Facebook may not be designed specifically for business networking, but its enormous daily audience makes it difficult for BNI chapters to ignore. In the second instalment of his seven-part visitor-inviting series, Darren Jamieson explains how chapters can use Facebook Pages and Facebook Events to improve their local visibility and encourage more people to attend meetings.
Darren begins by explaining that most BNI chapters should have a dedicated Facebook Page. Creating one takes only a few minutes, although he warns chapters to check whether a Page already exists before setting up another. Multiple Pages for the same chapter can confuse potential visitors and divide the chapter’s online audience.
For consistent branding, Darren recommends using the BNI logo as the profile image. The cover photograph can feature the chapter, its members or its leadership team.
Using the Chester BNI Facebook Page as an example, Darren highlights the details that make a Page useful to potential visitors.
The location should be clearly listed so that people know where the chapter meets. A telephone number gives prospective visitors a direct way to ask questions, while website and social links can send them to the chapter’s booking process.
In Chester BNI’s case, the Facebook Page links to a landing page created in ClickFunnels. From there, visitors can access Eventbrite, pay online and book their place at the meeting. Darren explains that each platform ultimately directs the visitor into the same booking journey.
Facebook allows visitors and members to recommend and review a Page. Darren encourages chapters to ask their members to leave genuine reviews, as these can provide useful social proof.
The most useful Page feature for visitor inviting is Facebook Events.
Darren demonstrates an existing recurring event created for Chester BNI’s weekly meetings. Each occurrence has its own event page, containing the date, meeting information and a link through to the chapter’s booking funnel.
Visitors can move between upcoming dates, view the meeting details and click to purchase or reserve a ticket. Members can also invite their Facebook contacts directly to a specific meeting.Darren advises against sending invitations every week or even every month, as repeated invitations may feel excessive. Instead, invitations should be used for occasions when there is a strong reason for someone to attend.
A chapter visitors’ day is one suitable opportunity. Another is when an individual member is delivering their featured presentation. When it is a member’s turn to give their ten-minute presentation, they can invite relevant contacts to that particular meeting.
Members who have the appropriate Page permissions can help invite people and manage chapter activity. Darren explains that members can be given staff or moderator-level access, allowing them to support the Page without necessarily having full administrative control.
Because Facebook has changed how Pages operate, administrators may first need to switch from their personal profile into the chapter’s Page profile. Once logged in as the Page, they can update the cover image, profile picture, address and About information.
Darren strongly discourages the use of Facebook avatars for a professional BNI Page, describing them as unsuitable for the chapter’s brand.
Darren then walks through the event-creation process.
Facebook initially imports the Page’s cover image, meaning an administrator may not need to create a separate event graphic. The organiser then adds the event name, meeting date, start time and end time.
Facebook’s repeat-event option is one of the platform’s most useful advantages. Unlike LinkedIn, where each event generally has to be created individually, Facebook allows organisers to repeat an event weekly at the same time. The chapter can select an end date and create every meeting in the schedule at once.
Once the recurring events are live, they can be shared into relevant groups, posted by members on their personal profiles and sent directly to selected contacts.
Darren finishes with a warning about the prominent Boost button displayed on Facebook Pages and posts.
He argues that boosting is rarely the most effective way to spend advertising money. A chapter that wishes to run paid promotion should instead create a properly targeted campaign through Facebook Business Manager.
A Facebook Event can be used as the destination for the advertisement. Because users remain inside Facebook rather than immediately being sent to an external website or ticketing platform, this type of campaign may be cheaper than advertising that directs users away from Facebook.
Paid advertising is not something Darren recommends using for routine weekly meetings. However, it may be valuable for a major visitors’ day, the launch of a new core group or a campaign designed to fill the room for an important opening event.
Darren concludes that Facebook Pages and recurring Events are straightforward to create. A chapter that does not already have them could potentially establish both in around ten minutes.
Once in place, the Page becomes a central source of chapter information, while the recurring Events provide members with something they can share whenever they have a strong reason to invite visitors.
Rather than relying on Facebook as a complete visitor strategy, Darren presents it as another simple tool that can support the chapter’s wider invitation and booking process.
Full Transcript
[00:14]
Facebook is obviously the largest social media platform in the world. Even though it’s not necessarily business-focused like LinkedIn or some other platforms, there are still in the region of 1.6 to 1.8 billion daily active users.
