How to Use Secret Facebook Groups to Enhance Your Business

One of the crucial underutilized options of Fb for companies is the Secret Group.

A Secret Group is straightforward to create and handle, and it’s excellent for small-group interplay.

Hold studying to find highly effective methods these teams might assist what you are promoting.

Facebook initially created Secret Groups for individuals to have small, intimate interactions with household and associates, however Secret Groups are additionally good for small companies, coaches and professional improvement, like mastermind groups.

Table of Contents

Why Secret Groups?

Most individuals consider Facebook Business pages when they consider Facebook, however companies generally want personal areas for working, coordinating schedules and creating advertising and marketing and promoting concepts with a small group of individuals.

It’s true that G+ (Google+) has created a system of Circles that enable for personal conversations, however there are some good options that Facebook has embedded inside Secret Teams that aren’t as simply utilized in G+ because it presently stands. I’ll clarify these Facebook options in a second.

There are three varieties of Facebook Groups:

Public (Open): everybody can see the Group, discover it in a search and make posts
Closed: everybody can see the Group, howeversolely members can see (and make) posts
Secret: solely members can see the Group, see and make posts

However how secret is a Facebook Secret Group?

Whenever you create a Secret Group, nobody, besides the members of the Group, will have the ability to discover it in a search and nobody will be capable to discover any hint of it in your private or enterprise Facebook profiles. And Secret Groups aren’t listed by Google.

Even for those who ship somebody the URL of the Secret Group, they won’t be able to see the Group web page. It’s that secret. I’ve even posted a Secret Group’s URL on a post in one other Secret Group and nobody may see the precise hyperlink in any respect!

You will get Facebook notifications (and/or electronic mail notifications—more on that in a second) for every post from any member. And people posts will present up in your information feed, which could be a bit complicated till you discover the little lock icon subsequent to any Secret Group submit. So nobody can learn these, until they’re wanting over your shoulder!

And in the event you select to obtain e-mail notifications of posts to the Group, it is possible for you to to answer to these emails and have your reply go on to the Group remark for that post.

Options of Facebook Secret Groups

There are a number of options that I’ve loved with my Secret Groups that any small enterprise may use. They’re:

Group Chat: everybody within the Group can use the Chat function on the similar time. So you possibly can have a dialog round sophisticated topics to work issues out with out having to select up the telephone or again-and-forth emails. So far as I do know, you possibly can’t use this perform on a cellular machine (cellular browser or app) in the meanwhile, although.
Shared Document creation: the entire group can have enter on one doc and have the ability to edit what different members have placed on it. This characteristic is just like utilizing Google Docs, and can be utilized to refine promotional textual content, press releases, responses to controversy, and so forth.

Non-public photograph sharing: members can submit pictures that nobody else on Facebook can see. For instance, Secret Group members on an promoting group can focus on which photos to make use of on an upcoming marketing campaign. They may create albums with the identify of their upcoming promoting campaigns and put a number of photographs in them to debate within the feedback or within the Group chat. You possibly can tag the pictures, however solely with the names of the members of the Group.
Shared e mail tackle: Facebook permits you to create a customized electronic mail tackle you should utilize to electronic mail posts to the Secret Group page. You may electronic mail textual content and pictures. I’ll present you methods to create that particular electronic mail handle in a second.

How can a small enterprise use a Secret Group?

These options, how can small companies and coaches use a Secret Group?Listed below are few methods:

