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Keep Group in FB Or Bring Into Our Website

by LinRP
3 replies
Hi Everyone!

I'm having a minor disagreement with my partner, and could use some input about what we really should do.

I am a partner in a athlete training company--membership based. We have been running an extremely successful nutrition program for athletes the past three months. We promote it and get the participants through very target FB ads. We will continue to offer it indefinitely.

The promo includes a live Q&A webinar before the program begins. I also set up a private FB group for ongoing support from our coaches during the two-week program. People LOVE it.

That said, I set up the FB group at the beginning because we had a crap, slow, clunky forum that no one enjoyed using. Now we have a whiz bang forum that is fast, and really nice to use.

Here's the rub:

I want to bring the athletes into our website and have them use our team forum instead of the FB group. They'd have limited access to forum areas since we have a membership team, but would allow them to see what we offer, and get comfortable being on our site regularly.

My partner, OTOH, says that the group is "comfortable on FB," and we should leave them there.

I think it's a lost opportunity not to drive all that interactive traffic to our site. Then again, at this point in the funnel, should we leave them on FB where they are, indeed, comfortable?

The convo with my partner who is not a marketer has me confused. He may be right? Any input appreciated! Thanks.
#bring #group #website
  • Profile picture of the author Rashell
    This is just an opinion. But I think it's better to have the forum on your site. You own it. You control it. faceBook can't just delete it or take it away one day.

    Getting users to move will take some creative brainstorming.

    (these are just arbitrary ideas)

    You might want to offer both at the same time. But somehow showcase the benefits of the new forum to those users who started with faceBook.

    Create some sort of event or special promotion to kick off the migration. Give them a reason to want to go check out the new forum. Then another reason to want to hang out there as often if not more often.

    Don't give them an ultimatum though. Make both the forum and the fB group fun places for them to be. But keep reminding them how much better the forum is.

    HTH,

    Rashell
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  • Profile picture of the author MelanieandMiles
    Rashell definitely touched on it, above... Meet people where they are at. If you have something good going on at Facebook, GREAT! Keep that momentum going!!!

    But, start to incentivise people over to your in-house forum, because there are some long term benefits in bringing all of those conversations over to your site from FaceBook.

    I've seen some forums offer free membership for a period of time when people reach 1000 posts... I've also seen free gifts and free consultations for when forum members reach other milestone post numbers.

    Don't stop a good thing and 'force' change.... But at the same time, try and strategize ways to add even more value from your site than from Facebook and your hard-core followers will jump at the opportunity to contribute and earn extras!

    Remember... Facebook will not be the ubiquitous site it is now, forever. In 2005 I was making a few thousand dollars per month through MySpace.... I didn't expect MySpace to die (or get re-birthed) but it happened, and ultimately Facebook has its own life cycle.

    We drive tons of traffic from Facebook right now, but our goal is to always get them on our email list and over to our products on our site, so we can build the relationships beyond FaceBook.

    Remember what Zuckerberg's opinion is of people who give him and Facebook their information...
    Zuckerberg was chatting with an unnamed friend, apparently in early 2004. Business Insider, which has a series of quite juicy anecdotes about Facebook's early days, takes the credit for this one.
    The exchange apparently ran like this:
    Zuckerberg : Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard
    Zuckerberg : Just ask.
    Zuckerberg : I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS
    [Redacted Friend's Name]: What? How'd you manage that one?
    Zuckerberg : People just submitted it.
    Zuckerberg : I don't know why.
    Zuckerberg : They "trust me"
    Zuckerberg : Dumb F*cks

    This quote is from http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/05...k_trust_dumb/:
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  • Profile picture of the author tuckspop
    As someone who has a 2600 member group that is very active. I have tried to move to the web site. People like where they are at. I have found it very difficult and confusing to the members who like the group. But... with the new facebook graph, if I was your competitor, I could get the id's of all your group members and target them with ads. A pretty good reason to move to the web site. Just share with me how to do it.
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