Growing a group on Facebook can be accelerated if you take advantage of the hack we’ve shared a few times on inviting people who like your page.
The process is quite a simple one, and we created a video explaining how to do it here:
However, Facebook has been playing with the way people who like your page can be invited to join a group. For example, the process we explain in the above video has changed in recent weeks so that it’s now not possible on a mobile. When you’re in a group you manage, and you switch to your ‘Page’ in order to invite people who like the page, the ‘Invite’ button vanishes – but only on a mobile. On a desktop, it’s still there. The problem is that on a desktop, the list of people you can invite isn’t displayed in any particular order, so you’ll have to scroll down past people who are already in your group, or who have already been invited.
It’s infuriating.
Well, things are about to get even more interesting, as Facebook has just launched a new method for inviting people into your group when they like your page – and this one is fully automated! This new feature, which we discovered only today, only seems to be available to some groups, and there doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason as to which groups are eligible.
When you’re in your group, on a desktop (not the app), switch to using the group as your page. When you click the ‘Invite’ button next to the list of members, if your group is eligible, you will see this message and button.
The message reads:
Automatic invitations
Save time by automatically sending group invitations to your followers. We’ll only send invitations to your top fans and recently active followers.
By switching on the button, Facebook will then automatically invite people to join your group as they engage with your Facebook page. The more content you post, the more engagement you receive, the more people who are automatically invited by Facebook to join your group.
No more scrolling through lists of people inviting them. No more going through long spells of no new members because you’ve been too busy in other areas of your business. Let Facebook do it for you.
As I say, the functionality is only available to some groups at present. I administer a number of different groups, and only one has this option available. It’s also something I haven’t seen anyone else in our industry talking about, as it appears to be brand new this week. Maybe Facebook is trialling it and rolling it out slowly.
Whatever the case, if your group is eligible, it’s definitely something you should try. Let me know if you have the option, and if you’ve found it to be useful in growing a group on Facebook.
EDIT 8/6/23 – If you’ve done this and now want to turn the automatic invites feature off, we’ve now written a separate blog on how to that.
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I’m not receiving that message noted above when I click on invite but my group is still getting automatic adds that are supposedly at my invite. I have not invited any of these people.
Hi LR, it’s difficult to give a diagnosis of the problem without seeing it. Could I suggest you join our Elite Digital Marketing Community on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/groups/engagewebfbmcommunity/ Hopefully you’ll be able to get a conversation going on there with someone who can help you.
Hi Thank you so much for this article it was so helpful – i was running a page likes campaign which grew my page massively in a week and the membership of my group shot up as a by product of that. I didn’t necessarily want that to happen but anyway I went looking for how to switch this feature off and found this article so panic over! Thank you 🙂
How do I TURN OFF the auto invite feature that Facebook added to my group? It’s supposed to be private and people are getting spammed!
Hi DeAnn, if you follow the same process as detailed in the blog, you should see the ‘Automatic invitations’ toggle and be able to switch it off.
I really wish more pages would turn this off as I keep getting spammed with invites! I’ve ended up having to unlike several pages because no matter how many times I click “turn off group invites from this page,” I still get at least one per day from pages trying to get me to join a group I have absolutely no interest in joining!
Hi LR. Not sure if you found a solution but I had this problem and found this tutorial very helpful to eliminate automatic adds to my Facebook group. Hope this helps — https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1809145009294366
This is a problem for private groups, as people who get automatically invited bypass the admin/moderator approval step! What the heck?! This would be great if the invites were automatically sent but they still have to be APPROVED to join a private group!
Do you know how to switch it off? Really struggling to find the deactivate option.
I am unable to see this and my group quality is decreasing 🙁 I need tbem switched off and there is no way to do it
Hi Fay,
One possibility is that your Facebook page hasn’t been updated to the latest page experience. We’ve now written another blog that explains how to turn the feature off.
https://www.engageweb.co.uk/how-do-you-turn-off-automatic-invites-for-groups-connected-to-your-facebook-page-32586.html