Moderating the MFRW Facebook Group—Pinning Posts (and a Membership Landmark!) #MFRWorg

First, a short announcement: since my last post here about moderating the MFRW Facebook group, the group reached (and passed) 3,000 members! The Facebook group has seen considerable growth since I started moderating it not quite a year ago. At that time, there were several hundred members. We reached 1,000 last June, if I remember correctly, 2,000 sometime late last fall, and now here we are at (as of this writing) 3,147 members!

In messaging with potential members during the request moderation process, I’ve often found myself suggesting that they consider joining the Yahoo Group as well. Since many potential members have mentioned where they are in their careers and what kind of marketing help they’re seeking or why, the conversation has often segued naturally into this invitation. MFRW’s Yahoo and Facebook groups serve notably different purposes at this point—since promotion is allowed on the Facebook group, it is used mostly for that right now, whereas the Yahoo Group (where no promotion is allowed) is where most of the group’s discussions about promotion, marketing, resources, etc., take place. So I personally see it as well worthwhile to be a part of both.

Which brings me (slightly indirectly) to the main topic of this post: pinning posts. A pinned post is a post on a group page that remains anchored to the top of the page irrespective of other posts. It is thus very useful as a reference point or to impart evergreen information that you’d like everyone who visits the group page to see, since it always appears as the first post on the group page.

In this case, since I found myself writing similar things over and over in private messages about the Yahoo Group and including the link to join, it eventually occurred to me that it would be much easier if I could just put this announcement somewhere and send people to it. Even better if it were somewhere group members and the public could see it.

Enter the pinned post. I wrote a short summary of MFRW’s Yahoo Group and other resources (such as its website), included links to all of them, added a note summarizing the process I use to moderate join requests, and pinned the post to the top of the group page. Now when I am in touch with potential members, I simply say something like, "Please see my pinned post at the top of the group page for information about MFRW’s Yahoo Group.” I have found this much more efficient. ;)

Only the moderator(s) of a group can pin a post, though any post on a group page may be pinned (i.e., the moderator doesn’t have to be the author of it). To pin a post, locate the post in question, hover over the upper-right corner of it until the little drop-down arrow appears, click on the arrow, and choose “Pin Post.” If at any point you want to unpin the post, follow the same directions and click “Unpin Post.”

Facebook currently only allows one pinned post at a time on group pages. Sometimes my post has been unpinned on the MFRW group in favor of special-event pins, such as when Summer Camp took place last year or when MFRW was up for several awards in the 2013 Preditors & Editors poll (the MFRW newsletter won for “Best Writers’ Resource”!). In these cases, Kayelle composed alternate posts that she pinned with these announcements, and the introductory post was unpinned and thus automatically returned to its original place in the group’s timeline. When it was time to put it back, I simply located it again and repinned it. Pinning and repinning may be done to any post that exists anywhere on a group's timeline. The “Likes” and comments remain intact, as pinning and unpinning don't actually alter a post in any way but rather just move it to a different place on the page.

Please note that the pinned post functionality is also available on “Pages,” so in the same way I described above to pin a post on the group page, you may pin a given post on your author page. This post will remain the first post listed on your page until you unpin it or replace it with another pinned post (the “one pin at a time” rule also applies to pages). To see an example of a pinned post and how it appears on the page, just visit the MFRW Facebook group and see mine (under my legal name, Emily McCay) at the top of the group page. :)

Thanks for reading, and see you next month!


Emerald
Emerald is an erotic fiction author whose short stories have been featured in anthologies published by Cleis Press, Mischief, and Logical-Lust. She serves as an assistant newsletter editor and Facebook group moderator for Marketing for Romance Writers (MFRW), and she selects and posts the monthly inspirational quote on the MFRW Marketing Blog. Find out more about her at her website, The Green Light District.

Moderating the MFRW Facebook Group - Contacting Potential Members #MFRWorg

In my inaugural post about moderating the MFRW Facebook group last month, I talked about screening requests. This month I’m going to pick up where I left off and discuss what I do with join requests that require a little more attention.

When I’ve done my run-through of things I look at in a profile and determined the account is probably not spam but also have not found what I’m looking for, I send the requestor a Facebook message. I keep it fairly short and simply introduce myself, thank the individual for the request to join, and ask about her/his/their connection to the literary community. Originally, my note said only that; as more responders seemed to wonder why I was asking, I expanded and tweaked my original message to explain the nature of MFRW and why it isn’t best-suited to those who are purely readers. This saves the time it was taking to explain that to people when they wrote back asking why I was asking. Kayelle also recently came up with the idea of putting a "deadline" date in my message, explaining that I will delete the request on a certain date if I have not heard back by then. That’s worked out very well in keeping the queue manageable, as it is not unheard of for the group to receive up to 15+ requests per day at times.

I’d estimate at this point that I receive a reply about half the time, and the response almost always supplies the information I’m seeking and results in a new MFRW Facebook group member. In a few cases, people have responded months later and explained that they just discovered my message (generally in their "Other" box—see next paragraph), at which time I reply with a link to the group and ask them to send another request, which I approve as soon as I see.

One way Facebook has made this kind of communication a bit challenging is by sending messages from people who are not one’s Facebook friends to the individual’s “Other” messages folder. I'm pretty sure some people don't even know they have an "Other" folder, much less how to find it. If, incidentally, you’re not familiar with your "Other" folder, you can locate it thusly: Click on the "Messages" icon on the top of your Facebook profile. When the box opens, look right next to the word "Inbox" on the top left, and you’ll see the word "Other" in gray, followed by a number in parentheses (the number of messages you have in your "Other" box). This folder usually contains messages from people you don't know/with whom you aren’t connected on Facebook or mass messages from FB Pages with which you may be associated.

Over the last few months, I have noticed Facebook doesn’t seem to be sending my messages to "Other" folders so automatically. I suspect that having messages from non-friends go to the “Other” folder perhaps used to be a default setting and was recently made to be one we had to go in and set manually. (Note: To view or change these settings, go to your privacy settings and see the questions "Who can contact me?" and "Whose messages do I want filtered into my Inbox?") In any case, Facebook now tells me at the bottom of a message box that a message will go to someone's "Other" folder (conveniently offering me the option of paying $1.00 to have it go to the individual's regular message queue...), and this hasn't been showing up on nearly as many message boxes in recent months.

My overall aim with the request approval (or rejection) process is to strike a balance between letting in members—MFRW is an open group, and we want members, of course!—making sure members are well-suited for the group (i.e., have some connection to the professional literary community), and keeping out spam or other malicious profiles. Because of Facebook’s "Other" folder system, I do suspect we've lost legitimate potential members sometimes because they simply didn't see my message. At some point, though, it seems there’s only so much I can do…I admittedly tend to err on the side of caution in wanting to keep spam profiles out, which is something I’ll talk a little more about next month.

Thanks for reading!


Emerald
Emerald is an erotic fiction author whose short stories have been featured in anthologies published by Cleis Press, Mischief, and Logical-Lust. She serves as an assistant newsletter editor and Facebook group moderator for Marketing for Romance Writers (MFRW). Find out more about her at her website, The Green Light District, and follow her on Twitter @Emerald_theGLD.