Do you have a Facebook Group for your eCommerce Business? If you do, keep listening. If not, check out episode 29 where I walk through why Facebook groups are a good idea for product-based businesses and how to decide what type of group is good for you. And then come back and listen to this one!

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You may have heard the news or experienced the notifications from groups you’re in but back in May I think it was Facebook started testing a new feature that would allow FB Group Hosts to tag everyone in their groups at one time using the at everyone tag. 

I don’t 100% know the timeline of this feature and I don’t think there was ever an official announcement from Facebook, I couldn’t find anything in their documentation. But the word is starting to spread and group hosts are starting to use it. 

If you’re in the eCommerce Badassery FB group you’ve probably experienced this once or twice. 

The thing about groups is, back in the day – the reach was always pretty good. Most people in the group would see your posts, you could create events and invite everyone in the group to them… but then something changed – as it always does. 

For the eCommerce Badassery FB group, I really noticed it after we surpassed the 500 members mark. Everything started to dip, people were missing invites to and notifications of my live videos, they weren’t seeing the content I posted there, and it was just as frustrating for the members as it was for me. I was also buying a home and moving around the same time so my participation in the group dwindled a bit… it was the perfect storm. 

But now, when you create a post in the feed you can add the at symbol followed by the word everyone and it essentially tags everyone in the group without you having to manually type them all out. 

From a host's perspective, this is awesome! But it didn’t take long for some group hosts to abuse it and annoy A LOT of people. So when is the right time and how often too often? 

Well, Facebook has some limitations on it by default. You can’t use the tag more than once per day. 

But does that mean you should use it every day?

Well, there are of course a few schools of thought here. Like I always say with email, if someone gets annoyed with your emails and unsubscribes, they probably weren’t your customer anyway, and not to worry about it. But… there is still a tipping point. 

And that’s especially true with notifications on social media platforms. I think of it more like SMS than email because it’s a lot more intrusive. 

In the eCommerce Badassery FB group, I only use it for really important things. Like live training events, which I’m doing less often now. And when I announced that I was moving the replay videos into the eCommerce Badassery Vault so i could more easily share my free resources with you. 

Nicole Diedrich, our resident FB ads strategist, I think she’s limiting it to once per week to start. 

Everyone’s cadence is going to be different,  but I do think daily is too often in most cases. 

I am in a few groups for product-based businesses and admittedly I have been getting pretty frustrated with the notifications that have been coming through.  And that’s the thing… most people are in more than just your group. So if you’ve got 3 groups that are tagging you every single day, it’s not gonna be long before it gets super annoying; especially when they’re all just buy my shit posts. 

I haven’t left any of those groups because I still want to know what’s happening and I want to support small businesses whenever I can… but I have thought about it. 

So… when to tag and when not to tag?

It’s going to depend a little bit on your group, the expectations of the members, and the types of content you post. But I would try and only do it for those posts that truly matter to everyone. 

Things like surveys, product feedback, or changes in the group itself. Things that either bring the members into the process with you or are going to affect their experience. 

If you’re doing a pre-launch for upcoming products, I would tag everyone to let them know about your early access email or SMS list, but I wouldn’t necessarily tag everyone when you release those products. 

That also depends on how often you release new products though. If it’s just a new collection every season, that’s one thing. But if you haphazardly release products every week, or even multiple times a week, that’s probably too much. 

Ultimately, when you’re creating posts just stop for a second and ask yourself, do I REALLY need to tag everyone for this? If I was just a member of this group, would I want to be tagged for this post. Is this post for them, or for me?

And just like I say with most things, let the data tell you if you’re using it too much. People will often ask me, how many emails should I send per week and generally I say, as many as your audience can tolerate. The data will tell you. If your engagement is going down, if you’re losing people, if they’re not converting to sales, those are signs that it might be too much. 

But you do have to balance that with not everyone is your customer and that’s okay. I don’t want you to be in fear of annoying your customers. I just want you to remember that your business is more about them and what your product can do for them vs. for you. 

And if you’re not totally sure how the best way to implement it or how not to annoy your people, start by letting them know that it’s a thing, and let them know when and how you’re going to start using it. Sometimes just letting them know what to expect is enough to keep them from getting irritated. 

Then, ease into it and see what the response is like. The unfortunate thing is, unlike email you can’t segment out the everyone tag. And honestly, from my own experience, evening unfollowing the group or muting notifications doesn’t override the everyone tag for the user. so keep that in mind. 

If you are using this in your biz and you’ve found a cadence that works, please come and let me know on Instagram. I’m super curious to hear how people are using this.