Facebook announces several new features for Facebook Groups

During yesterday’s Facebook Communities Summit, Facebook announced several new features to help Facebook Group admins grow and manage their communities.

Facebook Group admins will get the following customization options:

• Easily customize the colors, post backgrounds and fonts that display in groups, along with the emojis members can use to react to content.
• Use feature sets to select preset collections of post formats, badges, admin tools and more that can be turned on for their group with one click, so that communities can engage in the ways they want.
• Suggest preferred formats for members to use when they post in their group. This will appear in a new posting button that stays with members as they browse the group, eliminating the need to scroll back to the top when they’re ready to post.
• Create a unique greeting message and share group rules that new members will automatically receive when they join a group, so they can develop a sense of belonging sooner.

Ability to award members to boost engagement:

• Members will also soon be able to give community awards, like Insightful, Uplifting or Fun, to content that they find valuable. These awards encourage engagement, make the content more visible to members and help demonstrate the group’s content at its best.

Other new features:

• Ability for admins to create subgroups within their groups for specific topics, regions or occasions, that can be managed in one place, so that members can more easily go deeper on what they care about.
• When people want to connect in real-time, they will soon be able to use Community Chats in both Facebook and Messenger, as well as create recurring events when they want to get together more regularly, either virtually or in-person.

Ability to manage groups:

• Admins can pin announcements and choose the order in which they show up in a new Featured section at the top of groups, to ensure their community sees the most important details first.
• We’re updating Admin Assist to give personalized suggestions on criteria to add, provide more information around why Admin Assist declines certain content and make Admin Assist accessible across all platforms with availability on Facebook Lite.
• Community Chats will allow admins to create a chat for the admin and moderator team so that they can better coordinate decisions in real time.

Different ways to earn and raise money:

• Create community fundraisers to raise money for group projects, to offset the costs of running the group or to enable members to show their appreciation for their admins and moderators.
• Sell merchandise they’ve created through a shop in their group, enabling members to show their support and deepen their sense of community.
• Create paid subgroups that members can subscribe to for a fee to gain exclusive access to more content, experiences like coaching or networking or deeper conversations. As part of our broader paid subscription effort across Facebook, this new feature enables admins to sustain their communities while offering more meaningful experiences to their members.

Bringing Groups and Pages together:

• For admins of Facebook Groups, the new experience will allow them to use an official voice when interacting with their community. For admins of Facebook Pages, the new experience will help them build community in a single space for members to participate and engage. Admins of Pages will also be able to take advantage of the moderation tools that Groups have today. This new experience is in early testing over the next year, before it becomes more broadly available.

Source: Facebook