Growing on Social Media: My Experience and what I learned
Back in the beginning of October, I created my Facebook Group called Allergies Without Restrictions. When starting this group, I did not think it would be difficult to grow because of other experiences I have had when growing platforms. For example, I created my own personal photography Instagram (@natsphotos_18) where I post photos, edits, and highlights of my photography career. And while that page was not as difficult to grow in the beginning, I decided about a year ago to submit one of my photos to Canon U.S.A. to see if they would post it to their Instagram page. Sure enough, they posted the photo and that sparked huge growth for my photography page by helping me gain more followers. So, I thought that growing this Facebook Group would be a similar experience as it was for my photography Instagram. However, that is not the case. After trial and error, here are the tactics that I did to grow the Facebook Group and which one I think was the most successful.
Use another platform:
Now, most people are probably wondering why I decided to post about my Facebook Group on another platform. The reason why is because you may reach an audience that did not know your page or group existed. In this case, I decided to promote my Facebook Group on my photography Instagram page since it is a public account and I can utilize hashtags. I created a story to promote my Facebook Group, but I knew the best way to intrigue my audience at first was to put content that my audience is interested in seeing: photographs. In the first four chapters, I posted before and after photography edits and then I promoted my Facebook Group. I created my story this way because I wanted to get my audience intrigued with my story. The first hashtag I used was #foodallergycommunity since I knew that would be my best audience to reach. I also used #foodie as well since that is a nickname that I call my audience in my Facebook Group. I thought that by using these hashtags could generate more people towards viewing my story.
In my opinion, the results of this tactic were decent. While I did get an average of forty to fifty people looking at the Facebook Group chapters of my story, I noticed that I did not gain any new members in my Facebook Group. However, when looking at the story analytics, the results were quite interesting. The chapters reached around forty people for the first and last chapters as well as around sixty impressions. This I found interesting because I was able to see how my audience was able to interact with my stories and also see if the hashtags were bringing in new followers.
I think that this tactic would have worked better if I had the ability to have the “swipe up” feature on Instagram to easily link my Facebook Group. However, I need over 10,000 followers to have this feature, which I do not have. I also think that incorporating more hashtags could have increased the viewing of my story.
Share with a Group Chat:
The second tactic that I decided to try was sharing my Facebook Group with a group I am a part of on GroupMe. This group chat is a team of interns that I work with at Penn State where we all share information and inspiration about projects we are working on. One of the members in the group recently shared their new YouTube channel with us and I thought it would be the perfect timing towards sharing my Facebook Group. I sent a brief message talking about my group and letting them know I would be appreciative of them to join and also what the group is about.
With this tactic, I did end up getting some pretty decent results. I did gain a few new members from the group to join my Facebook Group, but I also received a message from one of the girls in the chat. She mentioned about someone she knew that has something similar and wanted to connect us. Overall, I think that this was a really successful tactic because you never know who your connections may know and may be able to connect you with.
Messaging Influencers:
Finally, the last tactic that I did was messaging influencers that have a similar platform as my Facebook Group. This was the most challenging experience that I have had. I decided to search for an influencer on Instagram since it is one of the most popular platforms that is used. I also decided to look for a smaller influencer since I think that it would be a great way to show support smaller communities. I first direct messaged one Instagram page that I discovered on my own. However, I did not receive a response, which I did expect to happen.
Like I mentioned earlier, one of the interns I work with put me in contact with an influencer that she knew who had a page similar to mine. I sent a direct message to her as well and included how I was referred to her page. Sure enough, I received a response from her about working together on promoting our pages. She has now joined the group and I also created a post about her page on my Facebook Group. I included a snapshot of her Instagram for others in my group to see in the post. She was so kind and promoted my Facebook Group on her Instagram page by creating a story about the group!
This tactic I found to be a huge success! I never thought that connecting with an influencer would be one of the most successful tactics for my group, but I am so happy that we were able to connect and now work with each other! It was truly an awesome experience getting to work with Sarah and I hope we still continue to promote each other’s pages in the future.
Final Thoughts:
Overall, I think that the best tactic when trying to grow a social media platform is networking with other people that you know. It is hard to have communities and pages that are so specific, especially one like mine and have people joining the group. By being able to network with other people, you never know what results you may get. For example, when Matt Duffy messaged our class group chat about promoting our groups, it was a great networking opportunity since his group went viral and now has thousands of members. Once he posted about the groups, this really helped my group grow a lot. Also, this opportunity of working with an influencer is a great way of getting new members to join the group and find another community to join. Overall, the importance of connections and networking with others was the best tactic that worked for the growth of my Facebook Group.
