Using the Publisher

Posting to the group works the same way as posting from a Timeline or the News Feed, by using the Publisher. There is a Publisher at the top of the Recent Activity section of the group. This Publisher works the same as the Publisher in News Feed, with a few extra options that I go over in this chapter.

The important thing to remember is that when you share something from a group, you’re sharing it only with the members of that group. And if you’re a member of a group, you also need to remember that you may not be friends with everyone in the group. In a big group, you may be sharing with many people who typically couldn’t see the things you post.

Although the Publisher works almost the same way across Facebook, all the options are briefly explained here within the context of groups.

Writing a post

Posts are basically like status updates that you share only with the members of a group (unless the group is open, in which case anyone can see your post). You might post an update just to say “Hi” or to start a discussion with group members. To write a post, follow these steps:

1. Click in the Publisher (where it says Write Something at the top of the group page).

2. Type whatever you want to say in the box.

   For the Dummies group, this might be something like “What do people think of the new group?” or “Does anyone know how I can start group chat?” You can also post a link to a relevant article or website in this space. You can see a post in progress in Figure 10-2.

3. (Optional) Add photos, tags, activity, or location information to the post.

   Click the appropriate icon at the bottom of the Publisher to add any additional information or content.

4. Click Post.

   Your post appears in the group, and group members can see it in their notifications and News Feeds.

If you want to share a link, usually some sort of article, video, or other online content that you want the group to see, simply type or paste the complete link to whatever you want to share, along with your thoughts or opinions, in the Publisher.

Creating a poll

One of the added features of Groups is the Create Poll feature. Polls allow group members to gather information in a more efficient way than simply using a post and then sorting through the comments for the answers. Members can vote on polls from the Recent Activity section of the group. To ask a question and poll your group, follow these steps:

1. Click Poll in the Publisher.

   You may need to click into the Publisher and click the Poll option in the bottom section.

2. Type your question in the Ask Something box.

   You can see a poll being created in Figure 10-3.

3. Type your first option into the first Add an Option section.

4. Add more options until you’re finished.

   Facebook keeps adding more boxes as you fill up these first few, so just stop when you’re ready.

5. Click on Poll Options at the bottom of the Publisher to choose whether people can add more options and if they can select more than one option.

   The Allow Anyone to Add Options check box controls whether people can add more answers to a poll. If you only add two options, Dog or Cat, for example, group members may be able to add Hedgehog if they want. Depending on how big your group is, this choice may or may not be significant. You can also choose, via check box, whether people have to make one selection or can choose multiple answers from the poll.

6. Click Post.

   The question then appears in the group and in members’ notifications and News Feeds. They will be able to vote, like, or comment on the question.

Sell something

One other option in the Publisher that you may not have encountered previously is the Sell Something option. This option allows you to create a classified listing with information about the item you are selling, how much you want to sell it for, and so on. Once you’ve posted your item for sale, members of the group can respond to it via comments or via private message.

You can create a post like this in any type of group, but you should be aware that there is a specific type of group called a “Buy/Sell” group that centers on this type of person-to-person selling. You can learn more about buying and selling on Facebook in Chapter 12.

Reading and commenting on posts

After you create a post or see a post that someone else has created, that’s when things really get interesting, because members of the group can start talking about it. On Facebook, that means commenting, liking, and following posts.

One unique feature of posts to Facebook Groups is that — in smaller Facebook groups, at least—you can see who has read those posts. At the bottom of each post, look for a check mark icon. Next to it, Facebook displays the number of people who have seen that post. If you hover over the number, you will see a list of names. These are the people who went to the group after you posted. It doesn’t necessarily mean they’ve read your post in depth yet.

Below each post are two links of actions you can take:

• Comment: When you see something you have an opinion on, click Comment below the post and let everyone know. (This action means you’ll be notified about all subsequent posts.) Often, you’ll see a blank comment box already open beneath a post, just inviting you to chime in.
• Like/React: When you like anything on Facebook, the person who created that content is notified that you like it. It’s an easy and quick way to say, “Good job!” when you don’t have an active comment to make. Hover over the Like button to choose from a more specific reaction: Like, Love, Haha, Wow, Sad, Angry.

Depending on your notification settings, you may be following all posts in a group, only ones from friends, or none. When you comment on a post or vote on a question, you automatically start following that post. Following a post means you’ll be notified every time there’s a new comment on that post, which can be awesome if you’re actively talking about something with group members, or kind of annoying if there are too many people commenting. If that happens and the notifications are bothering you, you can always unfollow a post by taking these steps:

1. Click the More […] icon in the upper-right corner of the post you want to unfollow

   This opens a menu of options.