For those who’re a supervisor with workers who reside on Facebook, you’ll be able to create a Secret Group to keep up a correspondence about hours, shift substitutions, emergencies and all kinds of issues that a supervisor would usually use e mail or textual content messages for. Everybody can examine the Secret Group posts for morning updates and these messages gained’t present up on somebody’s private wall.
You probably have a distant digital group engaged on a advertising and marketing mission, you should utilize the Group Chat characteristic to work by concepts that come up randomly by the day that solely want a few minutes of consideration in the identical approach you’ll use Google Chat or any IM system.
In case you have a disaster administration staff utilizing a Secret Group, you’ll be able to take photographs in your smartphone and ship them on to the Group utilizing your personal Group e mail tackle. You utterly bypass the add and tag course of you usually use for Facebook pictures. You possibly can create group paperwork for the right way to deal with a selected disaster for prepared reference and be capable of announce a gaggle chat time that instantly exhibits up within the member’s Prime Information Feed.
If you’re a private growth coach, utilizing the Secret Group system is nice, even when it’s a bit convoluted to get a totally Secret Group, as you will notice. First you should create a Closed Group. That means you can provide out the Group’s URL after which they will click on the Ask to Be part of the Group button (prime proper of the Group web page). You don’t must be private Fb pals with potential members for this to work. Then as soon as everyone seems to be a member of the Closed Group, you may change the Group setting to Secret (how to do this developing).

Read more: 5 Sure-Fire Facebook Contest Ideas

Assuming you have already got a private Facebook account, follow these steps to create a Secret Group:

Go to http://fb.com/groups
Click on the green Create Group button.
Give the Group a reputation and select the icon with the dropdown arrow.
Add any members who’re your Facebook Friends by typing their names. You’ll see their account pop-ups; choose so as to add them to the member field.
If you may be together with members who are usually notyour private pals, be sure you create a Closed Group first, then change it to Secret as soon as all of the members have joined.
Choose the Privacy Setting and click on the Create button.

For those who chosen to create a Closed Group first,ship the URL for the Group to the individuals you need to invite. The URL will take them to the Group web page, where they’ll see an Ask to Be part of the Group button (high proper nook of the web page). As soon as they click on that button, you (as an admin of the Group) will see their request on the proper column of the Group page.

To approve individuals who have requested to join the Group, look on the appropriate facet of the Group web page for the part referred to as Requests. You’ll be able to click on the Add or Ignore hyperlink for every one who has requested to hitch the Group. As soon as everyone seems to be in, change the Group setting to Secret. You’ll be able to see how to try this subsequent.

Adjusting Personal and Group Settings

To regulate your private notification settingsfor this new Group, click on the Edit Settings button on the prime of the web page, and choose if you wish to be notified when a member posts, when a member posts or makes feedback, when a private buddy within the Group posts or solely posts that you’ve got made comments on.

You too can verify or uncheck to be despatched an e-mail for the notification alternative you made, and determine if you wish to be despatched chat messages. After you may have figured all that out, click on the Save Adjustments button. I counsel that you just unselect the e-mail notifications and simply use the constructed-in notification system Facebook gives, however that’s my private choice.

To regulate the Group’s settings, search for the hyperlink in the best column known as Edit Group. If you click on this hyperlink you will have choices to:

add a picture that would be the Group’s profile picture
change the privateness setting (from Closed to Secret, for instance)
choose to have solely admins of the Group be capable to approve members (extremely prompt for all Group organizers to test this field)
create a novel electronic mail tackle for the Group—click on this button to create an electronic mail handle that you just or anybody within the Group (when you share it with them) can use to e mail textual content and pictures to the Group wall. You simply want so as to add textual content earlier than the @groups.fb.com hyperlink. For instance,GoldMasterMind@groups.fb.com. In case your proposed title is already taken, it is possible for you to to vary it till it’s distinctive.

Now you may create posts, add images, add hyperlinks, create group paperwork and have conversations, all throughout the Facebook “cone of silence” or underneath the “cloak of invisibility”! I can hear you say, “However nothing is totally secret on the Web.” I might agree with you, however so far as I can inform, the proverbial cloak works very well with Fb Secret Teams.

I’m a member of some Secret Groups, one in all which comprises all of the authors (of which I’m one) of a sure not too long ago printed e book. Our Secret Group was a lifesaver in the course of the writing and enhancing section of our guide.

Due to an incredible quantity of overlapping topics and textual content within the ebook, we have been capable of kind issues out inside the Chat, Group Chat, Posting and Image Uploading options of the Group. And we bonded very deeply over posts, feedback, rants and raves. Realizing that nobody else may see what we wrote helped to alleviate the frustration and stress of a really demanding venture.

What do you suppose?