If you want to build a Facebook Group with an engaged, positive community vibe, then you need to use Facebook Group Images. In this post we break down why Facebook Groups are so popular and how you can rock your engagement with visuals.
Are you frustrated with your Facebook Business Page? Everyone is talking about how difficult it is to get organic reach on Facebook Pages, so if you’re frustrated, you’re not alone.
Yes, for most Business Pages, organic reach is disappointing and dropping. And yes, you may need to pay-to-play if you’re concentrating on Facebook Pages. But, there is good news: Facebook Groups (and Facebook Group Images).
Facebook Groups are a great way to build engaged communities of potential customers in 2018 and into 2019.
Why Facebook Groups
In June 2017, Mark Zuckerberg announced a new mission statement for Facebook, “To give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together.” The feature that they’re keen to develop to help build communities is – drumroll please – Facebook Groups.
More than 1 billion people use Facebook Groups. Facebook added a lot of new features to help Facebook Group Administrators to grow and manage their groups in June 2017 such as group insights, scheduled posts and membership request filtering.
Facebook has continued to show its support for Facebook Groups by:
- introducing more changes in May 2018 to support group admins and to keep communities safe.
- introduced Watch Parties to groups in July, 2018.
- added Mentorship features to groups in August 2018 (focused on parenting, professional and personal development).
- currently testing paid for subscriptions within a Group.
Facebook is invested in developing Facebook Groups. They particularly want to develop more groups that add value to members or “Meaningful Groups”.
Building a community is a brilliant way to increase awareness of your business, nurture relationships with potential customers and to retain and build loyalty with existing customers. What are you doing about taking advantage of Facebook Groups as a way of building a community for your business?
Why Visuals in Facebook Groups are important
Facebook Group images are very important because group members spend time within the Group and the images you use become part of their Group experience. You want your Group to be memorable and you want to encourage people to keep on returning to the group.
Powerful Facebook Group images help you to:
1. Build your Facebook Group Branding
Your Facebook Group must compete for attention with all the other activity that happens in Facebook. It’s important to build a strong visual brand for your Facebook Group so that it’s instantly recognisable. Familiarity increases likeability and you want your Group to feel like “home”.
2. Create Buzz and Engagement within your Facebook Group
There is no point in spending time setting up a Group, marketing it, and consistently posting to it if you don’t build a community. People won’t keep coming back to the group if they don’t perceive it to add value to either their personal or professional lives. They certainly won’t come back if it feels like a ghost town with nobody interacting. Keep reading to find out our top tips for using Facebook Group images to build engagement.
3. Make your Announcements and Promotions Pop
If you’re running a Facebook Group with a business hat on, you will want any announcements, special offers and challenges to stand out. Facebook Group Images are a great way to get attention. We’ll cover some of the ways you can use visuals within your Facebook Group in this post.
Facebook Group Image Sizes
As the Group Owner, you want to make sure that your Facebook Group images are the right size so that they look professional. Let’s walk through the key image sizes you’ll need for your Facebook Group:
1. Facebook Group Cover Image Size
The header or cover image size for Facebook Groups is different from Facebook Profile or Facebook Pages image size. Your Facebook Group Cover Image will display different on for desktop and different mobile devices. There is no one size that is perfect. Sorry!
The recommended size is:1640 x 859 pixels or 1.91:1 ratio
Even though these are the recommended dimensions, desktops will only display 1640 x 662 pixels. Your Facebook Group Cover image will be cropped at the top and the bottom on desktops, so make sure that any text you use is in the centre and away from the margin.
Here’s an example of our own Facebook Cover image in the Easil All Stars Group:
Note that the main text is kept away from the border to allow for resizing on different devices.
2. Facebook Group Post Image Sizes
The chances are very strong that most of your Group members will view your posts on a smartphone. According to Statistica worldwide research (Jan 2018) 95% of active users will access Facebook via a smartphone, 32% through a desktop and 9% through a tablet.
