Facebook Announces New Features to Customize Groups
At the 2021 Facebook Communities Summit, the social media platform announced several new tools that will help Facebook Group administrators personalize how their groups look and function.
Among the new features to personalize the look and feel in Groups is the ability to change the group’s colors, post backgrounds and fonts that appear in the group, and the emoji that members use to react to its content. Some of the new functional features include subgroups and subscription-based paid subgroups, real-time chat for moderators, support for community fundraisers and more.
The new features come as Facebook continues to emphasize growing communities and a better culture among users on its platforms.
“As communities continue to evolve, we want to make it easier for people to collaborate in new ways and have fun while they’re doing it.”
Facebook
New Look and Feel in Facebook Groups
So let’s get into the new features. First up, administrators will be able customize the colors, post backgrounds and fonts in the Group. As you can see in the image below, the colors in both the header of the group and the background of the post are green. If you look close enough, you can also see another new feature.
Administrators can also select different emojis that members can use to react to the posts within the group. In the example above, next to the blue “like” you can see members responded with the hiking boot emoji. This makes sense, since the Group name is “Trail Runs and Hikes”. Think of all the different emojis your group could use to react to posts!
Along with the new colors and emoji reactions, administrators can suggest specific post formats for members. This suggestion will show up when members go to create a new post in the Group. And here’s another small, but super useful update. Facebook stated that the “new post” button will stay on the page as users scroll, eliminating the need to scroll back to the top to post. Thank you, Facebook! That was always so annoying.
Greeting Messages
Administrators can now create a customized greeting message when new users join a Group (see below). New members will automatically receive the personalized welcome message that outlines group rules. The hope is to create a more welcoming culture in Groups right from the second new members join.
Community Awards
Group members and administrators will soon be able to give community awards to other members. Awards can be given for Insightful, Uplifting or Fun for content posted in the Group.
According to Facebook, “These awards encourage engagement, make the content more visible to members and help demonstrate the group’s content at its best.”
As an administrator or regular group member, make sure you celebrate those engaging posts from other members! These awards could be a way to highlight the most relevant conversations and replies, and improve interaction. This ties into the overall goal of creating better cultures in Facebook Groups.
More Meaningful Connections
In Facebook Groups, especially the larger ones, it can be hard to find the content you’re looking for. Facebook is releasing a couple different ways to make it easier for members.
The first is subgroups. Subgroups allow administrators to create smaller groups for specific topics, regions or occasions. Although Facebook stated these are still in the testing phase, subgroups should help members dive deeper into the specific content they want. Instead of creating an entire separate group and trying to get new members there, subgroups can help you reach people you’re already connected with.
Next up are community chats. These chats will be available both in the Group and in Messenger. Community chats will help members connect in real time, without having to wait on replies to comments, etc. Another aspect of the community chats will be the ability to have recurring events for when members want to get together more regularly and chat.
Monetization Options
Among the slew of other new features coming to Facebook Groups, it looks like a push for monetization is well underway. Monetization efforts are being released to help sustain the costs of running Groups and to support community fundraisers.
Since we just talked about subgroups, let’s take a look at paid subgroups first. Paid subgroups allow members to subscribe for a fee to gain exclusive access to more content, experiences like coaching or networking or deeper conversations.
Specific details about how much administrators can charge for paid subgroups or the pay structure haven’t been released yet. This effort to provide more support to administrators falls in line with other recent Facebook paid subscription efforts.
Will people actually by-in to paid subgroups? We’re not sure. Maybe with the more dedicated and supporting Groups there will be members willing to pay? Either way, it’s worth a try for Group administrators.
Next up are community fundraisers. Community fundraising efforts can either be for a group fundraising effort for a specific cause (like any other normal fundraising campaign) or to help support the sustainability of the Group. The second option is similar to paid subgroups in that the money will be specifically to support the administrators and moderators of the group.
Groups will now also have the ability to sell merchandise, “enabling members to show their support and deepen their sense of community.”
These new monetization efforts make Groups sound more and more like official businesses. Will Groups eventually replace business pages all together on Facebook? Facebook is making every effort to be more of an open community for all, so who knows. Overall, for the administrators who do put a lot of time and effort into their Group, these efforts are a good way to support them.
Groups Are the Way Forward for Facebook
One thing is certain. Groups are at the forefront of Facebook’s efforts to keep users on their platform. At more than 1.8 Billion reported monthly active users, Facebook Groups continue to be a central social tool for many users across the globe. They allow people to stay up-to-date on current happenings in their area and connect with their communities, neighbors and friends in a more in-depth way.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently had this to say about Facebook Groups:
“Groups and communities on Facebook are going to be an important part of [the metaverse] vision. Nothing beats being together. But when we can’t be together in person, the metaverse will help get us even closer to feeling that sense of an in-person connection.“
These new features will only continue to advance Facebook’s goal of creating a better culture community on Facebook.
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