If Facebook disappeared forever tomorrow, what would happen to your community?
On Monday, October 4th, as I did my mid-morning Facebook group check, I noticed some weird error messages.
So, of course, I went to my backup source for mindless scrolling: Instagram. Same issue.
I even did the ‘ole tried and true “turn it off and turn it back on again” with my phone, fully indicating the seriousness of the issue.
No fixy.
“Am I in Facebook jail again,” I thought?
I did have a delightfully productive afternoon, and what I ultimately found out from the Twitterverse was that Facebook and its affiliated services WhatsApp and Instagram were, in fact, all down. For about five hours! (Read the super techie explanation of what happened here.)
You know how I periodically remind you guys to make sure you get your group members’ emails?
Well… what happened on Oct. 4th is one of the reasons why!
You may nurture, support, and spend hours on your on Facebook group but you don’t own it… Facebook does. You are essentially renting out the space with absolutely zero tenants rights.
This means if Facebook were to be totally wiped out by Russian hackers, or get Facebook COVID-19, or (much more likely), a bot decided to shut down your group for no apparent reason, your community would go POOF!
Which brings me to… the system I use to easily collect email addresses from a Facebook group.
In this 5 minute video below, I demonstrate the super easy system that I use for collecting email addresses from my new group members:
This has saved me HOURS AND HOURSE of time! Click here to get a free 7 day trial!*
As an admin who may have the intention to monetize your social media group – or if you already have a monetized group, this is a super important and easy process to put into place, which will ultimately get you more clients.
You’ll need to change your group questions so that one of them is for obtaining the new group member’ email address for updates on group-related news and info.
The email grab is the third question in my group so that people don’t feel immediately sold to. I don’t mind if people don’t provide their email, though I have personally seen many groups actually require it.
Maybe you won’t be using the email addresses right now, but this is fine. Keep all collected emails in a google spreadsheet for when you develop a newsletter (which I teach you how to do in my course) and/or for any future FB advertising targeting.
You can also add some text in another question that lets members know what you’ll do with their email address (basically a privacy policy).
You’ll never regret having these email addresses. They give you a little bit of distance from the behemoth known as Facebook.
Sample question text:
Would you like to sign up for FREE [GROUP NAME] news & events updates? Please leave your email address:
Put this in place today, especially if you plan to monetize going forward.
Try out Group leads now:
Group Leads offers a free 7 day trial!*
This post contains affiliate links. This means that you pay the same price, get a free trial, and if you decide to use GroupLeads, I make a small commission, which I will use to fuel my kombucha obsession.
