🔥Hot Strategies To Grow Your Facebook Group 📈
You have a Facebook Group, but you are struggling to grow it. And that pain it caused is what Adrienne’s guest also feels. In this episode, Deasha Waddup, Facebook’s accredited Lead Trainer, shares her strategies to grow your Facebook group the way hers grew. She provides some insights on how your page and websites should drive them into your Facebook group and what experience you should deliver in your group. Her wisdom for driving growth in her group reflected on her efforts to grow hers. Be sure to tune in to this insightful episode because Deasha Waddup will serve you a platter of wisdom today.
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🔥Hot Strategies To Grow Your Facebook Group 📈
Hello, everyone, and welcome back. We are here with the lovely Deasha Waddup. She has worked in marketing for over nine years. Deisha is credited by Facebook as a lead trainer. She’s helped businesses scale six and seven figures since launching Social Treats in 2016 and Deasha has perfected the organic marketing system that she now teaches through her coaching programs. This is going to be quite a treat because if you like to leverage Facebook groups in your business and you want to work smarter, not harder, and you want to know all the latest details on what’s working right now, then you are in the perfect place. Welcome, Deasha. It’s so good to have you here.
Thank you so much for having me. I’m excited to be here.
Before we jump into all things Facebook groups and marketing and prospecting, all those lovely things, can you tell us a little bit about your entrepreneurial story and how you farmed yourself, carving out, and living in this niche of being a Facebook group expert?
I have a wild and rocky entrepreneurial story. I think everybody who has been an entrepreneur is an entrepreneur. There’s that seed right back when you’re young. Mine originally, I was in 2012. I quit my job and booked a one-way flight to Thailand because I was like, “I'm over this. I don't want to work in a job. I need something else.” At the time, I thought that was teaching English.
It turns out I’m not a fan of kids. While I was there in the middle of nowhere in Thailand, I taught myself digital marketing and I taught myself how to build websites. My background previously is in events management. I’m super organized and a party planner and I taught myself everything about marketing and built myself an audience at the time for a travel and fitness business. It never made me any money, but I learned so much. I went to Australia and then I got employed in marketing which blew my mind because I taught myself.
I had built this following and then people were impressed by it so they employed me. I started working in the marketing field in different industries as I traveled to Australia. I got sponsored to stay in Australia, but I was still like, “This wasn't what I wanted.” When I left England, I still haven't got the freedom that I wanted. I quit my job in 2016 when I was living in Sydney. I went to Asia and started my business and that's when Social Treats was born.
I was like, “Now I can create the lifestyle that I wanted,” and get stuck in and build this business, but I panicked because I turned 30 and then I was like, “I'm supposed to be adulting right now. Have a house, have a job, have a husband, all the things that you're supposed to do.” I was like, “I'm not doing any of that. I'm backpacking in Asia figuring out stuff online.” I panicked and I moved back to England and I got a job in 2017.
It took me until 2018 to realize that I'm not supposed to fit into a box. I was like, “I'm out. I started working on my business and how I could double my income.” Before I quit my job in 2018 for the last and final time, I doubled my income from my business to my corporate job. My side hustle was making more than my full-time business. I was finally like, “Now is the time to quit and go all in on this.”
By then, I had the mortgage and I was growing up doing what I thought I should do but I don't strive very well in confines and safety. I thrive when I am pushed outside of my comfort zone. I quit my job and I thought if this all fails and all my clients leave me, I've got the backup of getting a job again, but I don't thrive in comfort so I packed everything up. Me and my dog drove to the south of Spain for three months because I was like, “I can't get a job here. I don't know how to speak the language so I've got to make my business work,” and that's it.
There's no other alternative. I rented my house out and I went to live in Spain and I was like now I've got to make my business work. In those three months, I doubled my revenue again and I came back in 2019. I was like, “This is going to work now. This is going to be fine.” That's a very long story of how I got started but it's always a roller coaster I think so it's important to share.
