Facebook Groups is a threat to our forum - how to win people back?

Hi,

I have a parenting website with 25 000 members. Our forum used to have about 500 posts a day. Many of those popular topics were the monthly clubs. For example "Babies born on june 2011" and so on. But the members of those groups who use facebook a lot have created Facebook Groups and ask people to move over from our forum to Facebook. This has decreased the number of posts per 24 hours a day to 100, it's 80% less than it used to.

My question is how I could make use of Facebook groups or how i could win people back or over to our forum? Any ideas? We've got traffic as our site is not only about forum but we offer parenting articles, tracking baby development, baby videos and images and much-much more.

I know I can't kill Facebook but need to figure out something to make it useful for us or then to kill the trend of moving over to Facebook Groups. We have our page in Facebook too with 500+ fans.

Hope some bright mind are here to help!

 

Launch discussions. Facebook groups cant beat discussions. You remember Surgy Brin saying "data goes to facebook but never come out". Facebook discussions are not ranked in google. So fuel more parenting related discussions. People will find you from search engines.

to win back your departed onces, launch something creative like baby face of the month etc and make use of pinterest etc

 

Try to capture leads launch useful article, discussion, contest etc.

 

Op i would hate to be in your position but the guys have given some good tips.
But also you have to make your own facebook page better than your members.
Make it very active, you can link the discussions from facebook to your forum
so that they click back from facebook to the forum.

you can even join those peoples groups and post site updates if you like. But if
your official group is popular then they will be talking about it in other groups anyway

 

Thanks for the ideas. We have content and get good traffic through search, also we started making parenting videos.

But about the main issue, should I delete the invites from the forum as they come when someone posts to our forum "Our monthly club is also in FB - come join!". When other company would posts such thing, we would delete it but when club member posts such a thing I have kept it. Maybe I should toughen up now and delete all such invites? On the other hand it feels bit wrong to restrict what people write there?

 

I think you should link things together. Show a portion of a thread on your FB page then continue it in your forum. Having an FB page can encourage more people to join your forum so it works both ways. I guess their activity in the fanpage has something to do with convenience. Since they are on Facebook, they can easily like and comment your posts there. You can invite them to post on your forum if you are going to run a contest of some sort - Just an idea. ^^

 

1) You could let people link their forum accounts to their facebook accounts, and log in via facebook.
2) You could make a facebook app that pulls updates from your site and lets people post comments via facebook.
3) You could see if creating a weekly featured thread works. Finding old comments in facebook's a pain, and this is where you can beat it.
4) You could join your members facebook group, and use it to promote your site.
5) Ceate your own facebook group, and show live updates in your websites sidebar. If people are going to migrate from your forum to facebook try and retain them, regardless of the platform.
6) Keep updating your facebook page, and use facebook to get new visitors to your site.
7) How many members contributed to the 400 posts you lost? You usually have very active members who post a lot, so it's possible that you've only lost about 40-50 boarders.
8) Were there any disgruntled members on the forum? Do your moderation policies need review? Was the quality of content decreasing? Were the old members dis-satisfied? Do your members feel neglected/unappreciated? Ask them for their suggestions.
9) You could contact the members advertising their facebook group, and ask them why they feel people should migrate. If they are doing it for profit, then you can ask them to desist with a clear conscience. They're not offering anything new, just stealing your efforts. But you'd have to be tactful otherwise it could backfire.
10) Make some of the people who're active moderators.

People are going to use forums less. They'll use it to get specific information, but for most of their social needs they are going to turn to a platform better suited for social engagement.

On re-reading your post I can understand why people have left.
Your members want everyone to see their babies, and for that facebook is a better platform. They can get the 'aww..he/she's so beautiful' comments from the boarders as well as their real-life friends on facebook.

Connect your members accounts to their facebook accounts. Let them repost/share to facebook from your forum. Let people log in via facebook, preferably without having to fill a registration form on your site.

And, if you can add some facebook like features to your forum, giving users a homepage, friends and groups, favourites, likes, a timeline for their kids pics, etc, it'll make them less inclined to leave.

 

Aggression of big sites are killing the smaller. To win over your visitors, offer something that really value them like contests, quiz etc. Moreover try to identify what the special think that facebook has but you don't for which people are switching to facebook and try to adopt that. Give much emphasize on common room discussion. And openning a facebook page can also be fruitful for you.

 

Thanks for the answers. Took a year to reply (sorry)

Some of the suggestion I had already done. Some I used. But the fact is that times are changing and I had to change the whole concept. Now the new business model is set (it's actually quite interesting how deeply something can be twisted and turned to finally work once again) and the signs of success are starting to show again.