Effective Facebook Community Management – From Go To Woah!
This is a guest blog by Tanya Burgess. Tanya is an Australian influencer who speaks to 230,000 Australian mums every day.
Get Your Facebook Community Moving From Go To ‘Woah’! Tips For Effective Facebook Community Management
Growing a thriving Facebook community doesn’t happen by accident. Effective Facebook community management relies on providing content that engages the community, while keeping discussions relevant, and creating a space where members feel comfortable to share their experiences and advice.
Here are some tips that I’ve found useful while building the Baby Hints & Tips community.
Don’t be afraid to seek help
When I started the Baby Hints & Tips Facebook community, I managed all the content sharing and admin myself. As the project started to grow, I knew I’d need to get some help to continue running the community to a high standard. I was lucky to form friendships with regular contributors in the early days and some of these members now assist me with different aspects of management. In fact, some of them have been a part of the team for over five years.
Building a team of admins (volunteer or paid) can certainly make the process of managing your Facebook community easier.
Curate relevant content
In our community, we publish a mix of sponsored content, shared content and reader questions. We are always assessing what content is right for our readers and it’s important to strike a balance between engaging content (latest news or something amusing) and useful content (practical, researched advice).
We think it’s important to share genuine questions from community members, but we do moderate them. For example, we might reword a question if we think the poster might receive responses that are irrelevant or inflammatory. This helps our readers get objective answers to their questions.
Getting to know your community will help you in finding the right content.
Establish firm community guidelines
We’ve always wanted Baby Hints & Tips to be a judgement-free zone where members feel comfortable. By being firm with this policy, we find that members are more willing to put themselves out there to provide advice, or ask the sensitive questions that others may be too shy to ask.
We welcome questions on any topic, but we closely monitor questions that may be controversial. We pay close attention to a thread if questions are likely to gather judgemental responses. Often these responses come from first-time visitors to the page who may have seen the page in their newsfeed because of a friend’s comments. From time to time, it helps to step in and gently remind guests about the open-minded, helpful culture we try to foster in our community.
We’re certainly not heavy-handed, but having guidelines means your members will know what to expect and ultimately get the most benefit from a smooth running online community.
There’s no doubt that maintaining a Facebook page is a big job! Making effective Facebook community management a priority keeps the process more enjoyable and rewarding for you, while helping your community to thrive.
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