That is the coolest story ever. I want to highlight a couple of things about this because, as entrepreneurs, we're a different breed. We are comfortable with levels of risk like distance from the comfort zone that the average person will honestly never be comfortable with I think. I've never felt so alive as I have when I've been taking big risks and jumped completely outside my comfort zone and where I had no idea where the money was going to come from. You feel alive almost in that place. I can tell you I have this too. A couple of things that jumped out at me. When you said you very first got started in a travel company and made no money, was this a network marketing company?
No, it was my own business. I decided that I liked fitness and I was going to teach people how to work out online but I have no credentials.
There's a huge percentage of experts like yourself, that I talked to who started in network marketing. Learned everything they needed to learn then evolved into something else. I thought maybe you were another one of those. It's so interesting how many of us there are who fit. You had all these interesting evolutions of going back into the box thinking, “This is what I'm supposed to do and then coming out and going, “I don't belong there,” and going back in and going, “Why do I keep going in there? Get out of there.” I think it's an amazing story.
I still get those moments from like, “Maybe this will be easier if you get a job,” and I was talking to one of my mentors who is an eight-figure business owner and she said to me, “I genuinely thought the other day, I'll just go working McDonald's.” I thought well if you think that, then it’s okay for me to have those moments occasionally too.
We all have those moments where it would be easier to do something so much easier, of course, but you never feel as alive.
You wouldn't get up as excited every day and be like, “Today I get to change the lives and have a good day.”
Change people’s lives. Live my best life like having an impact. That's amazing. What a fun story. What a fun intro. You've zeroed in on when you got Facebook certified, tell us a little bit about that story. We were talking behind the scenes before we started recording, you were doing some social media management stuff and that evolved. Is that right?
Yes. I started as social media manager and that's how I managed to quit my job. I bought on social media management clients and all of my clients were focused on Facebook groups. I coughed myself into that niche. At the time, I was working specifically as a wellness entrepreneur as well. That came from me wanting to work with people I liked because when I was working in corporate, I worked in a digital marketing agency as an account manager, which was fantastic, but I was working with clients. My major client was an insurance company for motorbikes.
I don't like what are bikes. I have no interest in insurance. I was like, “When I work for myself, I'm going to work with people that I like,” like more friendly people. Wellness people are nice people. Yoga instructors are nice people. You never find a nasty one. I was like, “This is going to be my niche, nice people.” I started working with wellness entrepreneurs, building out their Facebook groups and growing their Facebook groups for them and I got invited by Facebook to an event in Dublin. I still to this day have no idea why.
I think it was because I was managing some large highly engaged Facebook groups. I was the admin on lots of different groups being a social media manager, of course. They all expense paid for me to go to Dublin, for three days, conference, drinks, food, everything, hotel, and fly me back. I happen to be in Spain at the time. They flew me from Spain to Dublin. I'm back again for this conference. I started connecting with the right people and they said, “Do you want to come and do this? Do you want to come do that?” I started saying, “Yes.”
My philosophy is to say yes to everything and then figure it out. I was like, “Sure. I'll do that. I'll do that. I'll do that. No worries.” I ended up becoming Facebook certified at the start of 2020 as a lead trainer, which is a program they launched. We were the first twelve people to go through that program in 2020 in the whole of Europe. They had a couple of other places around the world that had a handful of people but then of course COVID hit and they didn't know what they were going to do with that program. They have started figuring it out now, but it's taking them years.
We've been delivering this the Facebook training. I also became a trainer for She Means Business which is a campaign on national across the UK for small and medium business owners run by women across the UK to deliver training for them as well. All happened to me and then in 2019, my clients started saying, “Will you coach us on how to run our business? You're doing all the social media stuff, which is amazing but we don't know what else to do and we're struggling on all the other backhand stuff.”
I was like, “Sure. I can do that,” and I enjoyed it because I'm a people person and I realized I thrive much better in front of people talking and chatting to people rather than behind the scenes doing all the work. I transitioned my whole business into coaching and helping people rather than doing the work and being behind the scenes.
