Are Facebook Groups Dying? Here Are The Top Free Alternatives

Are Facebook Groups Dying? Here Are The Top Free Alternatives

Welcome to episode number 165 of The Determined Mom Show. Happy Valentine’s Day, by the way as well. I can’t believe that it is already February 2022 because I think of my mind, and I’ve said this before on multiple prior podcasts, my mind is still in like December 2019. It just can’t get over the last two years.

It can’t process that we’ve already had all of this time pass. So it’s an interesting time that we’re living in. What I wanna talk to you about today is, are Facebook groups dying? I have been invited off of Facebook so many times in the last few weeks to join different communities that I think it’s something that we need to address.

So many people I know are closing their Facebook groups. They may even have thousands of people in there, and they’re just like, Nope, we’re done closing it, and they’re taking their communities elsewhere. The reason for that is because Facebook, obviously the algorithms, don’t necessarily work for us as business owners and as people that want to interact with our community.

Facebook isn’t showing them what we want them to see, and it’s really hard to fight against that current algorithm. Why not just go someplace where you don’t have to do that? Another thing is your content can be deleted, your group can be deleted. There’s just so much volatility in having a Facebook group and in having all of your eggs in that basket.

And I will tell you that I am researching a couple of different communities that I have started coming up with a different alternative to Facebook groups. And I will share with you some of the things that I have found that may be candidates for what I want. The first one that I know about is Marco Polo.

This is a, if you’re not sure what it is, if you don’t know what it is, it’s an app and it’s a video messaging app. So imagine sending someone a text message, but it’s a video.

I mean, you could do that I guess, via text message, but this is kind of like walkie-talkie style. You just hold the button in, record your video, and then let go. It sends the video to whoever you are sending it to.

Now you can have groups here and kind of a community. And I’ve gotten feedback from one person that I talked to recently who has hosted her coaching groups on Marco Polo. It’s better to have a very small Marco Polo group because it can get overwhelming to try to catch up and try to watch all of the videos, which I completely agree with.

So, Marco Polo may be great if you’re hosting a small group of people and you wanna keep it intimate and get to know each other well, that is probably good, you know, time to use Marco Polo, not necessarily for a huge community where there’s gonna be hundreds of videos in there every.

The next one is Telegram, and I’ve been on Telegram for years because I had a client way back in 2017 who wanted to communicate through Telegram. So I, you know, signed up and it’s kind of basically just like WhatsApp. But it allows you to have up to 200,000 members in a group, so, hello. That’s awesome.

I’m part of an SEO community that recently just kind of moved to telegram. They used to have a group chat on Facebook, And because there was a limit of 200 people, they quickly maxed out and now there are a couple of thousand people in this group.

So it’s very, very cool and it is hard to. Keep up with it because there are so many people in that group. But the thing that I like about it is that it shows you exactly where you left off and tells you how many notifications or how many new comments are on the group since you read it last. So it keeps track of where you are.

You don’t have to keep scrolling back through to find something or you know, to find where you were. The last thing that you read. It keeps track of that for you. So I do like you. Embed, you know, video, you can, or, I mean, you can link the video in there. It displays the preview of the video, so I know on WhatsApp, which is gonna be our next feature app.

A lot of times if the link is coming from an outside source, they blur the video, which if you’re gonna like to put a cute thumbnail or something there, it’s kind of like defeating the purpose. So, WhatsApp is the next alternative to Facebook groups. Again, that is probably one of the only drawbacks that I see to WhatsApp.

If you don’t like Facebook, well, WhatsApp is owned by Facebook, so that may not be a great alternative for you, but they really can’t in that format, I hope, you know, censor you or limit who can join your group or anything like that. So we have a very active WhatsApp community for 337 marketing or 337 networking, and I love it.

And we just have so much fun there. Sharing everything and sharing about our lives and everything. So it’s just a really fun place to hang out and everybody has it. It’s super easy to install on your phone. So is Telegram. So is Marco Polo. So this is a great way to get connected with your community and just be on the phone and you don’t have to get on the computer to access it.

