New tools and features coming to Facebook Groups in 2018.

February 9, 2018- Facebook recently announced a series of updates regarding Facebook Groups and the tools that are used to manage them.

Facebook is finally taking some time to really work on Group features, recognizing that the community aspect of these groups serve a higher good. Their first big announcement was in regards to a new Facebook Community Leadership Program which will seek to award funds for big ideas that serve unique needs.

They have announced a new, $10 Million Program aimed at increasing the effectiveness of Facebook Communities:  5, $1 million awards to be dedicated to fund ideas that cater to the community and serve unique needs as well as 100, $50,000 awards to leaders of communities that focus on specific, unique initiatives. These awards will also include things such as training, new tools for helping to manage the community, etc.

Interested in these awards? Go to https://communities.fb.com/ for more info.

The second big announcement that Facebook made about Groups was that they would be adding 4 new features for admins:

1. A new Admin Tools Hub which will feature all of the admin tools in one place and an easier way to navigate the ways the group can be administered.

2. Group Announcements which will include several posts in a grouped setting and pinned to the top of the group. You can schedule announcements ahead of time, add photos to them and they will give admins a lot more flexibility in how those announcements look.

3. New personalization features to give your Group an even more dynamic and appealing look. This will include picking out a color that will be shown throughout the group.

4. The best feature by far is the new Rules feature which will give admins a better way to communicate rules to members. They will have their own space, always visible on the group. Incoming members will also be shown the rules when they join. Rules will become a more prominent feature for the community.

A Social Experiment - Part 1, Starting a Movement

President and Owner of LileStyle Productions, Angie Lile, has many passions. She loves to play around on social media sites and absorbs social media news at the same rate as her coffee/smoothie.  She loves her kids and family and how much time she gets to spend with them when she's not on Facebook. She loves her friend and LileStyle's Senior Writer, Susan Stocking and her extreme abilities in the kitchen and uncanny way of finding a great deal.

But recently, Angie was consumed by an all new passion: flat-packed furniture. Particularly the kind you find at Ikea.

Having driven with Susan to an Ikea in Chicago and making their first ever purchases, walking through the vast spaces filled with every kind of room configuration imaginable and playing with all of the cabinets and drawers, this dynamic duo decided to begin a new social experiment with grand ideas of accomplishments.

Hence, the "Bring Ikea to Kansas City" movement was begun.  Susan and Angie sat down to discuss how to start a movement and quickly decided that a Facebook page would be the easiest and quickest way to start.  They talked about what they could provide on a Facebook page that would get people as excited about Ikea as they were.  There were many ideas tossed about and Angie used her Facebook technical skills to formulate the new page.

She added two very custom tabs to the page which would serve to (a) raise the overall visibility of the page to others and (b) give people who supported the page a reason to come back to the page over and over again.

"The first tab was easy," said Angie of her experiences. "I had just returned from a social media seminar where there was a lot of talk about Pinterest and how the demographic of Pinterest was about 75% women. This is the same as the demographic we had assumed would be interested in our page, so we decided to start a Pinterest account for uploading pictures that we had taken at Ikea to the board. Then I created a custom tab with "FaceitPages.com" and embedded our Pinterest board into it."

The response with Pinterest has been very slow, but mostly because the team has not been actively pinning things to it. The plan is to increase pinning so more followers will pick up Movement.

The second tab that was added to the Facebook page was a community tab which allows users to post when they are planning a trip to Ikea. Others can then either plan their trip at the same time or give a list of items to the ones going and ask them to bring the items back.  According to Lile, "Since we don't have Ikea in Kansas City, most people are faced with a minimum of 7 hours in a car to get to the nearest store. With a drive like that, I would ask my friends and family if they want me to bring them anything. The 'Ikea or BUST' tab does the same thing on a larger scale."

The Facebook page is only one week old and has garnered an amazing 400 Likes, mostly through word of mouth. The next phase of the plan will involve an investment of $25.00 into advertising to see if more people will see the page. We'll make sure the advertising is focused on the four states closest to Kansas City:  Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Iowa.

As the movement continues to build, LileStyle will implement many other tactics and document them here. This will also cover the content type that we use. So far, we have noticed that pictures of locations in Kansas City that have an "Ikea" sign photo-shopped in, are the most popular content.  People also love the photos which depict Ikea used in functional ways.  Please be sure to follow this blog or sign up for our newsletter to see how this social experiment unfolds.