2. Click Turn Off Notifications For This Post.

Just as you can unfollow a post you previously commented on, you can choose to follow a post you haven’t commented on. If you want to read what others have to say, but don’t have anything to add at this time, follow the preceding steps for the post you want to follow. Instead of the Turn Off option, you will see a Turn On option. Select that option to be notified every time a group member adds a new comment on that post.

You can also use the More […] menu to open a post in a tab, or chat window, at the bottom of the screen. This lets you keep up with the discussion happening around that post while continuing to browse Facebook.

Events

Your group may be based around an activity, so Facebook makes it easy for people to plan events for group members, whether it’s a game of pick-up or a family reunion. To create an event, follow these steps:

1. From your group’s page, click the Events link on the left side of the page.

   The group’s Event Calendar appears. This calendar displays any upcoming group events.

2. Click the Create Event button.

   The Create Event pop-up window appears (see Figure 10-4). These fields are like the ones you see when planning events, as in Chapter 13.

3. Fill out the event details.

   Event details include the event’s photo, name, location, date, and time.

   By default, a check box at the bottom of the screen notes that all members of that group will be invited.

4. Decide whether you want to invite all group members by selecting or not selecting the Invite All Members check box.

   Regardless of what you choose, all members will be able to view the event and RSVP. However, if you leave the Invite All Members box selected, when group members are notified about the event, they will be told that you were the one who invited them.

5. Click Create.

   The event’s page appears. Here you can add an event photo and keep track of RSVPs. (I cover this type of event maintenance in detail in Chapter 12.) As the event creator, you're automatically listed as attending. The post appears in the group’s recent posts and in members’ News Feeds.

To RSVP to a group event, follow these steps:

1. Click the event's name in the Recent Activity section of the group.

   The Event Home page appears (see Figure 10-5). This page shows you more information about the event, including who has already RSVP’d.

2. Choose Going, Maybe, or Can’t Go.

   All these options are big buttons towards the top of the page, underneath all the event info. To find out more about how to interact with the event as it draws near, check out Chapter 13.

Files and docs

Other features that are particularly helpful to groups representing real-world projects are files and docs. These are ways to create and share files among group members. Docs are more like wikis in that they can be edited by all members of the groups. Files are more like a file-sharing system that allows people to upload and retrieve files from user to user.

Docs

Docs are sort of a cross between a wiki and a blog post. The way you create them and the way they look mimics the look and feel of a blog post, with a cover photo on top of the doc and the title and text beneath that. You can choose to simply publish a doc to your group or you can choose to make it so that all members of the group can edit it as well.

To create a document that all group members can see and edit, go to the Files section of the group (by clicking Files on the left side of the page or choosing Create Doc from the Publisher) and click the Create Doc button. This brings you to the New Doc page, where you can enter a title and body text. Some basic formatting options are available by clicking the paragraph icon, as shown in Figure 10-6. After you enter your text, click the Save or Publish buttons. Saving your work saves it as a draft (no other group members will be able to see it yet). Publishing it makes it visible to all members of your group.

By default, all group members can edit it. If you don’t want them to do this, uncheck the “Allow…” checkbox at the bottom left of the Doc creation window. Assuming you leave it checked, any member of the group can view it, comment on it as though it were any other post, and click Edit Doc in the upper-right corner of the doc to change it. You can always find docs that have been created by clicking the Files tab. Click on the title of the document you want to change from the list of documents displayed on the screen and then click the Edit Doc button when you are looking at that doc. You can also leave comments on docs to let group members know what you liked or didn’t like about them.

Adding a cover photo

If your group does not yet have a cover photo, the space where the cover photo will be should have two buttons: Upload Photo and Choose Photo. Click Choose Photo to choose a photo from either photos that you have added to Facebook or photos that have been shared within your group (if your group is brand new, you likely won’t have any photos in the latter category). You can browse any photos you have added to Facebook. Click on the photo you want to use to select it. This brings you back to your group, where you can click and drag the cover photo to reposition it. Click the blue Save Changes button in the bottom right corner of the photo when you are done.

You can also choose to upload a photo from your computer’s hard drive. Simply click the green Upload Photo button, navigate to the photo you want to use, and click Open or Choose. You then return to the group, where you can click and drag the cover photo to reposition it. Click the blue Save Changes button in the bottom right corner of the photo when you are done.