For the audience, Facebook hand-picked her out of all the people managing Facebook groups in the whole world, one of twenty people in Europe, to be part of this pilot program. The girl knows a little something about the Facebook group. Let's dive into it because I'm super excited about this. Your background is fascinating. I think it's super cool. Tell us a little bit like I've seen this shift in Facebook groups where there's still like a group of entrepreneurs and online business builders who are 100% dedicated, your ideal client lives there, and you can interact with them in a private space like it's the place to be.
I also see this shift where Facebook is trying to get their reels off the ground and they seem to be favoring that with their algorithm. Tons of people that I'm talking to everywhere saying, “My Facebook group posts are not getting as much reach, my videos are not getting as much reach, and engagement is down.” What's going on with the groups? Can we start there? Anyone who's feeling this is going, “What the heck is happening?” Are they still hot? Is there still potential there? What's going on with the algorithm?
Facebook's mission statement is literally about communities. Communities are not going anywhere. They launched that Community Management Certification. They have a whole Facebook group for community managers worldwide now and they are pushing certification programs for community managers on Facebook as well so that it is more of a certified industry rather than anybody can do it, which I love because I do think that should be more certifications in online space so that you know who to go to and who are the cowboys if you like.
Facebook Group: Facebook's mission statement is literally about communities. So, communities are not going anywhere. Facebook launched the Community Management Certification.
They are pushing the community aspect of Facebook. With the algorithms, you have to look at your Facebook group as the center of your ecosystem and that there are all the moving parts that go around it. For me, the Facebook group is the center of everything because it is the community aspect. It is where people can connect with each other. It's where people can feel at home. Whereas everything else drives traffic back into the Facebook group. My email list drives traffic to my Facebook group. My Instagram drives traffic to my Facebook group.
My personal profile drives traffic to my Facebook group. Everywhere else drives traffic back into my Facebook group. It's constantly being re-engaged and reignited and it becomes a place where people go for information all the time, but you have to be there actively. Your Facebook group is a mirror of you. If you're there once or twice a week, then your people are going to show up once or twice a week. You have to be the person driving your Facebook group. I use the analogy of a dance floor. When you're in the kid's disco and the dance floor is empty.
Nobody is getting on that dance floor until somebody else does. You have to be that person in the middle of the dance floor busting out those moves until everybody else feels comfortable enough to join you and they won't until you go first. If you're still standing on the sidelines being like, “Nobody else is engaging in my group and it's dead and nobody's doing anything,” then that's why nobody's doing anything because the dance floor is empty. Nobody wants to go first. It's your group and you are in charge of taking that lead, busting out those dance floors, making sure those posts are going out there, making sure you're showing up life, and being engaging so that other people feel safe to do so too.
It's so true and I love that. Now, I know there are a lot of people managing businesses, managing Facebook groups who we're busy. We don't have time to be in our group organically every single day posting. We're running coaching calls, and we're on events like this and we're doing other stuff. Tell us a little bit, if you know, about the algorithm. Does the algorithm care if you're using a post scheduler, posting organically, or using the schedule feature inside of Facebook? Does it matter like those things? Can you use automation tools?
Yes. Absolutely, use automation. It makes a marginal difference. When we've compared it, it makes a marginal difference. It doesn't make enough difference to worry about your sanity. Within Facebook groups, you have to naturally schedule within the Facebook group. By doing that, you can plan out all of your posts. As long as you've got posts going out every day, and you're engaging in the comments that coming back in, you can have your VA or a community manager do that for you. You don't have to be there personally but somebody should be engaging in those comments and being a human back to those people so they don't feel like they're commenting into the void.
The use of automation tools makes a marginal difference. It makes a marginal difference. It doesn't make enough difference to worry about
How about with live video? Because I know like they're constantly working on upgrading their, I forget what they call it now, producer. I don't know what they call it. Where you can go live, organically through Facebook or there are tools like Streamyard or Be Live or I know you can zoom livestream into a Facebook group. Are all of those fair game? Do any of those get dinged in the algorithm? I've noticed a shift where I don't feel like live videos are getting favored as much in groups.
