How To Create A Private Discussion Board On Facebook
Posted by Ching Ya | Posted in Facebook, Guest Posts, How To, Social Media Tool, Social Networking | Posted on 28-04-2010
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This week we have another honorable guest on board – my good friend, Rajeev Edmonds who will share with you an useful Facebook tip today about how to create a private discussion board. Take it away, Rajeev!
Whether you’re an individual, a non-profit organization or a business entity, Facebook is one of the most important social media channels to connect with more people. It’s an excellent medium to let other people know what you’re up to. However, there are circumstances when you selectively want to club a group of people on facebook and want to keep the ongoing activities of this group completely private. It can be a family group, a social media group, a company’s elite members group or just a gang of friends. Whatever is the case, facebook let’s you achieve this very easily via Private Groups, that inherently supports private discussion boards.
Facebook provides an option to create private ‘family groups’. Though the name suggests it can only be used for binding family members, you can use it to include anyone who is on facebook. These groups are like normal facebooks groups with the exception of being completely invisible to non-members. So let’s get started and see how to create our very own private discussion board.
How To Create A Private Discussion Board On Facebook
Step 1: Head on to ‘create private group‘ registration page and fill in your group name. Make sure you add yourself as a member.
The registration page gives you an option to add more members either by their name or through e-mail addresses. If your potential group members are not on facebook, enter their e-mail addresses separated by commas. I’ll strongly suggest you to avoid writing names in the first step. Later on, you can add members via friends list to make sure you make no mistake and inclusion is fast and easy.
Step 2: Update group picture and basic information. This includes assigning a relevant category and providing helpful description for the group.
You can update this basic information via ‘Info’ tab. Along with basic information, you can also update the contact information which includes, website link, address, city and zip code.
Note: Updating contact information is optional.
Step 3: Now comes the real part of configuring a private discussion board for group members. That’s pretty easy and requires a few clicks. Go to ‘Edit Group Settings‘ link and uncheck all the options except ‘Enable Discussion Board‘. Save your settings and you’re done.
After applying these settings, group members will be able to access discussion board and all other parts will be read-only for them i.e, they won’t be able to write on wall, they won’t be able to post videos, photos and links. Now, I don’t think you’ll ever want to exercise such strict policy for private group members. The above settings are only for demonstration purpose to show the possibility of creating a private discussion board on facebook.
CAUTION: Be careful while using ‘Events‘ in your private group. Events are either visible to your friends network or to the entire facebook community.
Rajeev is a pro blogger who shares his expertise in blogging & social media tips. He is the founder of mintblogger.com and you can find loads of insightful articles regarding the mentioned topics at his blog. Don’t forget to follow him on @mintblogger!
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Thanks for having me Ching. Hope readers will find it useful.
Rajeev Edmonds´s last blog ..How To Sell Affiliate Products On Your Blog
Very good explanation Rajeev, I wish I am more involved with Facebook, I just discovered I am a Twitter guy lol!
I will keep all this good stuff, you never know what will happen tomorrow!
Hesham @ FamousBloggers´s last blog ..Linkify Twitter usernames Anywhere in Thesis Theme TwitterLink Comments
Same here Hisham. I find myself spending more time on twitter than facebook.
Glad you found the tip interesting. I hope you’ll never need to be secretive on facebook
Rajeev Edmonds´s last blog ..How To Sell Affiliate Products On Your Blog
This is a very useful tutorial. I’ll certainly keep this because I know I’ll need to use it.
Thanks.
Anne Lyken-Garner´s last blog ..Blog Jog Day
An insightful tutorial.
Have you read the recent privacy issues associating FB? It’s scary to know that they are using our personal details for advertising purposes.
Kiran´s last blog ..Memory lane
Like Hesham, I am not yet an avid user of FaceBook as I am a Twitter addict myself (seems just to be easier to use). Anyway, this is good to know. I have a group of friends who can take advantage of this functionality and might be a good idea to use it and see how it goes. Solid..
DiTesco´s last blog ..Google Releases Best SEO Tips Ever
Actually I am more on twitter because it’s more quite
and it dose the job perfectly
Hesham @ FamousBloggers´s last blog ..Bloggers, Do You Value Yourself as a Human Being?
While I am not currently on FB, this is a solid tip for something I do want to do; thanks!
Dennis Edell @ Direct Sales Marketing´s last blog ..Blog Subscriptions – Methods to my Madness part 2 of 2
Jeez, I didn’t even know you can do that, awesome !
Now, I just have to build a community big enough and use it.
It’s an awesome tool that surely defines the “iN-crowd” by excluding everyone else.
Deep group interaction here we go !
Mars Dorian´s last blog ..How to Bring Down the Sky !
That’s an interesting tip. It’s probably not possible to have a public group / discussion board but make individual threads private though? That might be a nice feature for group / page admins – if they could have a public board with their fans, and a private one between just themselves and access it all in one place.
Kristi@Blogging Tips´s last blog ..My Favorite 2010 Search & Social Awards Nominees
Hey, that was very useful post. I really liked it. I haven’t tried private discussions. But I may give it a try. Great post from Rajeev. Thanks man.
Aswani´s last blog ..How to manage negative comments on your blog
@Anne, @Dennis, @Mars – Glad you found the tip interesting.
@Kiran – It’s not just facebook, but other giants such as Google also do the same. The adverts shown in GMail use the text of email to serve relevant ads. This is done by sophisticated algorithms without any human intervention. I don’t think we need to worry about our privacy in this particular case. What’s your say on it?
@DITesco – I think most of us here find twitter much easier to socialize and connect with people. Hope your friends will find this tip handy.
@Kristi – I’m not aware about any such setting or trick where you can selectively create private threads within a public group. Probably, some 3rd party script (e.g greasemonkey) may do the same.
Rajeev Edmonds´s last blog ..How To Sell Affiliate Products On Your Blog
I’m still a newbie in Facebook, I really love Twitter but trying to involve in Facebook. This article will definitely help me to improve my work in Facebook. Thanks Rajeev.
Arafat Hossain Piyada´s last blog ..Update Facebook status with a universal voice using iconize.me
I was totally unaware of this feature. It will come in handy for some of the people I chat with who are Facebook junkies. Way easier than messaging all of them.
Are there any other James Bond, super secret squirrel things like this Facebook can do?
Trevor´s last blog ..How To Use Google To Search The Contents Of Your Blackberry
I wasn’t truly aware about such a function on facebook. I used to try FB for marketing of my products and even increasing traffic for my page but never knew this thing,. Thanks for the insightful post.