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How to Use Facebook Groups to Explode Your Blog Traffic and Drive Engagement

Of course you are a member of at least one Facebook Group.

Aren’t you?

It’s impossible to ignore them if you are on Facebook. Everyone including your grandmother and your cat is a member of a group. No?

As of the second quarter of 2018, Facebook had 2.23 billion monthly active users and over one billion users are active on Facebook groups in Jan 2016 (I couldn’t find the latest stats yet, but that is still jaw-dropping).

As you know, Facebook groups are where people go to ask questions, share opinions, be entertained, ask for help or offer help and learn new things.

Facebook users use groups to connect with other people, express and exchange opinions, inform, inspire, work with like-minded people, discover new things, organize events or promote stuff.

In this article, I’m going to talk about the last reason for using Facebook groups which is as a platform to promote your content.

Exactly, I’ll teach you how to use Facebook groups to increase traffic to your blog and drive engagement.

 

 

Using Facebook Groups for Blog Promotion

Getting the initial traction when you just published a blog post is almost impossible without any kind of organic traffic from Google or an existing audience.

However, you don’t just want any traffic, you’d want targeted traffic.

Because targeted traffic is more likely to sign up for your email list, share your content, click your affiliate links or get the conversation going in the comments.

The only blog promotion method that could drive traffic the day when you hit the publish button is social media marketing.

However, unless you have an existing army of social media followers, you are almost dead in the water from the get-go.

The good news? You can still attract tons of traffic from the social media even with zero followers by using Facebook groups.

Here’s how you can use Facebook groups to increase traffic to your blog,

 

How to Use Facebook Groups to Increase Traffic to Your Blog

When it comes driving traffic to posts, Facebook pages have been continuously stifled by their algorithm updates because Facebook wants businesses to pay them in order to get more visibility.

On the other hand, Facebook groups aren’t subjected to similar treatment when it comes getting more eyeballs on your content.

Most bloggers, at least in the early days of their blogs, acknowledge that traffic from Facebook groups is one of their major source of referral traffic.

For example, Janice of Mostly Blogging have used Facebook Groups to grow her readership.

If you read my previous post, you know that Sabahan.com is an old blog I created in 2006. It was left, nearly abandoned in 2012 as I wanted to focus more on my other online businesses.

In June 2018, I’ve decided to revive this blog. If that didn’t happen, you’d have never read this article and Sabahan.com would continue to drift into the Internet oblivion!

Facebook group promotion is one area in which I decided to focus early on to get the initial boost in traffic.

For past 30 days, here’s how my referral traffic looks like:

On top of that, visitors from Facebook groups actually convert into new email subscribers which is even better for me.

You may be wondering why do I get so little traffic from Google.

To provide a laser-focused content that Google will love, I’ve set all my old blog posts to no-follow so Google is no longer sending traffic to them.

When Google recognizes what your blog is all about, you should be able to rank better for the relevant keywords in your niche, and that’s what I hope will happen.

I’m back in the trenches like everyone else who’s starting from scratch!

Now, here’s how to use Facebook groups to increase traffic to your blog for free.

Join Facebook Groups

Joining Facebook Groups can be a great way to build relationships with like-minded bloggers and develop your authority in the topic. In fact, it’s probably more effective than blog commenting.

To find a group to join, perform a search on Facebook using keywords like “blogging”. Select the Groups tab to limit the results to Groups only.

There are thousands and thousands of Facebook blogger groups out there. When you find the one you like just click the +Join button.

There are Public and Closed groups.

If the group is public, you can preview its content and see if it fits your niche. Otherwise, check the group description on the sidebar or on the wall itself.

How Do You Know If a Facebook Group Is Any Good?

Here’s what to look out for when joining a Facebook Group.

Scan what’s being shared

If everyone is promoting their own links and there’re no engagements, it may not be a good group to join. But don’t discount these groups entirely, you’ll have to look at the group stats too.

Look at the numbers

Ideally, you’d want to join groups that aren’t too small nor too big.

