Facebook unveiled a slew of new upcoming features at the Facebook Communities Summit held on October 20th, 2022. Highlights include Reels for Groups, expanded Group admin features, and additional Instagram integrations.
Engagement continues to be the theme of Facebook’s feature updates, with the spotlight shining on Groups in particular.
Below is an overview of what was announced at the 6th annual Facebook Communities Summit.
Reels in Groups
According to Facebook “Reels in Groups let you express your voice in your communities through creative and immersive videos.”
Group members will soon be able to upload and share video Reels directly in their Group. Users will also be able to add filters, audio, and text overlays to the Reels they post.
Picture Source: Facebook
Facebook Event sharing via Instagram
Group administrators will be able to share their Group’s Facebook Events directly to their Instagram account. “This feature can help you showcase your community more broadly,” says Facebook.
Being able to cross-post events to Instagram could allow Groups to reach an interested audience beyond Facebook. This could be a great way to grow Groups and bring users back to Facebook.
There are also a number of updates that are in the testing phases.
Expanded Group Profiles
Group Profiles will soon be able to add even more information in the About Me sections and an “Open to Messaging” tag is also in the works.
Facebook also shed some light on a bundle of new features for administrators in particular stating that “Admins have new tools to help them effectively manage and drive their group’s culture forward in engaging, useful and responsible ways.”
Picture Source: Facebook
These tools include:
Community Contributions
Admins will be able to highlight top contributing members and track engagement with a points system. At this phase in testing, Group members can earn points by “ taking on an active role with a set of responsibilities in the community or for receiving reactions and comments on posts.”
Socializer
This new role for members is designed to recognize users who help welcome new members to a Group community and encourage community participation.
Here’s how this would work, according to Facebook:
“Socializers in music festival communities can be recognized for sharing their festival experiences and motivating others to do the same by sharing photos and videos.”
Picture Source: Facebook
Admin Assist
This feature will make administration tasks quicker and easier. Admins will need to provide a set of parameters for automated moderation. Once these parameters are in place, moderation is done automatically.
Parameters include how false information will be treated, such as being automatically deleted or moved to pending review.
Admin Assist will also come with a Daily Digest report. The report provides admins with a summary of all the automated actions taken during the day, based on the criteria set by the Group.
Flagged by Facebook override
This feature will allow certain admins to override the Flagged by Facebook status on posts. This is specifically for content flagged as bullying and harassment.
Admins will be able to override flagged content and post it to their Group after review.
Not all Groups and admins will be eligible for this feature, however.
“We use a variety of criteria to define a group’s eligibility for this feature, including that the group admin must not have been the admin of a group we’ve previously removed.”
It’s important to note that these features could see significant changes before public release.
Picture Source: Facebook
On the whole, these updates will address two important factors for Facebook Groups: quality of life concerns and user engagement.
The new admin tools are designed to alleviate many of the key pain points that Group administrators have been dealing with for years.
For marketers trying to build a community via Facebook Groups, all of these updates should make that task easier. Particularly with additional ways to cross-promote events and encourage user-generated content.
Groups have been a major focus for Facebook lately. They remain one of the most active parts of the social media network at a time of falling engagement numbers.
The new engagement features appear to be Facebook’s way to doubling down on its engagement breadwinner.
Considering many of these features have been requested by users for some time, users should be thrilled with the updates when they are released.
What remains to be seen is if they will be enough to stem the tide of people moving away from Facebook as their social media hub of choice.
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