You have a choice:
- Stick with the generally recommended image size for a post which is landscape (which is 1200 x 628 pixels or 1.91:1 aspect ratio) or
- Go for more real estate and go square or even portrait with your Facebook Group images (assuming that most people are going to view your posts on a smartphone).
Bigger is better and with a Facebook post you can use up to 2048 x 2048 pixels. If you are planning to use portrait-sized images, you can use a height of up to 2:3 aspect ratio (ie 600 x 900 pixels).
Remember that Easil has templates for Facebook Post Images and Square or Instagram Images.
Hot Tip: As an engagement exercise in your group, why not create a poll for your members and ask them whether they were using their desktop, tablet or smartphone to view the poll in your group?
P.S. Polls are one of the post options that always gets great engagement.
Join our Facebook Group – Easil All Stars
Before we get into the 7 types of Facebook Group Images, we have something to ask you. Are you an Easil lover? We hope so, seeing you are here on our blog! If you have an Easil account and you want to get the edge with Easil, then consider joining our exclusive Facebook Group.
Please note that you will be required to answer the Group Questions to be considered for acceptance into the group. This lets us know that you are an Easil user as well as how we can best help you in the group.
Our group has exclusive training, sneak-peeks of new features, tutorials and freebies. If you use Easil on a regular basis you will want to be in this group!
Now… let’s dive into how you can use Facebook Group images in your own group for more engagement:
7 Ways to use Facebook Group Images for More Engagement in your Facebook Group
Visuals on Facebook Groups work to create interaction between you and your group members. Here are some ideas of how to use them.
1. Cover Images
If someone “Likes” a Page, they may only visit the Page once. After that they are most likely to read Page posts in their news feed. However, people tend to spend longer actually visiting Groups, so your cover is more visible.
Think about changing your cover on a regular basis – when you have a big announcement, a special offer, a challenge or some news. Group members will be notified that you have changed it. It’s so tempting to see what’s new when you get a notification.
Here’s a clever idea for creating a cover image that will be sure to encourage engagement. This cover image was spotted in Tash Corbin’s Heart-centred, soul-driven entrepreneurs Group. Tash’s Facebook Group Cover Image is strongly branded. It also includes the hashtags for each day of the week in the group for easy reference. She’s also added the tempting call to action “Click Me” on her cover. Who could resist?!
When you click on the Cover Image, you see a thorough welcome and road map for the Group in the image’s description. She has added a great introduction to the group led with these delightful words “PLEASE READ CAREFULLY – it’s entertaining and will help you get the MOST from this group. I promise.”
Hot Tip: Add a call to action like “Click Me” on your Cover and add an interesting description to the Cover Image that will get conversations going.
2. Announcement Images
Facebook has changed the terminology for pinned posts to “Announcements”. Announcements are sticky posts that members will see when they visit the group. It’s easy to create an “Announcement:
- Create a post with an eye-catching image.
- Once it’s posted, click on the 3 dots on the top right.
- Select “Mark as announcement”.
You can add up to 10 posts as Announcements, but only one will be displayed at the top of the group with a “See More” link. You can choose which one you want displayed and set an expiry date to post if they are time sensitive. They will still be seen in the Announcement Section.
Announcements are great for:
- Welcome Messages
- Group Rules
- Events
- Offers
- Spotlights on members
- Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
- Training videos
3. Welcome New Members
Make new members feel special by creating a weekly welcome post. Facebook makes it easy by giving you a prompt to welcome new members. You can see this prompt to write a post under the members in the right column. The post generated will automatically tag members who joined in the last 7 days for any Group that has between 1-100 new members joining a week.
Add your own welcome message and a welcome image. Encourage new members to share something about themselves by adding a comment to the post. Often new members will interact with each other and start forming relationships. It’s a great place to encourage new members to share selfies of themselves.
4. Daily engagement images
Human brains are hardwired to recognise patterns and creating a routine for what’s going to happen by day of the week. This works well for Facebook Groups. It makes it easier for you to get organised and your members appreciate a familiar pattern of events each week.
