5 Things to Know Switching a Private Facebook Group Public

Default Changes When Switching

For months, I was obsessively loading the Group Settings -> Set Up Group -> Privacy screen to see if I would have access to switch. One day, it magically appeared without me seeing a push notification at all, so check regularly if you don't have this opportunity yet.

The details about what would happen were sparse at the time, but after clicking save for the public setting, a pop-up appeared with some relevant information to note. I did not capture a screenshot of this, so I will caution that this one is a bit from memory, namely:

• Posts made before the change will always remain private, and only new posts moving forward will be public
• The group may have a notification about the switch (admittedly, I never saw this on my end as an admin, but I've heard that others received something)
• Members can still use anonymous/pseudonym postings- I noticed a significant uptick in this after switching
• Moderation of posts and first comments was turned on by default (I'm not sure if my previous settings influenced this, though- I had every moderation feature enabled)
• The change would be made three days after submission, not instantaneously, just in case you change your mind

As mentioned above, I may be off slightly on the exact details since I mistakenly did not get a screenshot, but it gave me a lot of peace of mind, as many privacy features would be available to the group all the same.

I was a little daunted by the possible scale of first-post and first-comment moderation, as we often get hundreds of post submissions and even more comments per day. But I already moderated membership info and all posts anyway, so I hoped it wouldn't be too much effort. (It wasn't- but we'll talk about that a bit later.)

Block Off Time for the First Few Days/Weeks

Despite the above warning, I have to admit, I really wasn't sure what to expect when the group officially switched over three days later. I mean, yes, I did have some expectations because their pop-up had a lot of information. But this was more of an “I understand what is about to read in theory, but need to see it in practice to really know” kind of experience.

As such, if you're going to switch, especially if you have a large group, you may want to allocate a bit of your schedule in the initial days to be available to monitor anything that could happen. (I also made posts before/after the group changed so everyone would be aware, too. I laid out the reasons for why we did this very clearly, and no one seemed to complain.)

For me, my fears were a bit overblown in virtually every respect (in fact, my group was fairly slow for a few days, which I was mildly worried about), but I still recommend monitoring closely in case your experience is different. You certainly wouldn't want to go away on vacation and leave a group unmonitored, as your normal workflow processes could change here- even if it is only slightly, like mine.

• My gut feeling is that when private groups switch to public, you need a bit of time to rebuild your algorithmic presence. Your die-hard users will still access the group as normal, but my general feeling is that some algorithm features may get a soft reset. I felt like my membership growth rate, plus some post and comment frequency, were quite low for the first couple of days, but as our group was already large to begin with, it quickly bounced back (and then some) within a week or two as users continued their normal activity.
• The Engagement tab within Insights gets a new drop-down toggle for checking Visitors data, illustrated in the image above. You can see that it took about 10-15 days for my group to start getting a few viral surges to see a massive uptick in non-visitor comments that required moderation. Your mileage may vary.

Post and Comment Approvals Are Nice, But Require Time

A moment of pause I had before switching my group over to public was just how many moderation tools I'd lose and how much spam would subsequently follow- hence the blocking off time recommendation above.

Thankfully, it wasn't too bad for me.

The two biggest changes I saw on this end when enabling moderation were that I still see posts in my moderation queue for approval, and comments from new members were also sent for review. The emphasis on new commenters is key here, as it appears that the 140k+ members of my group from when it was private were grandfathered in and did not need to have their first comment vetted once public.

Phew. 

On one hand, that was good news, because the tens of thousands of comments we got monthly when private weren't sent to moderation. On the other hand, after a while, posts started blowing up in suggested feeds, and new comments sent to moderation went way, way up. Good problems, but it was a few days later before we saw this upswing.

As a side note, the change notifications were quite clear about first-time comments/new-member comments being sent to moderation, but less clear about posts. As it stands at the time of posting, my original moderation setup is still in place. But to make my life easier, I'm starting to pre-approve regular posters who follow group rules to try and speed up my moderation time- this has helped quite a bit.

So the time I spend approving posts has gone down, but the time I spend approving comments has gone up almost to the point that it is a wash. It is still a lot of time if you require comment approvals.

