The Question
When creating a Facebook group, should the group settings be public, closed, or something else — and would the something else be secret?
My Answer
When you’re creating a Facebook group, your group should be closed — unless it’s a private group. If it’s public, then people can go to the group and look at everything without ever having to join. And you don’t want to do that.
What’s a Closed Group?
You want to make it closed. This means that they can find the group and they can see the “About Us” — the “About” statement. They can also see how many posts there are, who the admins are, and how many of their friends are in the group.
They can even see how many people are in the group, but they can’t actually see the content until they join, and that forces them to join. If you want to be a part of this, you have to join.
Ask Them Questions Before You Let Them In
And then there is another thing I do in my Facebook group. A lot of people probably remember this from when they joined this lawyer marketing group. I have three questions that you have to answer before joining, and the first question is: Do you want a free copy of my cheat sheet? If so, drop your email address right here.
Some people find me organically through the Facebook group or through Facebook and they never actually get on my email list but they end up in my Facebook group. This allows me to get those people, grab their email addresses and get them onto my email list because, at the end of the day, my email list is my most important thing.
So you can do that as well. You can say, “Do you want my free guide to avoiding foreclosure? Just drop your email address in this box and we’ll send it to you for free.”
And then, you can use other screening questions if you want. You can use that for an ask campaign, so you can say things like, “What’s the number one question that you have about bankruptcy?” Or, “What’s your number one question about DUI?” Or, “What’s the number one thing you’d like to learn about foreclosure?”
So What’s a Secret Group?
A secret group could be a paid group. I have Social Media Marketing for Lawyers Masterclass, my private coaching group, though that’s actually, not a secret group it should be. It’s a really small group, and you get private access to me. So, you can create a secret group like that if it’s something that you’re not really trying to publicly advertise.