Create Facebook Group images for days such Monday Motivation or Thursday Q&A. Make sure these images are bright, branded, self-explanatory and eye-catching. The best part is that once you’ve designed them once, you can use them each week.
Tips for Creating Daily Engagement Images:
- Use one of Easil’s Facebook templates to create all your routine posts so there is consistency in the design.
- Schedule your posts to ensure regular posting of the engagement images.
- Use your posts to encourage members to post in the comments.
As we said, Easil has a new Facebook Group for people who LOVE using Easil which Easil users are welcome to join. We thought we would share some of our daily engagement images.
5. GIFs
GIFs are a create way in add fun into your Group. Engaging GIFs get attention and get people talking. It’s easy to create your own branded GIF in Easil.
If you want some ideas read this post we wrote about how to create branded GIFs that stand out for your business.
If you are adding a GIF that you’ve created, you would use select “Add photo/video” when you add a post and then upload your GIF.
You don’t have to create your own GIF to have fun with GIFS in the Group.
- Simply add a post.
- Choose GIF as the image option.
- Search for a suitable GIF from Facebook’s free library via Giphy.
- Then add your description and post it.
Encourage your members to respond to your GIF with a GIF reply in the comments. GIFs make people smile and will make people feel good about being part of your community.
Hot Tip: It may be worth telling your group members how to actually find and post a GIF. Many people don’t realise that a GIF is one of the options when they add a comment to a post. Often people are not familiar with some of these features.
6. Encouraging members to post photos
Photos are a great way to encourage dialogue. Encourage members to post photos. It increases engagement in the group.
Some groups have a #blatantpromo day for the members so that they can promote their own business. Other groups encourage members to take selfies or pictures of their workspace (yes, asking members to post a #deskie is a thing!).
Hot Tip: Each group is different. Make sure that your rules for your group are clear when members join.
7. Group Video
If you want highly engaged members in your group, try making video a group event using one of these options:
Facebook Live
Facbeook Live is a strong way to rock your engagement. Use Facebook Live to interact and answer questions in your Group. Group members will love the ability to interact directly with you and other members in real time.
But you can’t expect everyone to know instinctively that you’re going Live or to remember that you’re going Live at a certain time. It’s a bit awkward if you go Live on a Facebook Group to answer questions…and nobody is there! Yes, people will watch Facebook Lives later, but it’s always easier to speak to real people.
So, notify and remind your Group about the Facebook Live so that group members are encouraged to turn up to the Live event. The easiest way to do that is to create an image announcing that you will be going Live at a certain time.
Hot Tip: Don’t forget to mention and welcome the replay viewers on your video as it’s often the case that there will be a large number of viewers watching on the replay.
Facebook Watch Party
Facebook introduced Watch Parties in July 2018. Watch Parties allow the admins of the Group to set up an event where members of the group can have a shared experience by watching a pre-recorded video at a set time together. It’s a way to create a real buzz and allows you and other members to interact while having a shared experience.
Watch Parties can be very useful for showing pre-recorded “How to” Tutorials which allows you to answer questions as your community ask them. For example, if you notice that group members are asking a lot of questions about how to create branded GIFs, you could create a Watch Party about GIFs.
Again, make sure that people know about your Watch Party before the actual Watch Party starts by promoting the event with an image announcing the time it starts.
Hot Tip: Be careful about the types of videos that you allow group members to post in your group as it can be difficult to moderate the content. One way that group admins manage this is to restrict the posting of live video to admins only. You could also ask that members only post videos created by others and/or short snippet videos (ie funny videos) or helpful videos that don’t need moderation. This keeps the focus on valuable content and not self-promotion.
Summing It Up
Facebook Groups are an exciting way to build a community for your business in 2018 and into 2019. We hope we’ve encouraged you to use visual content in your Facebook Groups to rock your engagement. Facebook Group images will create a strong visual brand for your group and stimulate conversation.
Over to You
Do you have a Facebook Group or participate in one? What works best to encourage engagement, especially when it comes to visual content and Facebook Group images?
