This could be good (early days)

One traffic channel I've long ignored is Facebook Groups. I wasn't interested in dealing with a community (outside of the Fat Stacks forum of course). I didn't understand the full potential of groups. That was until a good friend suggested I try it a short while back. He's had big success with groups. I had misgivings but my friend is no slouch when it comes to driving traffic so I gave it a go. --------------------------------------------------------------- -TODAY'S PROMOTION- HARO Links Special Offer for Fat Stacks Readers Ends tonight at midnight! The HARO service I use is running a special for Fat Stacks readers. Here are the details. => Limited to 25 people. These monthly packages are rarely available. => 20% off. Use coupon DYKSTRA-MONTHLY-20 when checking out. ​[Sign up here](). Ends tonight at midnight. If it's E-E-A-T you need, give this service a shot. -END OF PROMOTION SECTION- --------------------------------------------------------------- He helped me set it up. It's not rocket science. Best advice he gave me was to keep it private. My impatient tendency wanted to make it public but he cautioned the spam could get out of hand. The last thing I want to do is moderate a FB group. I took his advice. I kept my group private. It'll likely remain private. People must answer a few simple questions to join. I manually approve them. Like many things in this business, it was slow going in the beginning. Despite my less than enthusiastic efforts, my group grew to 1,270 members. It's growing faster and faster. ​ ​ --------------------------------------------------------------- IMPORTANT NOTE ABOUT MY GROUP! It's important to note that I was able to leverage other significant traffic channels to grow this group. If you don't have lots of traffic or email subscribers to leverage, it will mostly like take longer. --------------------------------------------------------------- No spam ... yet. It's not driving tons of traffic either... yet. Where it shines is reach relative to the number of members. Most posts reach at least 1/3 of members; some approaching 50% of members. That's better than my Facebook pages. I'm sure as my member count grows, the reach ratio will drop. At least I'm expecting it to. If it doesn't, this group thing will be much better than expected. Frankly, I'm amazed at how many people take the time to answer questions to join. While it's not a big traffic driver now, if members grow to 100K or more, it certainly could be. It costs me nothing. I don't run ads for members. I may but haven't yet. I promote the group in my email newsletter and there's a link to it on the FB page. I also link to it from my Buffer Start Page (similar to Link Tree). I tend to prefer the current mode of promotion. Most members come in after some exposure to my site, email and/or FB page. That's good for engagement, I think. If it keeps growing and organic reach remains high, I'll put more and more effort into it. For content I currently repost in the Group the best performing posts from the page. It takes a few minutes to load it up for several days using your run-of-the-mill social media scheduling software. If it continues growing, I may put more effort into content but for now that works just fine. A few takeaways 1. It's worth trying new things. You never know if something will work. 2. Better late than never. FB groups have been around for at least a decade. I sound like an amateur writing about it but the point of this newsletter is to let you know what I'm up to. I could have had 100K or more members by now had I started this 5 years ago. Instead of dismissing starting a group as "it's too late", I decided to give it a shot. FB groups are alive and well. 3. Can't count chickens... it's early days. 1,300 members is peanuts. It's possible, and perhaps probable that reach ratio will decline as member volume grows. 4. Definitely jump on things that leverage other traffic sources. My FB group definitely levers the FB page and email newsletter with respect to growing members and coming up with content. 5. Be patient. While I didn't embrace the group in the beginning as it grew hopelessly slow, I kept at it, albeit without a whole lot of enthusiasm. Now my enthusiasm matches growth rate. The more it grows, so too does my enthusiasm. 6. It's Facebook and Facebook is fickle. Facebook can turn reach (i.e. traffic) off any time. Building up a group is being dependent on something I don't control. Don't forget that if you go the group route. It's not for every niche If your niche doesn't perform well on FB generally, a group probably isn't worth it UNLESS you can provide members something they love consistently. A good example would be the "how to blog niche". Most how to blog FB pages don't do great. But groups can be a huge success. If there's community engagement potential, a group could be worth trying. Next email: How to leverage your FB group way beyond direct traffic. Stay tuned. Jon Fatstacksblog.com P.S. Don't forget [the HARO link service]() 20% discount ends tonight. Disclaimer: I'm an affiliate for Linkifi, the HARO link service. [Unsubscribe]( | [Update your profile]( | 2016 Hill Drive, North Vancouver, British Columbia V7H 2N5