If you post on groups with 10,000+ members your posts may get pushed away faster limiting their visibility. So larger groups don’t always equate to high traffic Facebook groups.

Groups that are no longer adding new members in the last 30 days may no longer be maintained by the admin. Also, low posts count in the last 30 days indicate lower participation and engagement in the group.

The numbers below can give you a clue about whether joining the group will be worth your time.

Check if they allow self-promotion

Some groups have weekly scheduled promotion threads, some allow you to post directly on the wall, some are strictly no promo zones.

Most facebook groups run daily promo threads that you can participate to get traffic to your blog. Pay attention to what’s allowed what’s not.

Join relevant groups related to your niche

You’d want to be a member of groups related to your niche or industry you’re in.

For example, if you have a marketing blog and you decided to join a fashion blogger group, that’s not going to help drive traffic and engagement to your blog.

The admins may not approve your posts if they don’t provide a good match with their audience.

Minimized Forced Engagements

There are groups that promote like for like or follow for follow and so on.

Unless the people who participated in the reciprocal promotion are the exact audience you are seeking, you’ll end up following and being followed by people who have no interest in your content.

This can hurt your engagement on the social media. Why is that bad?

Well, when you have a low engagement, the social media platforms, i.e. Facebook, Pinterest, etc will show your content to fewer people.

Yes, initially your number of followers and likes may increase, but the people who really want to follow you and are actually interested in your content may see less from you hurting your visibility and engagement even more.

Also be careful when participation in search result click through exchanges to improve rankings. You can be penalized by Google if they find out.

That said, I feel that participating in blog commenting exchanges help in sparking the initial conversation for a new post. When other people see the comments, they’ll be more likely to leave a comment too. As the engagements happened in your own blog, you should be fine.

Participating in any Pinterest re-pin treads should be fine but proceed with caution. The benefits include increasing your re-pin counts which signal Pinterest you are gaining authority.

Even if the person who repins your pin isn’t in your niche, they will probably have some followers who are also interested in your niche and may interact with your pin.

Then again it all comes back to engagement. Asking random people to re-pin can dilute your niche focus and lower your pin engagements. Low engagements mean your pins may not rank as high for your chosen keywords.

Facebook Group Engagement Matters

Groups which are opened to everybody and allow unrestricted promotion/advertising are likely to be less valuable resulting in lower click through and lower engagement.

Facebook’s algorithm is heavily based on engagement. If the members don’t participate, your posts will get poor visibility.

So the best groups to join are those with lively discussions and real interactions.

When group members have questions related to products or services that you offer, don’t just drop a link.

Help them out by answering their questions and then you can mention related articles in your blog which provide more in-depth answers.

What drives the engagement is the Facebook notifications that were sent to members when you create a new post or reply to an existing post.

 

 

How to Write an Effective Facebook Group Post

When writing a post, try to be helpful and think how it will not only benefit you but the group as a whole.

You’d want to offer solutions to problems and what better way then finding existing problems in Facebook groups and try to solve it right there and then?

When promoting your link, you should include a short snippet of what your post is about to help the readers decide if your post is relevant to them. This helps reducing your page bounce rate which means people will stay on your page longer.

Mention the benefits the users will gain if they read your post, give them a reason to click. Try to evoke curiosity to encourage click-throughs but don’t promise what you can’t deliver.

Get active in blogging support groups and make it obvious you’re there to help them.

For example, one of the most asked questions I found in any blogging groups is how to get traffic to their blogs. It’s the exact question that I’ve answered in my post where I share strategies to increase blog traffic for free.

So I answered the relevant questions and included my links if they want to learn more. This has driven a few hundred Facebook visits to my blog in just a few days.

Add links to your post sparingly. Including links pointing to other useful resources besides your own will show that you are genuinely trying to be helpful.

However, you aren’t there just to solve other people problems. Blogging can be a lonely journey and joining Facebook groups connect you with supportive communities that you can rely on for solutions to problems that you may not be able to solve on your own.

