New Facebook Feature: Tag Everybody in your Facebook Group

Recently, Facebook released lots of new changes to Pages and Groups.

(I’m still trying to sort through some of the new Facebook Page experiences because it’s complicated and it’s annoying and it’s frustrating. Chalk up a win to Facebook on how they can frustrate folks so easily! 😊 NOT!!! I’m still working on understanding this enough to share in a future article so stay tuned!)

One new feature they released recently – It’s the TAG EVERYONE in a FACEBOOK GROUP – is one that some folks may let loose with because they feel it will help them engage more people … but before you do, I want to caution you to use it with care.

Remember the saying “With great power comes great responsibility”?

Yep, I just quoted Spiderman (the 2002 version with Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst – although it’s been traced back as far as the first century!) but for good reason.

This quote is critical to this new feature. The article below details it all out and it is an important lesson, especially if you run a Facebook Group. If you are a member of any group, read it as well so you can call out the admins if they use the feature without any forethought to what it can be doing to their reputation.

Now, I’m going to say this right here at the beginning of this lesson …

Just because you can tag everybody in your Facebook group does not mean you should be doing it. Period.

Remember that saying? “With great power comes great responsibility.”

If you start tagging people in your Facebook groups with the “Tag Everybody” feature, unless you have a dang good reason, you are just going to tick people off and lose people.

Folks in your groups – especially free groups – are leads and prospects. In a group that is part of a paid program, they are clients. You do not want to be doing activities that can potentially turn them off, remove the trust they have in you and see them leave the group.

Think about it … when the tag notification comes across in people’s notifications feed, it looks really personal. I had it happen to me the other day.

A leader in a group I’m in tagged me. One of my role models. I was so jazzed up when I saw the notification!

And I was thinking as I clicked the notification, “Oh my God! SO and SO just tagged me. Wow!”

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SIDE NOTE — He’s really big in the online marketing space and because of this I was all excited thinking he was singling me out for something… SOOOOO Coool!

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And, just for a minute, I was thinking things like, “Wow! Was he tagging me to ask me a question? Asking me for feedback? Pointing me out to his group for something?” … that would be beyond awesome!

If you put this into a real life situation you see how it can disappoint people. Imagine we were at a conference, and he was pointing me out to the audience. Me. Little Ole Kathy Colaiacovo from Nova Scotia.

This is exciting and builds you up and makes you think something cool is going to happen.

I was beyond myself at this tag, I’ll be honest.

And so, I clicked the notification and it took me to the post on Facebook where he tagged me … and it was just some post about a new free webinar he was hosting in a few weeks and it was just a big pre-notice to everyone in the group. So he tagged us all!

Not. Just. Me.

Everyone. Everyone got the dang tag.

Well, I was kinda ticked off, I’ll be honest.

Here I had gotten all jazzed up and bam. Major let down.

Major trust issue too. (Kinda like this GIF here…It’s hard tio get trust back. )

This is why you need to really think hard about how and when you use this very powerful tool so that you do not come across as … well … as a tool!

You do not want to be that person my mentor and role model was… you do not want your people, your community members feeling that let down.

Let’s walk through the kind of situations where it would be good to tag people in a Facebook group. Because I do believe there are some good ways to use this feature.

Before we get to that, let’s discuss why Facebook may have added this feature of Tagging Everyone in a Group.

I think it’s probably trying to compete in some ways with some of the alternative private communities now available in the online education space.

Several online course and membership systems now have options to have a private community so that you can have that networking and peer group option but NOT on Facebook.

Perspectives have changed about Facebook. Many folks are tired of it, exhausted with it, not trusting it and leaving Facebook – even as more sign up.

These community alternatives are helping some folks sell their programs with the bonus of a private community, “Not in a Facebook Group!”

I will tell you, I’m one of those people. In the Thrive Marketing Academy, we no longer have our Facebook group out there in the public. We use the Community Feature in Kajabi to have a private group.

Kajabi has an APP for mobile devices too – so people can still easily connect by their phone to get in and do the networking in this group.

One of the cool things you can do as the Admin of the community is to hit a button that says “Send an announcement to everybody” and a notification will pop up on their mobile devices. The same as Facebook has post notifications.

Folks also get an email saying, “Kathy posted this announcement.” So, it can work a little like Facebook in that regard.

Now, do I use it for everything I post? No! But I do use it for important things.

That’s what you want to do with your Facebook group and this new ability to tag everyone as well. You want to be very strategic about when you use this feature. Because you don’t want people getting mad at you and annoyed because you’re putting out these notifications to them.

Another big reason I think Facebook has added this feature is because groups have kind of fallen along the wayside in the notifications on Facebook, and are getting lost in the sea of notifications.

I know for me, in my Marketing Mastery Inner Circle, there have been posts from members tagging me that I am missing in all the notifications. There are simply too many showing in my list. Some I see, some I don’t. (I have a schedule now to check manually each day because I cannot rely on Facebook.)

This means from the other end folks are missing my group ones as well.

It is a way for Facebook to have a feature that works with notifications that stand out in your notifications higher than general ones.

Admit it. If you see a notification about a post, and one where someone tagged you, which one will you check first?

Right. You give priority on the tagging one, I would too. Facebook knows this and knows this feature can help group Admins get more engagement in their groups.

Notifications on posts have turned into commercials … we begin to ignore them.

#1 Strategy to use the new “Tag Everyone” in a Facebook Group feature.

Use the “Tag Everyone” Feature ONLY for very important notices and messages.

You have to think about what you’re doing in your Facebook groups now. What is the high level information they need to know? What are the important things that people should not be missing out on?

When I think about my Inner Circle (which still has a Facebook group, but we’ll probably be moving to a private community one day soon when they get a couple features that I want to have – yes Facebook has some things I do like!), I look at that for some of the big things that we post. Our monthly post with the dates of all the group coaching and hot-seat sessions, our office hours training lesson and our co-working times for the upcoming month.

That’s important. I don’t want people to miss that. Yes, we send them an email too, but maybe they’re not seeing the email. So, in these cases using the “Tag Everyone” feature on that one would be good.

We also post an accountability check-in every Monday. This is another post I see as important and big, so that will probably get the “Tag Everyone” feature too.

When I post the reminder that our calls are in half an hour, I’m not going to do that, because they already have the calendar and the reminder email, and so to me that is a little overkill.

The strategy for using this feature is really to decide for your business and your people what will be best for them – not you!

You want to use it in a way that it doesn’t overwhelm your members or more importantly, become so much the norm that when you do use it, they start ignoring it because that’s what will happen if you abuse this feature. It stops being a standout feature and becomes the norm.

Your Lesson for today:

If you are a Group Admin, use this feature strategically and determine what kind of posts will get the “Tag Everyone” feature with it.

If you are a member of a group, and they overuse the tag, let them know what you think. They may not have a “Kathy” to advise them on best practices like this.

Facebook groups are a great way to nurture leads and prospects. And you do need these when you own a practice or business. They become clients!

 

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