Author: Emily Gaudette / Source: The Content Strategist
If it weren’t for Facebook groups about rats, I would have deleted my account a long time ago.
You heard me. Rat groups. After I adopted my first pet rat, Ripley, in 2015, I took her home and realized I had no idea how to take care of her. While researching online, I stumbled into a thriving community of Facebook groups for rat parents. There are groups for sharing toys and cage decor, for matching rat foster parents with “forever home” adoptive parents, and for sharing related memes. (The best meme group is called Ratto Bamboozlin’, and it is a joy.)
Although Facebook’s algorithm changes slowly cleared my feed of posts from publications I follow, all that sweet, sweet rat content has remained. Mark Zuckerberg says he wants Facebook users to primarily interact with posts shared by friends, which means I now get updates from second cousins going on vacation, former coworkers having babies, and fellow rat moms.
Facebook groups have been a hot topic of discussion since last June, when Zuck rolled out updates to “give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together.” Whether or not that’s true, the new emphasis disrupted the connection between publications and their audience. For many media companies, especially ones that don’t value SEO, the hit to their Facebook traffic is enough to threaten their existence.
To hold off extinction, some companies have turned to the Facebook group. Publications have started groups that function like a comment section for their readers. Others have used branded Facebook groups…
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