When trying to place an advertisement in Facebook Groups, one is always faced by a few “social inflicted regulatory hurdles” that leads to nothing but frustration.
Facebook is home to the scammer, the fraudster and the rage baiter and because of this Facebook Group admins often appoint themselves as gatekeepers of their own little kingdom to “protect” their group from being reported to the Facebook Police and getting deleted.
But often, these little Hitlers, are nothing more than suppressing freedom of expression and the media, rather breaking Constitutional Law, than facing the wrath of the fictitious Facebook Community Standards.
To protect their little social paradises, they have developed custom rules which you have to agree to before given permission to enter their sphere of social safety. And more than often these rules makes absolutely no sense at all. A very popular one is the “Do you agree to abide by the rules set by admin?” only to be confronted with a checkbox down the screen to agree to the rules.
Best of all, once you have been accepted, they have no access to the information they so diligently collected. It’s gone – forever. The only benefit is to themselves to give their admin or moderator status a little oomph, or “teeth” so that they feel in control.
Meanwhile, their followers are deprived of special offers and deals which they will most certainly have wanted to see; but cannot.
Here is a list of facebook groups with these people in charge.
- AltydKampers – No advertising allowed
- Noordkaap: Reis saam – No advertising allowed
- Travel Cape Town – Admin approval can take up to 12 months – not good for time-sensitive special offers.
- Tour Guides and Tour Operators – post edit approval takes more than 2 weeks.
- Kom Kamp Saam – Does not like competition and will keep the post pending for up to a year.
- Camping Sites and Caravan Resorts – Admin approval can take up to 12 months – not good for time-sensitive special offers.
- Lankstaan Kampers – May attract carasquatters if you are not geared for it. Admins like Amelia Nel also does not have much of a sense of humor, so keep it out of the “sensitive viewer’s” reach.
- Kaapstad Besigheidsadvertensies – Posts takes months to get approved.
Why facebook groups is not the best place to promote your business
While facebook maybe the ultimate hangout of the Boomers and GenX, the majority of individuals use it as a form of entertainment and not really as a “buyers guide”. Even groups with large following – 100k plus, have no idea on how many of their followers are real people, duplicate profiles or high intent buyers. Yet they leverage their following as a hook to get you to list your business with them at rather over-the-top fees.
Facebook also offer the option to “unfollow” a group without leaving it. This means you are still there, but won’t see any posts in your facebook feed. This is common with high activity groups where irrelevant content reaches you more than once an hour.
Facebook groups are okay for brand awareness and to keep your business visible, but when there is a high level of activity it gets annoying for most people.
Another reason why facebook groups is not a good channel is that you cannot control who it attracts. Even a private group cannot guarantee your business will be shown to people with unsavoury behaviour traits. But then, this can be said for all social media platforms.
Facebook is a great source of advertising if you use it properly, but posting day in and day out on groups that are focused on the travel and tourism industry is probably not the best way to do so.
Instead, creating your own Facebook Page, and a group linked to it, will be far more controllable. Facebook should be used as a pull-channel, not a push-channel. You need to pull facebook users from the platform into your own sales funnel so that you can own the information for future use.
And always remember, if a person willingly enters a facebook group, the POPIA no longer applies to any member as their information is now in public domain. You are however not allowed to “harvest” that information without the user’s knowledge, so you need to get them to enter your own funnel willingly.
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