Share Groups…Yay or Nay?

Selling is hard. Getting your stuff seen is HARD! I get that and I know that sharing your live sales to share groups sounds like a great idea. I mean, you’re sharing into a group that is supposed to be just for people to find new lives to shop, right?

Actually, Share Groups are a fad that has gone around, and we all know how fads work. Someone you trust tells you this is a good idea. You tell your friends. Pretty soon EVERYONE is doing it!

And now, it’s not the cool new thing to do anymore. Instead of tricking Facebook’s algorithm into showing your stuff more, you’re actually triggering Facebook’s algorithm into showing your posts less…

Here’s What’s Actually Happening

You go live and then your profile shares that live to 15 different places as yourself. This tells Facebook “This content might not get seen by others, but I think it is good so I will share it myself.”

That is NOT how Facebook is designed to work!

Facebook is designed to work based off of the popularity of content, and it doesn’t figure that out based off of the number of places content shows up. It calculates that popularity off of the number of PEOPLE who share it!

Sharing your lives over and over into a pool of share groups in the hopes that someone new will see it is going to lower your organic reach. This means that fewer of the people who really matter will see it in their feeds.

Think Viral

Think about the last viral video you watched or the last viral blog post you read. When someone sees that cute kid singing with their dad in the car or saying “worry about yourself” or “you poked my heart” – it invokes a feeling, an emotional tie.

That is what Facebook wants. Connections, relationships, and real people wanting to share things. NOT people wanting to peddle their wares. That is not natural or relational. Instead, it’s free enterprise with fingers crossed that it works.

Ask yourself this:

Is a one-off sale from a random share group worth being locked out of your profile or blocked from sharing anything?

While some may see amazing results let’s consider some factors:

• What time are they live?
• Not the normal 8:00, 8:30 or 9:00?
• Did they have a catchy title?
• Are they already a followed group?
• How big is their “Normal” live audience

Any of these things can impact how well sharing into a share group will work. And what is guaranteed is that sharing to lots of share groups WILL impact your organic reach over time!

What Can You Do Instead?

Encourage your loyal followers to share for you! Ask them to share (not to share groups, but on their own profiles!) for you. You can even reward them for this by offering a prize to one person who shared!

Other things you can do to help increase live viewers.

• Use events to invite people to your lives ahead of time
• Use a Messenger bot (please use wisely!) to invite your followers to join you live!
• Reward your shoppers with occasional gifts for sharing and helping get the word out!
• Use a text service to alert people when you go live