• That said, I really like having new member comment approval on alongside all posts. 95%+ of comments I get are people replying to a post that follows group rules (thus, comments are often on-topic), but every so often, I'll get people being rude (same with non-members trying to post outright), and I pre-emptively ban them from the group seemingly before their comment is allowed to go out. With the private group that just lets all comments go by default, those kinds of comments were live first, reported, and then banned- so it feels like a bit healthier group quality from new users– insofar as you're willing to put the moderation time in, at least.

Admission Questions Still Asked (Group Leads Work Too!)

One of the reasons I liked having a Private Facebook group in the early days was that it allowed me to ask admission questions to weed out bots, scammers, and those who may not actually be interested in your group. (We cover a lot of this, and more, in our post about how to limit Facebook group spam.)  I also used one of the questions to ask for email addresses to build my newsletter, too.

Naturally, I was concerned about whether this one would go away, because it was a great tool in my arsenal for detecting bots and growing beyond Facebook at the same time.

But public groups still have the option to ask entry questions, and the push notification to answer is shown not only for those who click join but also for non-members who attempt to post or leave a comment for the first time, as noted above. When a post is suggested in a non-member's feed, and they try to comment, they're asked my group entry questions, and their comment (plus responses) goes to the moderation tool to review.

This is something I really like having in the public group, because I can still weed out spammers and bots as before (plus jerks as noted above), but also still capture email leads via the Group Leads plugin as I have in the past.

So if you're worried about that functionality, don't worry- it still seems to work for me.

• If you have group questions turned on in tandem with post and comment approvals in the previous section, approving a new member seemingly publishes their comment immediately (and you can see it via a button to click to load their comment on the same screen), whereas static posts originated by that user will be placed into your moderation queue after they are added to your group. So you can add a member without necessarily approving their post outright.
• Most of the time, if someone posts something that goes against group rules, I won't allow them in at all. But every so often, the post is at the line where I will still let the user in, but not their post. Your mileage may vary, but be prepared to set your own logic for when you will approve/deny here.

Better Recommendations in the Algorithm

Finally, the biggest reason I wanted to switch my group over was that I felt like having a private group was limiting in many ways, such as recommendations of individual posts in the algorithm, the ability to share, and members only being able to tag friends who are also members of the group.

These are all features that come with running a public group, and we are here for it as they come together to help with reach.

But it is the recommendations in the algorithm that were perhaps the biggest one for us, because a good post shared from the group and recommended via the algorithm to non-connected users gives the potential to go viral, and oh, did some posts take off rather quickly.

I'm not talking millions of views here (yet, at least). But what I noticed over time was that, even with 140k members, getting 100-200 posts per day meant the average reach of any given post was quite low unless it got some serious engagement (think: many at 100-300 and very rarely getting above 10k).

This low reach continued with poor performing content when the group switched public, I'm not going to lie, but it seemed like good content just got a better uplift overall- several early posts quickly got to 25k+ views. This was particularly common when users were asking a question (like a restaurant recommendation) and getting hundreds of replies. We saw in uptick in views from members, and also visitors as shown in the image above- over 100,000 visitor views in the first three weeks!

Those posts would get picked up in the algorithm, recommended to non-members, they'd comment, and the joining prompt/review process really took off alongside all that extra reach. This meant a lot of work approving comments, but, at the end of the day, we're seeing “good” posts have a much greater reach than before, more new members joining (about 1k+/month), more email subscribers via Group Leads, and overall better group health that we rarely saw before.

That isn't to say all posts do exceptionally well. Poor content will still do poorly even when public, but engaging posts have the potential to really explode, and we're here for what comes next. (But, hey, Facebook, can you roll out Content Monetization to group admins? It takes time to facilitate all this engagement, and I'd spend more time in my group with a little bit of an economic incentive- just saying!)

Overall, I had a lot of apprehensions about switching my private Facebook group to public, and while I still think I'm putting in the same (if not maybe a little more) work on moderation, I've been pretty pleased with how things are going and am glad I made the switch.

So if you have any hesitations about switching, take this as your cue that it is okay to do so. Just plan ahead, block off some time, find your new rhythm, and remember- you can always switch back.

Have you switched a private Facebook group public? What did you think of the process? Comment below to share!