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Facebook groups have been around for a long time but only a few considered utilizing it for networking purposes.  The benefit that one can gain in targeting groups of people can be massive, depending on the strategies that one employs. If done properly and effectively, an entrepreneur can connect easily with industry peers and potential customers in a single page.

Observing your News Feed, you can easily notice that you get more updates from Groups than your Liked Pages. This is an advantage in terms of visibility. Group members also get notifications for new posts on the page, unless they turned the notification off.

 

What You Need to Know Before Joining a Facebook Group

Facebook allows one account to join as much as 6, 000 groups, but it is advisable to focus on 10- 20 groups where you can be regularly active. Feel free to reduce the number if you feel they are already too overwhelming.

Also, keep in mind that Facebook only allows a personal account to join a group. Pages can’t join so make sure that it may not be fit for those who don’t like using their personal profiles, unless they resort to recreating another personal account for network building purposes.

Before joining a group, make sure that it fits the following criteria: related to your business or field, has a good number of active members, good group description and low spam count. It must be noted that Closed Groups don’t show any activity to non-members so you may be required to join first to see if it qualifies. Don’t hesitate to leave the group right away if it turns out otherwise.

Make sure that you read and understand the About Section of the group, as well as the rules and restrictions of its Admin to avoid facing networking problems in the future.

 

How to Find Facebook Groups

There are two ways to find Facebook Groups:

• Facebook Suggestions

• Facebook Graph Search

To use Facebook Suggestions, look at the left sidebar of your newsfeed and click Groups> Find New Groups. The resulting list will include Groups related to your interests or your activity in your account or in other groups. The results page will also show you other options as Friend’s Groups, Local Groups and New Groups. Take the time to inspect these groups to find a perfect match to your criteria.

In using Graph Search, the best way is to use keywords. Just type it in the Search Box > See More Results.  Posts are what will be shown in the default view, so you have to click More > Groups to find the groups bearing your keyword which you can check and join in.

Now, with pages already joined in, you can start leveraging and utilizing Facebook Groups to promote your business, gain new followers, or connect to potential customers.