebook to improve meaningful interactions in communities.
As Aditya Ahluwalia, the Director of Growth at Convosight pointed out,
“Crowdsourcing comment quality from members and tagging them into helpful new ideas makes the comments for posts way more valuable, and information so easy to consume.”
To put things simply for you,
The upvote feature which recently appeared in some private Facebook groups allows members to vote on the quality of fellow members’ comments.
Furthermore, when you choose yes, Facebook asks about the value that comment provided to you, i.e. was it a new idea, educational, was simply relevant, or anything else.
In fact, when you upvote a comment, it automatically gets bumped up to the top and becomes the first comment anyone sees for that post.
Tony Trevillion, the admin of On a Budget, says that “99% of my group members use this feature rightly. One time when a row kicked off, they weren’t just leaving angry faces on nasty comments, they were voting down each others’ comments. The comments had no place in the group so once we deleted the comments, the votes went with them – which is good.”
“All the more reason for adding the right members in the community,” adds Rinku Shah, admin of Fitness2Flash.
Updates to previous FB group features 🚀
1. Watch Party removed
As of 16th April 2021, Facebook has removed Watch Party from communities, i.e. one can no longer create and view watch parties in their groups.
Hoping Facebook treats us with something as awesome as watch party in the future!🤞🏻
Alternatively, you can focus on hosting live videos in your group as they are undoubtedly the future. And the engagement they get is massive!
Check out this BLOG where we have explained the A to Z of going live in your FB groups.
For those of you who don’t know about watch party-
It is nothing but live sharing of pre-recorded videos by an admin in their group. Members can interact with each other and watch the video in real-time, creating a shared video experience.
For instance, a group member went live, but only a few members joined him/her. The admin can save that live video and create a watch party of it anytime later. When they do that, group members are notified that the admin is doing a watch party post which they join in super soon. Hence, all those who missed joining the live in the first instance get a chance to watch it again, thereby increasing the group’s engagement.
Samiksha Aggarwal, the admin of Moms Magic Cooking, regrets it saying, “I used to organise watch parties almost everyday. It’s sad that we admins cannot use it anymore.”
2. FB Marketplace logo on group posts
As per Facebook’s algorithm, if any of your group posts seem salesy, i.e. the members appear to be selling something, Facebook instantly tags that post as ‘buy and sell’ and makes the option of ‘contact seller’ available to them.
If you are wondering if it affects your group quality in the long run, well, it doesn’t. It’s just an automated feature of Facebook which it uses to classify marketplace posts.
However, a few admins reported that it’s appearing on posts that are not buy and sell. (as in the above snapshot). Which certainly means Facebook is working on it and making the algorithm fair enough that it picks relevant posts only.
3. Shift Cover removed
The shift cover feature made collaborating and getting work done (i.e. covering their shifts) from co-workers in the FB group easier. The shift cover templates ensured that final approval on all requests was made. In fact, there was a dedicated tab for shift cover information.
As per the latest revelation, Facebook discarded this feature along with the ‘work’ group type in which it was available, from April 15, 2021.
However, a few admins running parenting, fitness, and groups other than work were able to see this feature in their groups.
Latest Update: Since the ‘work’ type was removed, all those groups (which earlier had group type as work) were automatically converted to ‘general’ category groups by Facebook.
That’s all with this edition of Facebook group features.🙌🏻
We’ll keep you posted for more new features as and when they become available in Facebook groups.
Meanwhile, you can look out for the aforementioned features in your communities. And, please don’t worry if you can’t see them in your groups. Slowly Facebook will roll them out in all groups.😇
Let me know if you have any concerns or would like to add anything further to any of these features in the comments below. Or post in our Facebook group where thousands of power admins are constantly discussing this and so much more.🙂
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.
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