When you build a Facebook group, inviting your friends is the first step, because nobody will find and join a group that has only a handful of members. But if you have lots of friends and page fans, clicking to invite them one by one is not realistic. In this post, Lucid Gen shows you how to invite friends and fans to a Facebook group with the Automatic Invites feature in just a few steps. Let’s get started!
What you need to know about Facebook groups today
- Friends must accept your invitation to join the group: In the old days, building a group with tens or even hundreds of thousands of members was very easy. Now your friends have to accept your invitation before they are added to your group. A bit sad, I know!
- You can use a Facebook page to invite fans to the group: If you join the group as a Facebook page, you can use that page to invite its fans to the group. This is a great option: a personal profile is capped at 5,000 friends, while a page has no follower limit. Check out how to get real likes on Facebook to attract more fans.
- Groups have more post formats than Facebook pages: Facebook detects what a post is about and picks a format for it automatically (Jobs, Sell, Q&A…). If you don’t need this, turn it off in the group settings. You can also show members how to write bold text in Facebook groups so their posts look the way they want.
Manually invite friends to a Facebook group
Step 1: Go to your group > choose who you are interacting as, if you joined the group with both your personal profile and a Facebook page.
As I mentioned above, a Facebook page can invite its fans to the group. Make the most of this!
Step 2: Click the Invite button > select friends or fans > click Send Invites.
Automatically invite fans to the group with a Facebook page
Facebook has a feature that automatically invites your page’s fans (followers) to your group. The group must be linked to your page, or your page must be an admin of that group. Note that Facebook only invites new followers and your top fans.
On the computer
Step 1: Go to your Facebook page > click More > select Groups.
Step 2: Click the three-dot button in the Linked Groups section > select Automatic Invites.
Step 3: Turn on Send an automatic group invite to your followers, then save.
If you want to invite older followers, click the Invite button on this page and select them manually.
On the phone
You can also turn on automatic invites on your phone. The steps are the same as on a computer, only the interface is different. Go to Groups in the horizontal scrolling menu > tap the three-dot button next to the group > Automatic Invites > turn on Send an automatic group invite to your followers.
Conclusion
You can use several Facebook pages to invite as many fans as possible to your group. As long as they are genuinely your fans and your group has valuable content, they will usually be happy to accept. If only we had built our groups before Facebook changed the rules, we would have great groups by now, right?