[00:31]
Meaning, if you want to get in touch with people, Facebook is the place to do it. Most BNI chapters have a Facebook Page. It’s an absolute necessity for you to have, and it takes literally two to three minutes for you to set one up.
[00:46]
If you’ve already got a Facebook Page, then please don’t create a duplicate, because there’s no point having more than one. Check whether you have one or not before you start.
[00:54]
If you don’t have a Facebook Page, then to create one, you simply log into Facebook, as you can see me here.
[01:02]
Click on the nine dots at the top, and you have the option down here of creating a Page, which takes you through to this section.
[01:13]
You simply fill out your Page name. So, Chester BNI. Category—let’s see if they’ve got networking.
[01:24]
Professional networking. Yes, I think that fits. Fill in a short description or bio and click “Create Page”. I’m not going to do that because we already have one.
[01:33]
Once you’ve done that, you’ll then be able to upload your profile photo and your background image and fill out a few more details.
[01:40]
Again, I’m not going to do that because we’ve already got one. So, I’m going to cancel that, click “Leave Page” and show you the Page that we do have, which is here.
[01:48]
This is the Chester BNI Page that we have. We’ve had this for a long time. We have a background image, which is a lovely photograph there of our last leadership team.
[01:56]
We’ve got an icon, which is a profile photo, which is simply the BNI logo. You want that for branding.
[02:05]
We go into the About section. We’ve got the location. That’s important, so people can find where you are.
[02:13]
Phone number—again, that’s mine. If anybody wants to phone up, then they get in touch with me. Websites and social links.
[02:22]
We’ve got a link to the Chester BNI Page. If we open that, as you’ll know from other videos, that goes through to our ClickFunnels funnel landing page.
[02:30]
Anybody who then clicks to book a visit will be able to book a visit using the Eventbrite link via ClickFunnels, pay online and come straight to the meeting. It all funnels into the same place.
[02:45]
We’ve got a rating based on eight reviews, because people can review you on Facebook. You want to ask your members to review you. Naturally, you’re going to get this here, which is review spam.
[02:57]
Unfortunately, there is very little you can do about that. You can report that to Facebook, and Facebook will promptly do absolutely nothing about it, because it is terrible.
[03:05]
Review spam on Facebook is a scourge, and they’re not doing anything to stop it. But at least when people leave review spam, they at least give you a recommended review.
[03:13]
So, it’s a positive review, even though it’s review spam. You can follow other Pages as well.
[03:22]
You can follow other businesses within your chapter or local chapter groups. You can follow other businesses in different chapters. Follow BNI Pages around the world as well, if you wanted to.
[03:31]
That’s quite useful, so that you can interact with them on Facebook. You can upload videos, which we’ve done here, as you can see.
[03:38]
You can have a group, which, to be honest with you, isn’t a massive use because not every BNI member of your chapter is on Facebook, but they all have a phone, so we tend to use WhatsApp for the groups rather than that. That’s not helpful to get you visitors anyway.
[03:55]
But then this is the bit that’s really useful: the Events. You’ll notice these are all identical. That’s because it’s been set up as a recurring event.
[04:03]
If I were to click on one of these, it takes me through to the event page on Facebook for the next meeting, which is this week, this Thursday, in a couple of days’ time.
[04:12]
I can also skip through here to go through to future events if I want to.
[04:20]
If I were to click here to book a ticket, it’s going to go through—yes, you’ve guessed it—to our ClickFunnels Page, where they can pay online and go straight through to the meeting.
[04:28]
Obviously, you can invite people to your event as well. If I were to click on this link here, I can take anybody I want, click “Send Invitations” and invite them to a particular BNI meeting.
[04:43]
Facebook would send them an invite to go to that event. Now, I don’t recommend you do that every week, or indeed once a month, because it’s a little bit heavy.
[04:50]
It’s probably worth doing if you’ve got a visitors’ day, or perhaps even if you’re the featured speaker. If it’s your ten minutes, then invite people to the event.
[04:58]
Anyone who is an admin or moderator on the Page—I think moderator level can do it—can actually do this.
[05:07]
You can add all of your members at staff level or moderator level to the Page, so that they can do stuff like this as well and invite people to the Facebook Event for when it’s their ten minutes.
[05:15]
That is definitely worth doing. But what we also want to see is what happens when you are—let’s go back to—
[05:31]
No. See, Facebook’s a mess to navigate. Let’s go back to the Facebook Page.
[05:39]
What we want to do, because we can’t edit any of this because Facebook has changed the way Pages work in the last few months, is log in as Chester BNI in order to do it, which is this at the top here for the little switch.
