Meta is launching new features for Facebook Groups to improve connection between members, strengthen communities, and give admins more ways to customize the look and feel.
Additionally, the company is sharing its vision for the future of communities on Facebook, which brings features from Groups and Pages together in one place.
Here’s an overview of everything that was announced at the recent Facebook Community Summit.
More options for Facebook group admins
Administrators can take advantage of these new features to make their groups look more unique:
- personalization: Colors, post backgrounds, fonts, and reactions to emojis used in groups can now be customized.
- feature sets: Predefined groups of post layouts, badges, management tools and more can be turned on for their collection with a single click.
- Preferred formats: Select the formats you want members to use when posting to your group.
- Greeting messageCreate a unique message that all new members see when they join a group.
Stronger connections to members
Members of Facebook Groups can build stronger connections by taking advantage of the following new features:
- subgroupsMeta: The Meta is testing the ability of Facebook group admins to create sub-groups around specific topics.
- Community chats: Communicate in real time with other group members via Facebook or Messenger.
- recurring events: Set up regular events for members to meet either online or in person.
- Community Awards: Give virtual prizes to other members to recognize valuable contributions.
Screenshot from about.fb.com/news, November 2021.New ways to manage communities
New tools will make it easier for administrators to manage their groups:
- Sticky ads: Administrators can pin ads to the top of groups and choose the order in which they appear.
- Custom suggestions: Admin Assist will now offer suggestions for extension criteria, and more information on why content was rejected.
- Internal chats: Administrators can now create group chats exclusively for themselves and other admins.
Screenshot from about.fb.com/news, November 2021.Income and fundraising
A new set of tools will help group admins sustain their communities through fundraising and monetization:
- collecting money: Administrators can create community fundraisers for group projects to cover the costs of running the group.
- Goods sale: Sell the goods you’ve created by creating a shop within your group.
- Paid memberships: Create paid sub-groups that members can subscribe to for a fee.
Screenshot from about.fb.com/news, November 2021.Combine groups and pages
Facebook introduces a new experience that brings Pages and Groups together in one place.
This will allow group admins to use an official voice when interacting with their community.
Currently, the administrators are posting to the Facebook Group, which indicates that it was posted by the individual user behind the account.
When this new experience starts, posts from admins will appear as official announcements posted by the group. Just like a post from a Facebook Page shows that it was posted by the Page.
Facebook page managers will have the option to build their community in a single space if they’d rather not create a separate group. When this change is initiated, page admins can use the moderation tools that group admins have access to.
This new experience will be tested over the next year before it becomes available to everyone.
Source: newsroom meta
Featured image: AlesiaKan/Shutterstock
