There is little in this world as frustrating as growing your Facebook group and not seeing any progress. Sure, 10 people might join when you first launch the group and announce it on your personal profile, but after that? Then what? How can you grow your Facebook group once everyone you know has already joined? How do you get more people in there?

For many, the answer is in using Giveaways and what is called Loops.

Why Growing your Facebook Group this Way is Harmful in the Long Run

Using Giveaways is fairly self-explanatory: everyone who adds a friend or family member to your group either wins something or gets entered into a giveaway where they can win something. Seems great, right? If you tell a group of ten people that they can win a free product by adding their friends to your awesome group, surely they will want to win, right? So they'll add all their friends into the group.

Here's the problem…the keywords in that sentence are “they will want to win.”

They aren't adding friends because your group is great. They aren't adding friends to your group because you're awesome. Or because they love how you do business. Or because they think their friends will like you, your business, or your company. They're adding their friends to your group because they want to win something.

The fact that you're awesome just happens to be a coincidence.

And because they want to win something, chances are they will add the friends who are most likely to join the group without leaving right away, right? Or they'll explain the rules and let them know that to win they have to comment somewhere or something. And then what happens? Now those friends want to win something! So they will try to add people.

Before you know it, your tight-knit, loving community of ten people has grown to 500 prize-hunters who don't know you and don't care about your product. They will only pay attention to you when you're giving something away because that's what you've told them to do — bring in people who want prizes. They won't engage on anything else after the first couple of days, they won't check out your posts or your memes, and most of all, they won't shop with you.

Now, Loops work a little differently as there is a bit of networking involved, but they basically lead to the same result.

With a Facebook Join Loop, you get together with other group owners, preferably within the same industry, and you put together a giveaway for people who join all your groups. Generally, each group involved donates something to the giveaway, making the prize worth a lot to anyone who wins. The loops tend to look something like this:

• Business A makes an announcement about a big giveaway — join their group for details.
• Prize-hunters join Business A's group. Business A tells people to join Business B's group to be entered into the giveaway.
• Prize-hunters join Business B's group. Business B tells people to join Business C's group to be entered into the giveaway.
• Busier prize-hunters drop off, serious prize-hunters join Business C's Group. Business C tells people to join Business D's group to be entered into the giveaway.
• Repeat this process for each group willing to participate.
• Prize hunters at the end of the loop are entered to win a giant prize.

Now, you may already see a few issues with this particular method of growing your Facebook group: it attracts prize hunters.

And, of course, the prize hunters are probably interested in your product — they just aren't interested in buying your product. They joined each of those groups for the chance to win something for free. Not because any of those groups offer value, education, or an amazing group owner who posts the best puns ever.

And the groups at the end of the loop have it even worse because the people who join those groups are the hard-core prize hunters. They are the prize hunters who will do anything for a prize, even if they aren't necessarily interested in the product at all. Win a pair of pants that don't fit? Meh, they can always sell them. Win a piece of software they don't use? Perfect gift for their software-loving daughter. Lipstick that doesn't match their skin tone? Well, that's a stocking stuffer for sure!!

In the end, just as with the giveaways, Join Loops attract people who want to win free prizes, not people who want to hear about you, your business, or your products. If you want to build an engaging and Facebook group for your business, you have to do it the old-fashioned way:

1. Build your funnels
2. Post valuable content your audience will love
3. Invite them to your group

#EmpowerSocial