Yeah, so they say that a live video gets 238% more engagement than a pre-recorded video. Live videos are still very much the thing to have. It's that there's so much going on in the news feed now, 54% of your newsfeed posts are from your friends and family and 17.8% are from your Facebook groups that you are members of. It is very much favored. You can find these stats. Facebook releases transparency reports every three months. You can find those stats every three months, the top Facebook posts that performing, the top Facebook pages that are performing, and the split across what is working on your newsfeed.
Facebook Group: A live video gets 238% more engagement than a pre-recorded video. Live videos are still very much the thing to have.
Facebook is very much favoring the posts from your friends. The next biggest segment of that is your Facebook group. It's not a business page, it is your Facebook group. It is your friends first and that is why I use my personal profile to make sure that I'm also friends with everybody that joins my Facebook group or at least request friends. They might not accept them, but I at least request friendship from everybody who joins my group because then, my posts from my personal page are also driving them back into my group as well.
If you are friends with someone in one of your Facebook groups and you make a post in the group, are they more likely to see it because they're in the group and they're your friends?
Yeah, and they also have a direct message strategy that welcomes people into the group. When people join the group, I look at it like a party. When you go to a party, somebody welcomes you and they open the front door. They show you where to get a drink. They show you where the toilets are, the back garden if you want to go outside, and where everything is. That is exactly what experience you should create in your Facebook group.
Use a direct message strategy and welcome people into the group. When people join the group, treat it like a party.
When somebody joins my Facebook group, I send them a friend request. I send them a message that says, “Welcome to this Facebook group. These are the rules you're allowed to promote or you're not allowed to promote, whatever the rules are. I would love to get to know more about you to see if I have any resources that I might be able to send you that can support you in your journey right now. Can I ask you a few questions?”
I also send an email. An email is automatically sent as well that also welcomes them into the group and says, “You're in. Congratulations. I'm so glad you're here.” It says exactly the same as the message pretty much. They also get tagged in a welcome post. When they join the group, they feel so supported, then they're going to dive into all of your content and that's where sales come instantly because they feel supported in all avenues and they can dive into your content and get to know love and trust you quickly and then buy from you straight away.
This is super smart because you said that in the feed, 17% of what people see are groups, but that's all groups. You're competing with all the other groups there. They might be in dozens or even hundreds of other groups. If you're the one welcoming them, offering them additional support and resources, emailing them, taking them on the welcome post, and making them feel like they're part of that private party, I love that analogy, they're probably more likely to see your groups posts within that 17%. Is that correct?
Exactly. Yes.
I love these tips. Now, you said when someone joins your group, it triggers a welcome email. What are you using to make all these things happen for the email to trigger and then to take them to the welcome post? Do you have favorite tools you'd want to share with us?
I make sure firstly that I'm asking them for their email address when they join the group because you can't scrape it from Facebook. It's against all the data protection laws.
I wish you could.
I know. They have to give you their Facebook group, but then I use a software called Group Track which takes all that data from them and pops it into my email system. It also automatically tags them with the information that they've given me in their part in their questions. I've got that data so when I come back to them I said, “When you joined the group, you said you were struggling with this or you needed help with this or you said you wanted to book a sales call with me because you needed help specifically with your and social media strategy.” I've got all of that data stored so I can refer back to it when I'm ready to pitch them for something.
Facebook Group: Group Track takes all that data and pops it into my email system. It also automatically tags them with the information that they've given me in their part in their questions.
I'm familiar with Group Track. I've heard of that. It's a nice tool. That's the same tool that you use to take them in the welcome post as well.
It automatically sends direct messages to me so I can automate some of the processes. I can go make coffee and come back to people who are responding to me.
Fun fact, you're going to love this. One of the other speakers at our event is the CEO and founder of Group Track.
Jenna.
Yes. She will be in our lineup and you guys will all have to connect on the side afterward because I'm in love with Group Track too. That's also what you use so I love that. For those of you watching who are maybe you're not realizing like, “Wait. You can do all this stuff in?” Oh, yes. Do you have other top strategies that you recommend to help make the most of a group and grow it fastest and, of course, convert people into actual paying customers or clients? Any other top strategies you'd want to share with us?