[05:48]
So, switch to Chester BNI. If I click that button, Facebook will reload and I’m now logged in as Chester BNI, which means I can edit this Page.
[05:54]
I can click on here and I can change the profile picture, change the cover photo and change the avatar—but please don’t use the avatars. They are extremely cheesy and very annoying.
[06:03]
I can change information on here. So, I can change the address if necessary and add a few other things as well.
[06:11]
That includes editing the About information, to go down through here and change any of this that I should indeed want to.
[06:18]
But what is particularly useful is creating Events. I’ve already got one, as you’ve seen, but what I want to do, if I go into here in the dropdown and click on “Events”—
[06:35]
I can create an Event here. Let’s say I don’t have one already. This is what you’re going to want to do with your Facebook Page. You’re going to want to use this to create an Event.
[06:42]
By default, it’s going to pull in the header image for your Facebook Page, which means you don’t actually need to edit it. You put in your event name.
[06:52]
So, say “BNI Chester Meeting”, perhaps. You put in the date of your meeting. So, the 31st.
[07:02]
Start time. Our meeting is 6:45 in the morning. Add an end date. We’re going to be finished by 9:00 a.m.
[07:11]
Is it in person? Yes, it’s in person. Yours might be online. It might be a Zoom event. You put in your location.
[07:19]
It’s not at Chester Zoo, unfortunately, because that would be awesome. We put in Rowton Hall Hotel and Spa.
[07:27]
Facebook knows where that is, so it knows when people are near it to show the event to them. There’s where you put in your description.
[07:34]
Once I’ve put the description in there—we’ll just put some text in there—you click “Create Event” and, bang, your Event is done. That allows you to create a one-off Event.
[07:42]
But you notice there’s a button down here for “Repeat Event”, because you don’t want to be doing this every week.
[07:49]
In the video where we show you how to create an Event on LinkedIn, it’s very similar to this. It’s a little bit more cumbersome, takes a bit longer and often errors, as you’ll see in the video if you haven’t watched that one yet.
[07:57]
But you cannot do a repeat Event in LinkedIn. On this, you can. So, frequency: repeats weekly.
[08:05]
Exactly the same time every week, and click “Create Event”, and it will create all of those Events.
[08:15]
Isn’t that brilliant? It’ll do the whole lot with the click of a button. So, you can create Events for your chapter meeting going on for as long as you want.
[08:23]
As long as you want, setting an end date for them. So, I would set it—not the 28th—the 21st of December, because we’re not going to have a meeting on the 28th.
[08:33]
The 21st of December. Click “Create Event”, and it will create it up until the 21st of December. That’s genius. That’s absolutely brilliant. I love that feature of Facebook.
[08:40]
Once you’ve got that, of course, you can share that Event in groups. You can share that Event on your personal profile.
[08:47]
You can invite people to that Event, and other members of your chapter can invite people to that Event when it’s their ten minutes. That is a really simple tactic.
[08:55]
I’m going to cancel that, of course, because we already have one and I don’t want to duplicate it. But once it’s live, this is what it will look like.
[09:03]
People can scroll through the Events. They can click through to buy the tickets, and they can see everything to do with that Event directly on Facebook.
[09:10]
When people look at Events on Facebook, Facebook will show Events that are relevant to them and local to them, which is ideal.
[09:18]
You can also notice there’s a big “Boost” button on here. Please don’t touch that. Don’t touch the Boost button, because all boosting a post on Facebook does is basically give Mark Zuckerberg more money—and he’s got enough.
[09:34]
But you can run proper Facebook ads through Facebook’s Business Manager, not the Boost button, where you can use your Event as the destination for the advert.
[09:42]
Facebook likes that. It likes that because it’s not taking people off the platform. It’s not taking people to a website or to Eventbrite.
[09:51]
It’s taking people to its own platform, so it likes that particularly well. They are a lot cheaper than running other types of adverts, but that’s something you could do if you wanted to.
[09:59]
Again, I don’t recommend you do that regularly, because there is a cost implication to it. But if you had a particular visitors’ day or you had a drive—
[10:08]
Maybe you had a core group you were trying to launch for a certain date and you wanted to get a lot of people in the room for a big opening—then that might be something you want to do.
[10:15]
That pretty much covers Facebook Pages and Events. It’s really straightforward. It’s really easy. You can literally have the whole lot set up—the Page and the Event—in about ten minutes.
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