Facebook Group Overview: What is it and how to use it?

Ever open your Facebook group and feel like you are staring at all the numbers? You're not alone.

The majority of admins do not go to the Overview dashboard. They immediately go to the feed and answer some of the comments, and that's that. However, that is one dashboard that will give you a lot of information about your group's health. And checking it regularly for five minutes can alter the way your community runs!

Now, here's what the Facebook Group Overview is, what each section is, and how you can use that data to take action.

What is the Facebook Group Overview?

Your admin command center is the Facebook Group Overview. It's one central place to get an overview of all that's going on in your group, what you need to do, how active your members are, and whether your community is expanding or contracting.

Consider it your morning briefing. This is the first place to check out before you post anything or approve anyone.

It resides within your Facebook group's admin tools and updates as it is happening. Anything that happens overnight or over the weekend will be visible as soon as you open it up.

How to Access the Facebook Group Overview

It is as easy as a few clicks to get there.

On desktop:

• Open your Facebook group.
• In the left sidebar, look for "Overview" under the "Manage" menu
• Click on the "Overview" tab.

On mobile:

• Click on the hamburger icon at the top of the screen
• Tap on the Group menu
• Open your Preferred Facebook group.
• Tap the Admin Tools icon in the top right

What You'll See Inside the Overview Dashboard

The Overview is made up of four main sections. These will tell you different things about your group.

The "To Review" Section, Your Daily Action Checklist

The first thing you'll see at the top of the dashboard is this. Presents a list of all tasks that must be done now.

There are 5 objects here:

1. Member-reported content: posts/comments that members have marked as violations of the rules
2. Moderation alerts: Facebook's own moderation system alerts.
3. Pending posts: Posts that haven't been posted yet until you approve them.
4. Member requests: A list of the people who have requested membership in your group but have not yet been accepted.
5. Group status: Group admin violations/ compliance problems that may impact reach.

For each item, there is a total count, and a "new today" label is located below. This way, you'll know what's crucial and what's been there for some time.

The thing most admins overlook is that requesting members is not a moderation job. All those people in that line had already extended their hands and asked, "What is this group? That's a warm lead: Not simply a name to approve and forget.

More on this in the next moment.

2. The "Insights Summary" Section, Your 7-Day Engagement Snapshot

Below the "To Review" panel, there is the Insights Summary. It includes information from the past week and monitors three key metrics:

1. Top posts: How many top posts were published in your group?
2. Comments: How many comments were made on those posts
3. Reactions: The number of likes and reactions that were given to your posts.

A small arrow and a percentage are shown beside each number. That's the trend, how this week compares to the week before.

The green up arrow indicates that things are getting better. The down arrow indicates the decline in engagement. Also, "0%" is used to indicate that nothing has changed, as far as we know.

There is a "View Engagement Insights" button at the bottom of this section. When you're ready to dig deeper, you'll have more granular information about the performance of your top posts, the most active times of the day, and member information.

3. The 'Pro Tip' Panel is the third Facebook's Built-In Coaching

It is located to the right of the Insights Summary, and many admins don't pay attention to it at all.

This panel is Facebook's way of providing you with relevant suggestions that you can take action on, based on what you're seeing in your group. If your new members are coming into your group, you may get a tip like this:

"Set up an automated welcome post. People have been joining your group. Use Admin Assist to greet them with a recurring welcome post."

This tip is not just a coincidence. Facebook is studying your group data and suggesting a specific action. More than 500K admin and moderators already save time with automated welcome posts, according to Facebook's own dashboard.

This panel will be opened each time you visit the Overview. It rotates in accordance with your Facebook group activity log, so that the advice remains relevant.

4. Your Best Content at a Glance is the "Top Posts" Section

You can also find a Top Posts section in the Overview, if your group has it. It displays the top posts in the past 28 days, as opposed to the 7-day Insights Summary.

This section is helpful to see which type of content your members are most interested in. As much as you really need to know, a question post with 40 comments in one week.

Don't worry when the section displays "No data to show". That simply indicates that your group hasn't created enough posts lately for Facebook to rank anything. It's not an error. Begin posting regularly and the information will follow.

Note: Not all groups will have the Top Posts section. Facebook seems to roll it out according to levels of activity within groups, but hasn't officially stated what criteria it uses. If you're looking for it, check the Insights Summary instead, as it does the same for the last 7 days.