Some groups being neglected by the admins are getting spammed a lot. If you decide to join such groups, your post needs to stand out. Whether it’s worth your time or not, you’ll need to test it for yourself.

How Often Should You Post

Make it a priority to participate in these groups every single day.

The average Facebook post has a lifespan of 5 hours. It’s the next fastest expiring posts after Twitter.

So to gain more exposure, you’ll need to post more than once per day. However, I wouldn’t recommend posting the same content more than once in the same group in a day.

If you think you can get away sharing your links in multiple groups in a short amount of time. You can’t.

Facebook will detect those and will quietly auto delete your posts and comments containing the links. It’s a way for them to control spam links (even if you aren’t spamming).

Always observe the group rules to avoid any troubles. Plan your posting and post different content every single day.

No, you don’t have to post in all of the groups. Try posting in a few and see how they are responding. Keep the group f they provide enough return on your time. Then move on to another group and continue testing.

Managing your Facebook Groups posting properly will save you time and improve productivity, and will ultimately drive more traffic and engagement to your blog.

 

Create Your Own Facebook Group

Having your own Facebook Group provides another channel for you to reach your audience and get them to engage with your content.

Not everyone is comfortable giving away their email address to join a mailing list.

Some people find it more convenient to join Facebook groups to get their daily dose of content right from the source.

When creating a group, it’s worth noting that the group should be less about you (unless you are a brand) but more about what value it provides to members.

I am not saying you shouldn’t include your name or website name in the group name but you are targeting a larger audience here many of whom may have never heard about you before.

If you want to talk about you and your business, that’s what Facebook pages are for.

For example, I’ve created a Facebook group for Sabahan.com but I didn’t name it Sabahan Facebook Group. I use a generic blogging group name any blogger can relate to.

But it’s still associated with my Facebook page. The idea is to grow the group by providing  valuable resources and Sabahan.com brand will grow with the group by association.

Go ahead, feel free to join my Blogging Tips Groups.

Be Helpful and Build Trust

Groups are communities of people coming together with a common goal. Your goal is to focus on providing content that engages the members.

Avoid promoting your business or links too often until you’ve earned the members’ trust. If you only want to feed links to your latest posts, you can do that in your Facebook page.

I’m not saying you shouldn’t promote your blog links but a group is more than a place to feed links.  Perhaps you can create some promotion threads to give the members a chance to promote themselves too.

Don’t just paste a link and run away. Try to be helpful and answer whatever questions they have.

When you include a related link pointing to a post on your blog that benefits them, you’ll not only get more traffic from the group, but those visitors are more likely to engage with your content and convert into customers.

Why?

Because you’ve built a rapport with them, you’ve established the initial connection when you help them out, so they’ll trust you more.

You can use your Facebook group to build connections with people. As you create more engagement, you’ll notice the community will continue to support you and they’re more likely to go to your website, share it and even buy your products or services.

Creating a Facebook group is a quick and easy investment that you can do today to grow your brand and drive traffic to your website.

It’s another way how you can use Facebook groups to increase traffic to your blog.

But remember that if you don’t actively set and enforce the rules, your group can turn spammy rather quickly. So be prepared to invest some time and resources to make sure it says clean over time.

 

 

How to Track Which Facebook Groups Are Sending You the Most Traffic

This section is for those who one to go one step further with their Facebook groups promotion.

I’ll teach you how you can track which groups provide the best ROI for your time and effort.

Similar to writing a blog post, your Facebook posts should be useful and add value to the group. Unlike a blog post, you can see the result of being helpful with your Facebook group posts almost immediately.

How?

By tracking your Facebook group traffic using Google Analytics.

How to Create Your Tracking URLs

To start tracking, you need to add extra parameters to your URL to capture reporting data about the referring group.

For example, I use the following link to help me identify the traffic to a particular blog post  that came from a particular group:

https://sabahan.com/increase-blog-traffic/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=groups&utm_campaign=blogging_tips

Don’t worry it’s not as complicated as it looks.

I use a URL generator to help me create the URLs.

There are 5 parameters you can add to your URLs. For this example, I am only using 3 parameters which are necessary for our simple tracking purpose.