One of the first things when you're looking at and growing the group, you need to make sure that you're getting out in front of other people's audiences. Doing things like this, doing things in other people's groups, and then talking that you can do other people's groups on podcasts, on summits, and then also be engaging in other people's groups. The quickest way to grow your group on Facebook is to be active on Facebook. You can go on to other platforms but then you get the objection like, “I'm not on Facebook.”
Being active on Facebook is the quickest way to grow your group on Facebook. Being in those other groups, stay away from the groups that you have free promotion in because they are promo fest. We've all seen the groups that turned into bam and you're like, “This is not value anymore. I'm over it.” I teach a strategy of five different posts that you can share in other people's Facebook groups that you can't promote in that is about you sharing value and showing up as a unique human and being awesome.
One of the posts that I share that I've shared regularly in other people's groups that's generated and made thousands of pounds of income now is a post about me doing a selfies challenge. I literally did this challenge a few years ago, pre-COVID, where I went out and took selfies with strangers every day for 30 days. It was about me getting outside of my comfort zone and doing something different. Every single day. Even when you were dying and you didn't want to go anywhere and like, “I have to leave the house and go find somebody to take a picture with,” do it because I've committed to this challenge.
Every single day, I had to go out and have a conversation with a complete stranger to be able to have enough of a conversation to be like, “Can I take a selfie with you?” You can't walk up to a complete stranger and start the conversation with, “Can I take a selfie?” They might think you're weird. I got a lot of those but that was part of putting myself out of my comfort zone. This post literally talks about the selfies of the strangers challenge and it has a collage of the pictures that I took at the time. That post has generated thousands. We’re not promoting anything, just being my weird unique self, and people like, “Oh my God, I loved your post. You're so weird that it connected me with you and I want to buy your stuff.” Cool. Okay.
How do they even know that you had stuff to sell?
Because humans are nosy. They go and check out my Facebook profile because I posted in a group from my profile. They then go and be nosy at my personal page on Facebook. They see my group. They go join my group and they see all of my content experience, my concierge experience in there and get the big warm hug and they're like, “This chick knows what she's talking about too, and she's cool. I'll sign up.”
I love that people are like, “You're weird. I love that. Let's hang out. I'm going to go peek at what you're doing.” I mean it's so true. Many of us shy away from the things that make us weird, but honestly, that's what's going to make people fall in love with you because that's what makes you and your weirdness like embracing the weirdness of you guys.
When it comes to nurturing those people in your group, making sure that you're providing value is one of the biggest things and selling your offers. The number of times that clients come to me and they say, “Nobody is buying anything from inside my Facebook group,” and I say, “When was the last time you posted about your offer?” They were like, “I did it a month or so ago.”
Maybe do it at least three times a week, at least, because people move so fast in the social media world. Nobody is seeing all of your content so you constantly need to be pitching an offer. That's usually people's biggest problem when they come to me or the Facebook group that that's not selling. It is that they don't have a clear offer that they're promoting all the time in the group. People don't know if they've even got something to sell.
It's funny. I tell people all the time that when you feel like you've promoted something so much that it feels disgusting. It's barely enough. When you make a post you feel like, “Everyone saw this, everyone knows. Everyone didn't see it and nobody knows,” like they just don’t
It's so true. They say that on average on your business page on Facebook, 4% of your followers will see any of your posts. If you work on the same equation across everything on Facebook, then you have some work to do to make sure that you are posting all the time so that everybody is seeing your stuff.
If you work on the same equation across everything on Facebook, you have some work to do to ensure that you post all the time so that everybody sees your stuff.
Is that the organic reach now, 4%?
Yeah, on your business page.
Especially business pages because that's basically pay-to-play, No one is going to see your stuff unless you're paying for them to see you. Let’s get that straight.
I use a lot of recurring posts on my business page because I always think business pages are there for SEO. They're there so if somebody Googles your business and they want to see if you're still alive. We've all done it. Think about going to a restaurant. Let me see if the restaurant is still open. Actually, at the moment with COVID, so many things have closed permanently like, “There's a cool restaurant in that place. Let me go on Facebook and see if they're still around or if they've closed down.” They won't post for six months. You're like, “They must be dead like business is closed.”
