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Facebook Groups and Facebook Messenger are perhaps Meta’s two most successful products in recent years. So it’s punsurprising that Zuckerberg + team hope to drive more engagement with these offerings by creating a new bridge between the two experiences called Community Chats.

Community Chats will now let Group admins start topic-based conversations in Messenger. In addition to text chats, the conversations can also support audio and video chatting.

The chats will only be accessible to members of the Group.

A key benefit for Admins is that you can get instant responses. For example, rather than waiting for posts to get comments and reactions, Messenger can theoretically get in front of group members instantly.

• Additionally, you can create several Community Chats based on different topics that matter to your group. This will help organize communities and add clarity to group conversations.

• One example: a band fan group could have a “Breaking News” category with “chats dedicated to new album drops, tour dates and group activities.”

Additional topic opportunities might include:

• Event-based chats to facilitate conversations around in-person or virtual meetups.

• Announcements in which users have view-only access, and admins can broadcast important news to the community (similar to a read-only channel within a Slack communty).

• Admin-only chats to collaborate with admins and moderators. (You can also optionally turn video in these chats.)

• Audio channels where members can share live commentary.

• Support chats to provide customer service.

Getting started is easy. To create a community chat:

1. You can use either the Groups or the Messenger app:

   1. From the Groups part of Facebook, click “Chat” at the top of the group and then “New Chat.”

   2. From Messenger, click on a Group in the left menu, then click the plus (+) icon, then “New Chat.”

2. Enter a chat name, an optional description, and an optional category.

3. Click “Create chat.”

4. You can then invite participants (or members can join the chat themselves). A post will be created in the Group, which can be promoted via a pinned post or announcements.

5. Be sure to post an initial message in the chat so that members know appropriate next steps. For example, as a question or invite people to share an opinion on the topic at hand!

Two important notes:

• In the future, there will be an option to allow Group members to either create or suggest chats, as well.

• The feature is rolling out as a test with select users now, but promises to roll out globally soon.

Why it Matters

We have been big believers in private/semi-private social media spaces for a few years now since they can create authentic engagement as well as providing safe spaces that users increasingly want online. (See the rise of disapearing Snaps and Stories, and the continued thriving of many Facebook Groups even as engagement in the main Facebook app has stagnated.) With that in mind, this melding of Facebook Groups with a direct chatting feature could be a big win for Community Managers.

The tricky part is that whenever you cross boundaries and create new terminology, things can get confusing. Are people going to understand what a Community Chat is, and that it connects with the Group they joined in the main Facebook app? If you decide to try this new feature out, it may be a good idea to help people through the process as much as possible while they get used to the new set up.

All that said, the upside with the feature could be huge. So Group managers should seriously consider how testing out Chats might fold into their existing strategies.

To learn more about how to use Community Chats, check out the Facebook Community Blog.