How would you increase the number of comments in Facebook groups?

cool.

Clarifying questions:

Q. any particular kind of groups(location, theme, members)?

A. nope in all groups

Q. what do you want to achieve from this?

A. to increase interest towards content creation

Q. what about other engagement metrics? like, share, save!!

A. they are good but comments are way less compared to likes so trying to bring more traction. 

ok thats it for now, will ask on the go. 

so I would like to take this in terms of user journey matrix of effort and predictability. 

as we are trying to increase comments, we have to steamline and make it easy to comment for users. make it exiting. 

so to decrease the effort (friction): 

• put the group posts in order of number of comments. 
• show them in their feed, everytime someone comments. 
• show sample comments using AI. 
• pin their top words or smileys to the top. 
• notify that so and so number of people are commenting on it. 
• let them comment in Audio, video formats or let them create gifs in the comment box. 
• let them post anonymously.

so make it exiting (use both ends of predictability)

• show them who is typing in the comment box. 
• pursue, reward, motivate, inspire.
• inlcude creative gif libraries on the platform from movies, shows and popular videos. 
• reward them for commenting (any voucher or gifts)
• based on their profiles tell them that they are good in it and has a reason to contribute (motivate)
• measure their comments. notify them to take part in conversations and not break streaks to put their voice out. 
• show the necessity of it. like if its a blood donation group, ask them for blood group and see if they can save a life. 

Summary: 

to increase comment box engagement in groups, work on making it easy to comment. we can a/b test various features in various groups and check what works for those users. 

A Facebook product growth question.

Candidate: Are we talking about Facebook groups in a particular country or language?

Interviewer: No, we are talking in general

Candidate: Okay, are we seeing some competitive threat to increase the engagement on this product or is it in an internal decision?

Interviewer: There are many platforms which have Groups as a feature. It could be a combination of both.

Candidate: Okay. I will first go about understaning the Mission of Facebook and Groups as a feature for Facebook and why it's important for it. Next, I will talk about the metric we are looking to optimise which is comments on Groups. I will enumerate some User Personas which maybe of interest to us, then pick one. I will understand what their pain points maybe with respect to Groups, how can we improve on the current solutions which might lead to increase in our original metric which is Number of comments on Facebook groups. Does that seem fair to you?

Interviewer: Yeah, please go ahead.

Candidate: Okay. So, Facebook is a social network that allows us to connect and share with the people in our lives. Facebook groups is a collection of people who have come together for a common theme (maybe to support a cause, or to search for real estate, or are part of a class/ company). Thus any information they share here is related to that common theme and is one to many mode of communication.

Now, we are looking to optimise Number of comments on Facebook. Let's break down the metric into

Number of comments = No. of comments per user * No. of users

Number of comments per user = No. of comments per user per group * No. of Groups

There are various levers which we can press here. But first lets understand what brings people to groups.

I see the following target User Personas:

1. Young teens

2. Adult working population

3. Adult homemakers

4. Elderly

I think each of the above user group is important for Facebook. But i feel specially, Young Teens is the one that has the most value downstream in terms of the CLTV. So, I will like to focus on that. Is there any other that you would like me to focus on?

Interviewer: No, teens are good

Candidate: Okay. Now, this user group is onto Facebook and looking for things to do which are fun and interesting. They also want to discover new people and be increase their social network. They are also present on other social networks like Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok etc.

What brings them to Groups?

1. They are bound by a cause like following a celebrity or their school/ college group

2. They discover something interesting in a group theme and may want to join the group

3. They want to create their own groups and get more friends in the process

4. They want to learn something which the Group may help them to

 

I think as far as Impact on Engagement is concerned, i will think it follows the order 1>2>4>3

So, I will pick the first Pain point.

Now, lets come back to our Metrics equation.

No. of comments= (No. of comments per user per group*No. of Groups)*No. of Users

Lets see what solutions/ improvements may move one or more of these levers.

The first lever is No. of Groups.

Are there enough Groups on Facebook?

Does every School/College/Company on Facebook have a group.

FB can identify schools/colleges/companies that dont have one and then prompt the users working there to create one. Care has to be taken to avoid duplicacy here. When someone is trying to create a new Group for one which already exists,we can show a warning message.

Simialarly, we can take help of FB Pages here. For celebrity Fan Pages, we can notify the admins to create FB Celebrity fan groups.

Which brings us to our second lever, the number of users in a group.

We can use FB's data to recommend Groups to people who would be the most relevant target audience. All people who have studied or study in a school may get the recommendation for that Group. Similarly for company groups. For people following a celebrity, may get recommendations to join that celebrity group.

Which brings us to our third lever, the Number of comments per User per group.

Essentially the target here is to increase activity on the group.

We can use AI here to posts videos/ links/ images etc on the group which might spike people's interest and encourage them to comment. These content would be posted from an account called FB Group Admin. However, a lot of care has to be taken to post non controversial content. This has to be tested in a closed beta first and results evaluated to launch to certain groups.

Thus, I will look to focus on the teens user persona and look to improve my solutions on three key levers which might move my overall metric of Number of comments. I will evaluate my solutions in a closed beta with some groups, evaluate the impact on metrics and then launch more publically.

I will also see that this should not have an adverse impact on my overall FB engagement and metrics for other products like DMs, Individual posts , Pages, Watch etc. If it does then I will see what's the quantum of impact and what fits in line with the company strategy.