Should you leave your Facebook Group?
“Should I leave MY Facebook group?”
Creators everywhere are asking this question right now. And with good reason.
As more and more people delete Facebook and other social media apps from their phones and move to other software to connect digitally, creators wonder if their community would be better served outside the Facebook ecosystem. In many cases, the answer is a resounding YES.
For instance, I recently received a fantastic question from a friend on Instagram, who shared:
I’ve been building a community around the app and coaching program I created. My Facebook Group has about 12,000 members and is going strong, but I always toy with the idea of moving it to another platform. I’m just not sure yet if this is the right move. My audience is mostly women between the ages of 30-60, and we also utilize Mighty Networks for challenges a few times per year.
My answer for him was to leave, slowly but surely. A lot went into that answer, but ultimately it comes down to this: Building your brand community on Facebook Groups is not a viable long-term choice for creators or small businesses (or most large ones, but that’s another can of worms for another day).
So… what should YOU do? Should you stay or should you go?
Let’s walk through how to answer that bigger questions, one step at a time. First, there are a couple of really important questions before you dive in and take the next steps to leave Facebook.
Questions to Answer
There are 3 important questions for you to ask yourself before deciding:
Is your community healthy enough to undergo a platform change?
To answer this question, take a look at your Facebook Groups admin dashboard. What does growth look like? Is it growing at all? If not, it doesn’t mean you should not leave the platform, but it is something to consider. That’s because many creators rely on Facebook to grow their audience because people are already there. If you’re struggling to grow a community while on Facebook, you are likely to struggle even more outside of Facebook - unless you create a clear marketing strategy. So start thinking about how you will take charge of growing your community without relying on the fickle Facebook algorithm.
Next, look at engagement rates. In any community, you want to see about 20% of members returning to participate on a regular basis (weekly or monthly). If people are not yet engaging at that rate, it is unlikely they will engage more outside of Facebook. Again, whatever your answer to this question, it does not mean you should feel like a failure and not leave Facebook Groups. Instead, it means that if you choose to leave, you should create an ongoing engagement strategy to encourage people to return and develop more commitment to the community.
Do you have a content and programming strategy?
How do you currently think about bringing people back into the community? Is it all ad hoc? Are you posting things on Facebook several times per week and relying on notifications to encourage participation? Or do you have a content plan?
There are very rare cases in which Facebook Groups have created such strong bonds for their members that people log into Facebook just to see what is going on in their favorite group. So I am going to put this plainly: Your efforts are unlikely to account for the rate of engagement in your Facebook Group. Instead, Facebook’s user experience and algorithms account for your engagement. As a creator, that should deeply concern you.
Here’s what I mean (no beating around the bush): Many are addicted to checking their Facebook accounts, and your group is part of what they see when they compulsively check in. They participate not because they are deeply committed to your group but because it’s a convenient, easy, and low friction way to get a hit of dopamine. This is not an entirely bad thing (and you certainly want people to be excited to hear from you and their fellow community members!), but it does mean that Facebook is controlling that relationship between your members, not you. And that’s just way too risky.
If the thought of creating a full-fledged content calendar and engagement strategy overwhelms you, that is a good reason to stick with Facebook Groups a bit longer.
Do you have loyal members to help you move?
To successfully migrate to a new platform, you’re going to need “ride or dies” (also discussed as Founding Members in this post on Facebook Groups and in this more broad piece). They will help engage folks on the new platform with you. They will give feedback. They will tell you if they think the new platform is shitty and they don’t want to use it.
A good rule of thumb: if you have 10 of these “ride or dies”, then you’ve got what it takes to make the move.
If you’ve been able to answer “YES” to these three questions, I strongly recommend migrating off of Facebook Groups. It’s too risky to build your relationships in someone else’s (ad-supported, profit-prioritizing) sandbox.
If you’re ready to make the move, here’s what you can expect:
Tired of reading? Watch the rest of this blog post AS A VIDEO.
How to Migrate from Facebook Groups to a New Community Platform
Ready to leave? Here’s how to do it, step by step:
Send out a basic survey to assess people’s general needs and how they want to connect with others.
I recommend starting by going to your people. Figure out what they need now and how they prefer to connect (I recommended multiple-choice questions with an “other, please explain:____” option for these). Ask things like:
What tools have you used to connect with members in the past, if at all?
Who would you like to meet who you have not yet met?
How would you prefer to be introduced to new people?
Would you be willing to talk with us further about your experience in this community (then ask for their email)?
We can then use those survey responses as an initial gut check telling us whether people are happy where they are or not. This survey will not tell you what to do next. That comes later.
Talk to your members one on one in-depth about their experience so far.