I do the same thing. I'm like, “Is this person still doing it?” I go look at their business page. If there's recent activity I'm like, “They're they're active. They're in business like we're rocking and rolling here.” It's like proving that you're open for business.
It doesn't need to have any brain-amazing content that's going to rock the world. It just needs to be content.
It’s like, “We're open. We're still alive. We're still here.” It gives you the ability to place ads, of course. That's about it.
I have to visit my group.
Right, a great way to fill your group. For the most part, bang for your buck, a Facebook group, especially if you're connecting as friends with as many people in it as possible, is going to give you more returns far and above what your business page will.
The business page. Realistically unless you're running ads, you don't need a business page unless you have ads in your strategy. I would focus primarily on your personal page and your Facebook group.
If you want to build organically without paid ads, that's where it's at. Awesome. Any other hot tips for us or common mistakes that you see people making in their Facebook group that we could save the audience from now, especially if it's anything new? I mean social media is constantly shifting and changing, algorithms are changing, and Facebook might be prioritizing some things over others. Any recent changes to help people avoid common pitfalls that you'd want to let us know about?
I think in the future of Facebook groups, reels will be coming into Facebook groups. They are very hot right now and I see that happening in the future. If you don't have a reel strategy yet, then get one because I see that being very hot in the future. Make sure that you have some sort of strategy for video content and that you're repurposing a lot of that stuff.
I worked with one of my clients yesterday and we talked about repurposing all of his podcast interviews into real snippets because they were doing some editing anyway, and I was like, “Whilst you're there, turn them into reels because when that strategy rolls out in groups, you've already got that stuff already there if you're already editing those things.”
As that's happening, if you're editing videos, then have that in the back of your mind to think, ”I might as well do it now,” rather than wait and then have to go back. That's one of the things that I think is coming hugely. We're also seeing a lot of changes come out of Facebook in regards to admin rights and some automation that you can start to do inside of your Facebook group to help you regulate your group more as well.
There are some things that you'll be able to do like block certain posts that have certain words or flag posts that have certain words. If people looking for help inside your Facebook groups, particularly if you've got a paid membership group, and you ask people to use specific tags, then Facebook could notify you if they use those specific tags.
To help you monitor those groups a lot easier and the same with if you've got a public group and you don't want people swearing in your group, for example, you can add those those words to a blocked list so they won't even get posted at all. Rather than using the features of approving all the posts, which I think is a pain and you need admin to do it, I just trust my members not to break the rules. If they do, then I kick them out afterward.
I don't like approving postings because it's another thing to add to your long list of never-ending tasks as a business owner. I trust they will. Facebook brings out these admin features. They’re going to help us manage the groups a lot easier going forward. There have been things that they put on and then they take off quickly. They're trying a lot of things at the moment. One of those was they launched an @everyone tag where you could tag everybody in your group and it worked for three days and then they pulled it back.
I love that idea.
Yeah, so did everybody but the people inside the group, not so much. When they kept getting tagged with hundreds and hundreds of posts all the time. They pulled that back pretty quickly and they also had a section where you could view those that don’t answer people's questions when they joined your group which was a cool feature because that's something that never been able to do before, go back and look at the answers inside of Facebook. They pulled that pretty swiftly as well. That I think and learn things and then change their minds.
They're constantly testing, which makes sense as business owners where I was constantly testing something too. I get it.
You can see that all the time on Instagram, for example, they rolled out reels so fast in 2020 because TikTok was doing so well that they put a lot of other features like IGTV on the back burner, and then failed. They've now pulled IGTV because of it because they did they didn't roll out the full plan that they had thought of, and then they changed in a different direction.
IGTV was basically meant to compete with YouTube.
TikTok took off and they were like, “We should do that instead.” It’s that promotional IGTV and went with reels and they didn't even make a fuss when IGTV disappeared slowly in the background over the last year.