• utm_source – this is the domain that is sending traffic to my blog post. I put facebook here.
• utm_medium – the advertising or marketing medium. For this example I use social  since Facebook is a social media.
• utm_campaign – this is the individual campaign name. I specified the group name here, i.e. blogging_tips. Make sure to replace empty spaces with underscores “_” and remove any special characters from the group name.

Keep your UTMs simple by sticking to lower cases, numbers, hyphens for spaces and remove any other special characters. It’s also important to use the same link for the same article. Don’t use “blogging_tips” today and then “blogging-tips” the next day for your utm_campaign as they will track two different groups!

You can learn more about setting up custom campaigns using Google Analytics here.

That’s it! It’s not that hard, is it?

How to See Custom-Campaign Data

To see the campaign’s reports:

1. Sign in to Google Analytics
2. In the left panel, if you want to know which groups are sending traffic right now go to:

REAL-TIME > Traffic Sources .

You should be able to see the exact groups that are sending traffic to your blog right now.

If you want to know the groups that are sending you the most traffic, go to

ACQUISITION > Campaigns >  All Campaigns

Just remember to adjust your date range accordingly.

Additionally, you may also want to track your email signup conversion rates using Goals in Google Analytics.

 

Best Facebook Groups for Bloggers You Can Join Now

You didn’t think I would end the article without giving you a list of Facebook groups for bloggers and creative entrepreneurs that you can join did you?

Whether you are just starting out or have been blogging for a couple of years, these groups will help you grow your audience and connect with other like-minded bloggers.

Here are my top 15 Facebook groups for bloggers that you can join right now.  Not every group is created for promotion, many are blogging support groups but also have a weekly promotion thread you can participate in.

1. Blogging Like We Mean It
2. Becoming a Blogger
3. Boost Your Blog
4. Write Better, Blog Better: Writing Support for Bloggers
5. Blogging for New Bloggers
6. The Blogging Crew
7. Pinterest Savvy Bloggers
8. GimmieLove – Blog & Social Media Engagement Group
9. Turbo Blogging & Business ★ (with Raelyn Tan)
10. Blogging Newbs
11. Bloggers United
12. Grow Your Blog
13. Pinterest Pals
14. Blogging Network
15. Blogging Tips & Social Media Marketing Group << This one is mine! Apologies for the shameless self-promotion 😆

PS: Please do me a favour by either sharing, pinning or tweeting this post. You can also leave a comment below if you find the post helpful.

 

Do you want more?

I’ve compiled a list of 61+ Facebook groups that’re perfect for bloggers. You can join them and amplify your reach by getting your blog in front of more people.

Start discovering a wider assortment of threads to turn to and connect with more like minded-bloggers. Imagine how much time you’ll save trying to find Facebook groups yourself.

The list only includes Facebook groups that have accepted members for the past 30 days. This is to help you save time by only applying for groups that are still actively letting new people in.

Please enter your first name and email where I can email the list to you. Don’t worry, your email is safe, I really hate spam too.

Conclusion

There you have it!

If you are just starting out, joining a Facebook group is the best way to promote your blog, get the initial boost of engagement and seek solutions to problems you are facing.

For any blogger, Facebook groups provide a platform to connect with other like-minded bloggers who understand your struggle and journey growing your blog.

Smaller groups may suit you more if you enjoy more personal interactions as everyone has more of a chance to share their feedback and be heard.

Conversation in larger groups can move fast and can be harder to keep up. But it also provides the opportunity to reach a larger group of people

Facebook groups promotion can be time-consuming though. Not all groups are created equal. It’s up to you to figure out which groups work for you and which you can ignore.

To ensure you only spend time on groups that will actually send you traffic, email signups and engagements, you can track your ROI  using Google Analytics as I explained above.

Now it’s your turn.

Are you new to Facebook groups promotion or plan to join any groups soon?

Are you a member of any Facebook groups which have been working well for you in driving traffic and engagement to your blog?

I love to hear your story in the comments below!