You can change your group’s cover photo at any time by hovering your mouse over the cover photo and clicking the Change Group Photo button that appears in the upper right corner of the cover photo. You can then choose where you want to select a photo from (group photos, your photos, or uploaded from your computer).

Adding a description

Remember, when people are deciding whether to join a group, they need to know what that group’s purpose is. One way to let them know is to create a group description. To add a group description, look over on the right side of the group for the Members and Description box. Click on the Add a Description link, then type your group’s description into the box that opens.

This is a good place to outline why the group exists, and maybe some do’s and don’ts for the group. For example, you might want a group for discussing parenting challenges, but you might want to request parents not post photos of their children’s potty training successes. You may want teammates to coordinate travel to a Frisbee game but not smack talk the other team. Be descriptive and honest. And click the blue Save button when you’re done.

You can edit your group’s description at any time by clicking the blue Edit link next to the Description section.

Adding tags

Tags are a way that groups get sorted into various categories and can be found (and find their way to) potential members. Facebook often recommends groups to users based on their interests, so if you’re creating a group for people interested in Ultimate Frisbee, add tags that would help people who play Frisbee find you—discs, ultimate, AUDL, team sports, and so on.

Controlling notifications

Sometimes, especially in larger groups, you may find yourself a bit overwhelmed by all the notifications. To control them, you just need to get comfortable with the Notifications Settings menu, which you access by clicking the Notifications button from a group’s Home page. Clicking Notifications (it’s below the cover photo) reveals a drop-down menu with four options, as shown in Figure 10-8.

• All Posts: Because comment threads can often become very long and rambling, this option allows you to see when a new post is created, but not see comments on those posts unless you follow the post.
• Highlights: This option means you’ll get notifications for posts that have lots of likes and comments, and for friends’ posts.
• Friends’ Posts: In especially large groups, you might not be official Facebook friends with everyone in the group, so a good way to filter down to the material you’re most likely to care about is to pay attention only to the things your friends post.
• Off: Some people may want to read the posts only when they choose to look at the group and not receive any notifications from this group. Selecting Off gives you that silence.

If you’re being inundated by email notifications but still want the notifications to appear on Facebook, you can change your email notification settings from the Account Settings page. To adjust this setting, follow these steps:

1. Click the upside-down triangle icon in the blue bar at the top of any page.

   A drop-down menu appears.

2. Select Settings.

   The Settings page appears. You can choose different types of settings from the menu on the left side of the page.

3. Click Notifications on the left side of the page.

   This opens all notifications settings.

4. Click Edit to the right of the Email option.

   This expands to three options for email notifications: All Notifications, Important Notifications, and Only Notifications about Your Account, Security, and Privacy.

5. Select either Important Notifications, or Only Notifications about Your Account, Security, and Privacy.

   This step limits how many email notifications you receive from Facebook.

   If, after you change this setting, you’re still getting emails about activity happening in a group, scroll to the bottom of one of the offending emails and click the Unsubscribe link. You will be asked to confirm that you want to unsubscribe from that type of email. After you confirm, you'll no longer see emails about groups.

   Limiting notifications doesn’t mean you won’t see posts from that group in your News Feed. If you don’t want to see group posts in your News Feed, you need to unfollow that group:

6. From the group’s Home page, click the Joined button under the left corner of the cover photo.

   A tiny menu appears. The menu has two options: Unfollow Group and Leave Group.

7. Choose Unfollow Group.

   You will no longer see News Feed stories about things that happen in the group.

Searching a group

If your group is particularly active — meaning that lots of people are constantly posting content and commenting on things — you may have trouble finding something that was posted in the past. Each group has a menu on its left side with links to things like Members, Events, Photos, and Files. At the bottom of this menu is a search box. Click into it to search posts by keyword. For example, you could search for reviews of specific hikes in the PNW Hikers Group by entering the name of a trail or park.

Adding friends to a group

In most groups, most members can add more members at any time. This is a fast and easy way for groups to get all the right people in it even if the original creator isn’t friends with everyone in the group. For example, if I’m friends with someone creating a group for our neighborhood association, but he isn’t friends with my husband, I can easily add my husband to the group instead of the group admin searching for my husband, adding him as a friend, and then adding him to the group. You can add friends to a group via Facebook or email. Simply look for the box on the right side of the group page that says Add Members. Choose this option to display photos of current members and display some of your friends’ names. Click Add Member next to any of your friends to invite them to join. You can also enter friends’ names or email addresses into the box at the top of this section. Facebook auto-completes as you type. When you’ve highlighted the friend you want or finished typing out the email address of a friend, hit enter to invite them.