That's interesting. One thing I've noticed, I pulled up my phone because I've seen this change with Facebook so I'm curious. There's that little menu across the bottom home, watch, news, marketplace, etc. While they had separate little group sections, it was like a separate group’s feed, and at least on my phone, that appears to be gone. I know that they're constantly testing and rolling out things for different users at different times. Someone else might still look at their phone and still see the little groups down there. For me, it’s gone. Was that them testing whether to have the group speed separate or whether to give it a certain percentage of the main feed?
I think that was trying to drive people back into groups more and giving people a space to actively engage in that group feed content. The problem being is that people are in so many groups. That's one of the reasons they stopped with the invite button that added people to the group a few years ago. I know that I am in hundreds of groups that I didn't want to be in and don't have the bandwidth to go back and not be in them and unsubscribe from them.
They stop that. Now they've got the 30-day rule where you can see the content for 30 days and you get to choose if you want to join and if you don't join in that time, you'll be removed anyway. I think they were trying to drive more traffic to that group feed to get more people engaged in groups again because it is their mission statement. Communities are the biggest thing they want to push. I think they were trying that but they might come back. Who knows?
Groups are still their main focus. It's going to remain their main focus. I mean it is one of the things that makes them unique. It's the only place where you can create a private living room or a private party for one specific audience. It is still big, it's still hot. They may play with exactly how and where you find the groups and the percentages of who's seeing what but they're they're here to stay.
It’s 100% hit a state. They're not going anywhere.
One last question I have and then I know we probably need to wrap it up. You mentioned that they were going to be looking more at people getting certifications to be group managers. Do you see that being a requirement in the future or more of like like a bonus like you're verified as a group leader or something?
I think more of a bonus. There were a lot of jobs that required certification. If you're looking in the market to be a community manager for an employer, then that could be an avenue for you because I see that on a lot of job boards now that they're looking for certifications in that process. I mean if you did a dish marketing degree, it's dead by the time you finish it. It's no longer in a day. Whereas the certifications you have to reset them every 12 to 18 months and they're constantly updating them.
I am certified in a few different exams and every eighteen months I have to reset all of the stuff and they add new things to that all the time. If you want to check them out, Facebook Blueprint Training. You can Google it. You can study all of these things for free. All of the resources are completely free on Facebook Blueprint. If you want to take the exams, you pay a couple hundred bucks to do the exam. It can be very strict. I've done one exam where they made me show my whole workspace, so I wasn't cheating. I turned around to look at my dog and they popped up and said, “What are you doing?” It is quite a strict exam process.
The training is free. If you want to get certified, there is a cost for that. It sounds like if people want to learn more, there are Facebook Blueprints out there and they're free.
They're constantly updating them. I was resetting one of my exams recently and they've updated it with all the reel content and how to do reels because the last time I did it was eighteen months ago and they didn't have reels in it. They're constantly updating it with all the new stuff that's happening. They’re diving into and looking into.
That is fascinating. You have been a wealth of knowledge. Super helpful, and I know that you have a special gift for our audience. If they want to dig deeper, if they want to learn more about Facebook groups, you have something for them. Do you want to tell us a little bit about it?
If you want access my 11 Steps To Growing your Facebook Group, it is a download and there is also a course that you can purchase on the back of the download as well and it takes you through some of the steps we talked about today around growing your Facebook group and making sure that you're getting the most amazing clients in your group and filling it with purposeful people rather than just having a large Facebook group full of spammers, so it’s 11 Steps To Growing your Facebook Group. It’s a completely free download or you can go and get the course and upgrade and get taken step by step through optimizing your personal profile and making sure that everything on your ecosystem is driving people to your Facebook group.
I love that. It’s so helpful. This has been such wonderful training. We're so appreciative of your time. Thank you so much for being with us. We so appreciate you.
Thank you so much for having me.
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About Deasha Waddup
Deasha Waddup has worked in marketing for over 9 years. Deasha is accredited by Facebook as a Lead Trainer, has helped businesses scale to 6 and 7 figures since launching Social Treats in 2016. Deasha has perfected an organic marketing system that she now teaches through her coaching programs.