Yes, this takes a bit of time. It also communicates deep respect, curiosity, and will get you far better answers than you will get on your own; invest the time upfront instead of on the backend wondering what went wrong. You can let participants know when you chat with them that you are considering leaving Facebook Groups, you’ve been eyeing some other possibilities, and you want to assess what that will mean for them in their life and experience of the community.
You’re going to learn so much. There is no greater use of your time than to spend it talking to your community members. Truly.
Determine necessary platform features based on member needs.
Now you can start to write down the features you need and determine which platforms (out of the 80+ now available) will be the best fit for your members.
Bring in your “ride or dies” for testing the platforms.
Set up demo sites or sandboxes and let these people play with them and get their honest reactions.
Determine the best platform.
From their feedback, make the best selection.
Begin the migration process with members.
While it is tempting to move all the information over on your own, you should not do this solo if you want the best results. If possible, bring in those loyal members and allow them to determine which threads to pull over from the old group and which to ditch. This can happen over a live Zoom session or asynchronously via a shared spreadsheet and a communication tool like Slack, Whatsapp, or Facebook Messenger. This activity is called “seeding” in community management.
Test the tech.
Before announcing the change more broadly, test the tech for a few weeks. Fix any bugs or oddities in the user experience. Smooth out onboarding. And continue to seed the new platform with content created with your loyal “ride or die” members.
Communicate — more than you think you ought to.
Let people know weeks before you shut down the group that the change will be happening. Email if you can, or at least create posts in the Facebook Group if you don’t have everyone’s emails (this is why Facebook Groups are so frustrating; you can’t get your members’ contact information from them).
You're going to have to communicate a lot, a lot, a lot. It’s not enough to send one email and say, “Hey, we're shutting down. Go find us over here.”
What you're going to do is probably send at least five emails or sets of notifications. At least. Let people know well ahead of time what the Facebook Groups closure date is (or if you won’t close it, what that will mean for the future community experience if it is split).
Remind them over and over again that this change is taking place. Over time, you’ll notice people slowly start to move to the other platform.
What to Expect When You Leave Facebook Groups
Here’s what your trajectory will look like when you make the big shift and share it with everyone.
You’ll see an initial spike in activity, especially if you plan launch week activities (which I recommend).
After 1-3 weeks, you’ll see a sudden drop in activity. Do not panic. You’ve just had an exciting moment where everyone is together and then you move into maintenance mode.
Activity will plateau for several months. Your job at this point is to stoke the fires and continue to bring people into conversations on the new platform.
After ~18 months of continuous community engagement, you’ll see a steady rise in activity that should increase alongside your efforts to bring in new members’ voices and continue engaging those who have been with you. Things will feel much easier than they used to at this stage.
Eighteen months might seem like a really long time to invest. And that’s why I recommend starting this migration process now, because 18 months from now, you're going to wish that you started NOW.
There's no time to lose on this because, truly, if you're thinking about leaving Facebook Groups and you have 12,000 members (or even 12!) and a business tied to the group, it's way too risky to tie your customer's experience to the whims of Facebook.
Or Meta and their metamates.
Or whatever they’re calling themselves to try to change the public narrative in 2030. (I’m not usually this snarky, I swear.)
Just don't do it.
And if the timing is not right for the move, then work on your operations, work on getting those loyal “ride or die” relationships, and continue to engage people with meaningful content and programs. Then make the switch.
What Platform Should You Use? Suggested Alternatives to Facebook Groups
There are over 80 community platforms on the market as of 2022. And whenever you're reading this, that number will likely be even higher.
So the ones I recommend for those of you who are thinking about leaving Facebook Groups (and I'm going to caveat this by saying every community is different. I cannot give you the ultimate solution in this video, but I want to tell you which ones to look at first):
Circle.so: I use this one for my work.
Mighty Networks: A good choice if you have courses + community and the user interface appeals to your members (test this first!)
Discourse.org: a forum-like open-source solution
Discord: A good option for those who want to create synchronous communities, have gaming-related or blockchain-related communities and whose communities are less than ~500 members.
Slack: A good Discord-like option for those in the B2B space
Whatsapp: For small groups (I would never recommend this for a group of over 50, and even that will be tough).
Remo: A newer solution that combines events with a community platform
Geneva: A nice blend of Clubhouse, Slack/Discord, and Whatsapp-like features.
In addition, on the operations side, you might also look at:
Okay, take it from here, friend!
I hope this is helpful for you. I hope it guides you. I hope that you have the people that you need to make this shift.
Any questions? Drop ‘em in the comments section below.
Looking for more guidance? Check out these videos:
What’s the best community software?
What platforms can serve both courses and communities?