I find it harder to use like it’s harder to navigate. Like I go there and I’m like, not sure what I’m supposed to do, not sure how I’m supposed to interact, but it is a great place to gather people and you.

Post topics and you can tag people in topics and things like that. But I will say that I don’t feel like it is an intuitive place to understand how it works. So, one thing that is cool about Mighty Networks is that you can see who’s online.

When you’re online. So that’s kind of cool, who’s logged in? So that way if someone’s logged in that you wanted to send a message to, you can send a message to them. It’s just, yeah, it’s pretty cool, but it’s not necessarily the solution that I know I need for my purposes. The next tool is something called Voxer, which I’m sure you know of. It is a walkie-talkie-type app for your phone.

Oh my gosh. Voxer has been around forever. Like I remember. Oh my goodness. I feel like I knew about Voxer, like back. Oh my gosh. When I was in college. Is that possible? Like on one of my first cell phones? I don’t think that’s possible. Maybe like on my first Android phone, I think I had Voxer.

But that would be, you know, not in college. That would be a little later. Voxer is a walkie-talkie tool that you can download and just like Marco Polo sends video messages, Voxer sends voice messages. So it’s kind of cool you just, again, with that walkie-talkie style, you just hold the button in talk and then send it and it’s super easy.

I know a lot of people do coaching on boxers so they can communicate one on one with their clients and, you know, be available for any quick questions or kind maybe even longer questions. So, Voxer is another Facebook alternative.

So all of those things, Marco Polo, telegram, WhatsApp, Mighty Networks, and Voxer, they’re all free to some degree. I would say Marco Polo and Mighty Networks have a little bit of a cost. Voxer does have a premium version. WhatsApp and Telegram are completely free. The next two that I’m gonna share with you are online communities and they do have a free version.

So with RakLet, R A K L E T. Very weird words, I know. With RakLet, it. Limits you to 50 members in the gr. The cool thing about it though is that it does allow transaction fees or I mean, not transaction fees. The cool thing about rack lit is that it does allow you to collect payment.

So if you wanted to have a paid membership, this could be a great option for you, for $0 per month, you can have up to 50 contacts and for $59 you can have up to a thousand people. So there is a cost if you get, you know, over 50 people. So, just keep that in mind. The next one is gonna be called Tribe.

So not a fan of the name, but it’s okay. Not here for the name, I guess, but, the basic plan on Tribe is free. And it gives you free apps for individuals and small communities. You get unlimited spaces, basic apps, and theme customization. You get a custom domain and custom embedding. So it sounds like you get a lot of things for free with that particular plan.

And you get a hundred members. So if you’re looking to have more than a hundred, then it. What is it? $49 a month and you can have up to 10,000. So there’s a pretty big jump there from a hundred to 10,000. I would say 50 bucks would be worth it if you have more than a hundred people. So these are all alternatives to Facebook groups.

If you are tired of Facebook groups. Don’t wanna worry about your content being erased. Don’t wanna worry about not being able to reach your people. Don’t wanna worry about being censored. Just all of the things that Facebook is right now.

And I know that everybody is leaving Facebook groups. Not everybody, but I know so many people are leaving Facebook groups, so, keep your eye out for what we’re going to do with The Determined Mom community.

I’m not sure about that yet. Might just stay on Facebook, might go somewhere else, or not. But either way, I will be hosting my membership community on one of these options when I figure out which one is going to be best.

So that is gonna be for TDM Marketing Academy, and that will be coming up. You get a little sneak, I don’t know if I call it a sneak peek, but you get a sneak preview of the fact that that’s even coming and that it will be at the end of March, the beginning of April.

I’m very excited about that, but looking forward to it. Chatting with you. If you have any questions about any of these tools, I have linked all of them in the show notes, so then that way you can kind of explore them and figure out which one might be best for your community. Or you can completely ignore this episode and just stay on Facebook. Either way, it’s up to you. Whatever works best for you, have a great week.