There is a ‘View Post Insights' button below this that will go into a deeper performance analytics for that post.

5. The "Weekly Active Members" Chart, Your Real Growth Metric

You will find the Weekly Active Members chart at the bottom of the Overview. This is a chart that represents the number of members who were active for your group, each day for the last seven days.

This is probably the most significant number on the entire dashboard.

Why? In fact, the total number of members is a vanity metric. If one has 10,000 members and only 50 active members per week, it's almost as if it's a ghost town. The Weekly Active Members chart is a tool to help you find the truth.

Search for patterns here:

• Are you on the rise? That's great, you are attracting people to your content.
• Is it flat? It's time for a poll, challenge, or question post.
• Is it dropping? See if you have been posting regularly and if your recent posts resonated.

The average percentage of members active in a healthy, well-run Facebook group is 70-90% per week. If you're not, the Insights Summary will help you determine what isn't working.

Facebook Group Overview vs Facebook Group Insights: What's the Difference?

These two things are related but not the same.

The Overview is your daily overview. It is created to make rapid and smooth decisions, who to approve, what to moderate, and how the engagement was this week.

Group Insights is your analytics deep dive tool. It displays historic trends, member demographics (groups with more than 250 members), your best posting time, your top contributors and detailed post performance.

As a guideline, the Overview will tell you what is happening now. Insights explain why it has been occurring over time.

Use the Overview daily. Use Insights weekly or when you want to plan what you're going to post.

How to Turn Your Overview Data Into Results

It's one thing to read the dashboard. But knowing what to do with it is another.

Make the following four immediate actions from the Overview:

1. Clear out "To Review" each day. Do not allow member requests for longer than 24 hours or pending posts. If we don't get approvals when we want them, then we don't get engaged when we want to be engaged, and new members who feel unapproved are not likely to become engaged.
2. Be sure to pay attention to the trend arrows of the Insights Summary. If posts are down week-over-week, along with reactions, you should consider trying out a high engagement post, poll, question, or "share your win" post. In quieter groups, these continually elicit comments and reactions.
3. Act on the Pro Tips! If Facebook is recommending that you set up an automated welcome post, then do so. It will take 10 minutes in Admin Assist and will leave a better impression on all new members from now on.
4. Do not treat Member requests only as approvals; those are leads. If the person wants to join a group, they're interested in the things that you offer. Just by asking the right membership questions (and receiving their email, for example), you can capture that interest before it's too late.

That's where a tool such as Groupboss can be of great help. Once you approve a request, it saves member answers, emails and more automatically to a Google Sheet or your email marketing tool. No changes are made to your approval process. You simply cease losing the data.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the Facebook Group Overview?

The Facebook Group Overview is an admin dashboard that displays an up-to-the-minute view of your group's activity. It features a weekly active members chart, a 7-day engagement summary, and pending member requests, as well as moderation alerts.

Where can I see the Overview of my Facebook group?

On the desktop, select your group, click on "Manage" in the left sidebar, and select "Overview". On mobile, go to your group and tap Admin Tools (the icon at the top), and the Overview will appear.

What does " Weekly Active Members " mean?

Number of people who posted in your group, commented on posts or reacted to posts in your group during the past 7 days. It's a more accurate indicator of the health of a group than the number of members in the group.

What's the difference between the Overview and Group Insights?

The Overview is a snapshot of what is happening now, and is brief and daily. Group Insights is an in-depth analytics tool that provides historical trends, demographics, and detailed post-performance. These two exist within the Facebook group admin tools, but have different functions.

Why do I not have any Insights Summary numbers?

This indicates that engagement did not increase from the last seven days. It's not bad, it's just steady. If you have actual low numbers, it's a clear indication to increase your posting or experiment with other types of content.

Begin to use Your Overview Today!

The Facebook Group Overview doesn't require any setup. It's already there and waiting for you in your admin tools.

Open it today. Review the number of "To Review" counts, take a quick look at the trend arrows on the Insights Summary and determine where the "Weekly Active Members" line is going.

This dashboard will give you more information about your group in 5 minutes than it will take you an hour to scroll through the feed.

If your members' requests are increasing, be sure to "catch" their interest before it goes elsewhere. The numbers are displayed in your Overview. It's up to you what you do with them.