Scheduling posts

Often group admins find they want to post something at certain times. If you’re the admin of your college’s alumni group, you might want to post the link to sign up for reunions as soon as it goes live. Or, if your group is about sharing inspirational quotes, you might know that you need to post an inspirational post every morning at the same time, so group members wake up to a new quote in their News Feed. Scheduling posts allows you to create a post and choose a time in the future when it will be published.

1. Create a post following the same steps detailed in the Writing a Post section.

   Simply follow all the instructions but don’t press post.

2. Click the Clock button to the left of the Post button.

   This opens a window for scheduling the date and time of your post.

3. Use the date selector to choose a date for your post.

   Clicking on the date opens a calendar, which you can use to choose a date in the future.

4. Choose a time for your post.

   Click on the hour, minutes, and am/pm spot, then use the up and down arrow keys to change the time.

5. Click the Schedule Button.

   This immediately adds the post to the schedule.

You can view all the posts you have scheduled from the Manage Group section of your Group’s page.

Pinning posts

If you have a large group that has a lot of activity, especially a lot of people joining over time, you may find that similar posts happen all the time. If there are posts that you think need top billing, admins can “pin” posts to the top of the page. Pinned posts appear before more recent posts. One group I belong to, for example, is entirely made up of people who no longer work for Facebook. A pinned post at the top of the discussion section details commonly needed contact addresses and forms that people need to fill out right when they leave the company.

To pin a post, follow these steps:

1. On the post you want to pin, click the tiny upside-down arrow or More […] icon in the upper-right corner of the post.

   A menu of options related to the post appears, including options to save it and report it.

2. Select Pin Post.

   The post then appears as a pinned post at the top of the page.

Pinned posts don’t have to be just for new members, and they don’t have to last forever. To unpin a post once it’s outlived its usefulness, follow the steps above, and choose unpin post to remove it from the top of the page.

Edit Settings

The Edit Group Settings page and the Manage Group page are the two places you’ll be going most to keep track of what’s happening in your group. The Edit Group Settings page is shown in Figure 10-9. You get to this page by clicking the More […] button on the right side of your group’s page. This expands a drop-down menu with several options. Select Edit Group Settings from the menu, which takes you to the Edit Group Settings page.

The Edit Group Settings page allows you to revisit some of the decisions you made when you were first creating your group, as well as adjust some settings that tend to be relevant only for people who are admins of large, open groups.

• Name: Edit the group name here (but I don’t recommend pulling the rug out from underneath people by, say, changing a group name from Yankees Fans to Red Sox Fans).
• Icon: You can change your icon at any time from here.
• Group Type: You can choose a group type here to provide more context to members. Keep in mind that a Buy, Sell, Trade group has additional features.
• Description: The description of your group appears in the About section of the group the first-time members visit your group page. So this is a good place to set expectations for what the group is for and how you expect to use it.
• Tags: Tags are another way to let people know what your group is about. Tags can be any sort of keyword such as “television” or “hiking.”
• Locations: Many groups are locally focused — Hikers of Seattle, Gamers of San Diego, you get the idea — you can add locations by listing as many of them as you want here.
• Linked Pages: Many businesses might have Facebook Pages and Facebook groups to promote the community aspect of their business. If you want Page followers to be able to find the group more easily and vice versa, you can link groups with Pages here. You can only link groups with Pages you own or admin.
• Web and Email Address: If you want, you can create a group email address and web address. Group addresses appear as something like [email protected] and web addresses appear as something like www.facebook.com/groups/groupname. Emails sent to the group email address are added as posts to the group wall.
• Privacy: The privacy level of the group can change here. Again, I don’t recommend changing a secret group to an open group if people are sharing content they may feel is sensitive. If you are the admin of a group with more than 5,000 members, you can only make your group more closed, you can’t make it more public.
• Membership Approval: By default, any member of a group can add other members. You can change this option by requiring admins to approve new members.
• Membership Requests: Often group admins want a way to vet new members, simply to make sure the intentions of the group stay intact and the existing members feel comfortable with new people coming in. You can add up to three questions that new members will be asked to answer here. That way when you are approving membership requests, you know a bit more than just a name and profile picture.
• Posting Permissions: By default, all members of a group can post to it. But if you're the admin of a large group, you may want to change this setting so that only administrators can post. Keep in mind that this can really limit discussion.
• Post Approval: Similarly, if you want to make sure the content of a group is appropriate and relevant, you can choose to have admins approve posts before all group members see them.

