Facebook rolls out new features for Groups & Admins

Facebook is introducing new features to help admins strengthen group culture and manage and sustain their communities. It also has a new experience that brings together elements of Pages and Groups into one place, allowing admins to use an official voice with their communities.

The updates of new tools in Facebook Groups were announced at the Facebook Communities Summit hosted to highlight the company's investments in ways to improve the Groups experience on the platform.

Building Communities

As every group develops its own culture. To make their groups look and feel unique, admins will now be able to:

• Customize the colors, post backgrounds and fonts that display in groups, along with the emojis members can use to react to content
• Use feature sets to select preset collections of post formats, badges, admin tools and more that can be turned on for their group with one click
• Suggest preferred formats for members to use when they post in their group. This will appear in a new posting button that stays with members as they browse the group
• Create a greeting message and share group rules that new members will automatically receive when they join a group
• Members will also soon be able to give community awards, like Insightful, Uplifting or Fun, to content that they find valuable

Sub-Groups

With one main feed for discussions in a group, it can be hard for members to find the content they want to engage with. Facebook is testing the ability for admins to create subgroups within their groups for specific topics, regions or occasions, that can be managed in one place.

When people want to connect in real-time, they will soon be able to use Community Chats in both Facebook and Messenger, as well as create recurring events when they want to get together more regularly, either virtually or in person.

Also Read: Facebook company renames itself to ‘Meta’

Manage Community

These new tools will help make it easier for admins to manage their groups:

• Admins can pin announcements and choose the order in which they show up in a new Featured section at the top of groups
• Faceook is updating Admin Assist to give personalized suggestions on criteria to add, provide more information around why Admin Assist declines certain content and make Admin Assist accessible across all platforms with availability on Facebook Lite
• Community Chats will allow admins to create a chat for the admin and moderator team so that they can better coordinate decisions in real time.

Sustain Community

A suite of tools to help admins sustain their efforts and advance the purpose of the group has been introduced. The platform is testing the ability for admins to:

• Create community fundraisers to raise money for group projects, to offset the costs of running the group or to enable members to show their appreciation for their admins and moderators
• Sell merchandise they’ve created through a shop in their group
• Create paid subgroups that members can subscribe to for a fee to gain exclusive access to more content, experiences like coaching or networking or deeper conversations. As part of the broader paid subscription effort across Facebook, this new feature enables admins to sustain their communities while offering more experiences to their members

Facebook Groups X Pages

Some communities use both Groups and Pages to connect with people, which can be more time-intensive for admins to manage and unclear to members where to go for what. So, the platform is introducing a new consumer experience that brings features of Pages and Groups into one place.

For admins of Facebook Groups, the new experience will allow them to use an official voice when interacting with their community. For admins of Facebook Pages, the new experience will help them build community in a single space for members to participate and engage. Admins of Pages will also be able to take advantage of the moderation tools that Groups have today. This new experience is in early testing over the next year, before it becomes more broadly available.