Click Save when you’re done editing your group’s information; otherwise, all your hard work will be lost.

Managing a Group

You can get to the Manage Group page, shown in Figure 10-10, by clicking the Manage Group option on the left side of your group’s page.

The Manage groups page is an easy place to keep track of what’s been happening in your group lately. I will say that although admins of smaller groups may find parts of this useful, most of it is geared more towards groups with hundreds if not thousands of members, who have multiple admins and moderators. So if you just have a group of twenty people from your kid’s new classroom, you might not find yourself here as much.

• Admin Activity: View recent actions taken by all admins, including adding new members, creating new posts, and so on. Click on the Add Note link to the right of any entry to leave a note for other admins letting them know why you did something or asking a question about it.
• Scheduled Posts: View all upcoming posts in a list. Click on the More […] icon to view a menu for each post. Use this menu to reschedule, edit, or delete posts.
• Member Requests: View all new requests to join a group. You can sort these requests in a variety of ways (by when the requests were made, by location, by gender, and so on). You can approve or reject requests individually or use the Approve All or Decline All buttons to approve or decline in bulk.
• Reported to Admin: Admins and moderators may be asked by other members to review problematic content or members of the group. Facebook also uses some automated systems to automatically report content that it thinks is likely to be problematic, offensive, or need to be taken down later. You can view all reports here and act on them (Ignore it, Delete it, Delete it and block the offensive poster, which blocks the poster from rejoining the group). If this turns out to be a lot more work than you’d like, you may want to consider adding more admins and moderators to share the workload.
• Reported to Facebook: When content is reported directly to Facebook (as opposed to being reported to the admins), the admins are automatically notified of that report. You can find the reports that have been made to Facebook here.
• Request Notifications: By default, you will see a notification in your usual Facebook notifications list when a new person asks to join your group. You can opt to only see requests when you are looking at the group instead.

Edit Members

As an admin, you can remove and ban members from the group, as well as create other admins and moderators to help shoulder the burden of admin-hood.

To edit members, follow these steps:

1. From the left menu on your group’s page, click the Members tab.

   The Members section of the group appears, the bulk of which is taken up by images of group members. If you are an admin, below each group member’s name is the More […] icon.

2. Click the gear icon below the name of the person you want to remove or make an admin or moderator.

   A menu, shown in Figure 10-11, appears.

3. Choose whether you’d like to make a member an Admin, a Moderator, Remove them from a group entirely, or Mute them.

   Making someone an admin means they will have all the same powers as you to add new admins, edit the groups privacy (and other) settings, and so on. Moderators have the same abilities to review requests to join, reported posts, and schedule posts, but they cannot add more admins or edit the group’s settings.

   When someone is already an admin, you can remove her admin status by choosing Remove as Admin from this same menu.

If you choose to remove someone from the group a window appears with options for deleting that member’s posts, as well as blocking them permanently and blocking them from any other groups you manage. Hopefully you never need to use these options because people in your groups won’t be jerks, but unfortunately that’s just not always true.

Reporting offensive groups and posts

If you stumble upon an offensive group in your travels, you should report it to Facebook so that the company can take appropriate actions. To report a group, follow these steps:

1. Click the More […] icon under the group’s cover photo and then select the Report Group link.

   A form appears in a pop-up window.

2. Fill out the report by choosing a reason for the report.

3. Click Submit to Facebook for Review.

   Facebook attempts to remove groups that

   • Contain pornographic material or inappropriate nudity.
   • Attack an individual or group.
   • Advocate violence.
   • Serve as advertisements or is otherwise deemed to be spam by Facebook.

Many groups on Facebook take strong stands on controversial issues, such as abortion or gun control. In an effort to remain neutral and promote debate, Facebook won’t remove a group because you disagree with its statements.

To report offensive content within a group, such as a post written by a group member, follow these steps:

1. Click the More […] icon at the upper-right corner of the post.

   This opens a menu of options for that post.

2. Choose to report that post to the admins or report it to Facebook.

   Reports to admins won’t notify Facebook, but reports to Facebook will notify the admins. You will need to verify that you want to report a post, and reports to Facebook will request more information about why you are reporting something.

Depending on the nature of your group, reporting content to your admins might have the same effect as reporting it to Facebook. However, admins may be either more lenient or harsher than Facebook. Some Facebook groups have strict “be kind” policies, so a post reported to Facebook might be permitted to remain, whereas the admins or moderators may deem it too mean for the group. As with most reporting questions, I advocate for reporting the things that concern you rather than not.