The launch of Facebook Mentorships as a feature in Facebook groups.
If you have been looking for a way to incorporate your mentorship service with Facebook Group, now you can. Also, if you own a Facebook group and you want to offer mentorships to members of the group or you want the members to be able to mentor or guide each other, now you can.
With Facebook Mentorships, you can use a Facebook group to match people within the group to help and guide each other on topics they are experts in. Basically, it helps to pair people who need guidance with those who can provide such.
This is a feature which will be an added functionality to Facebook groups. However, the feature can be used only by members who are at least 18 years of age. Also, the Facebook mentorships feature is basically for providing guidance not outrightly for coaching purposes. It is focused on Facebook groups whose main topic is about parenting, professional and personal development.
As this feature was recently launched, Facebook will start with a smaller percentage of Facebook groups before extending the use of the feature widely across the Facebook network.
The Facebook mentorships is free. There is presently no means of making payments to people who provide guidance. Which means, the mentorship is based on simply volunteering. As a Facebook group admin, this should not be a hindrance. One of the main reasons why you created the group is to provide value. Mentoring members of your group should come naturally to you without getting paid directly for that. Also, as a group admin, you can choose to enable the feature or not. If or when you do, you would also be in control of who you pair with who and make the introductions. However, the conversation between the mentor and the mentee is private. This is in order to maintain privacy and safety. In situations where things go wrong, either the mentor or the mentee can report issues to Facebook.
How Does the Facebook Mentorships feature work?
- Group admins create a mentorship program.
- People sign up and are matched with their mentor/ mentee.
- The Admin introduces the pair.
- Mentors and mentees get step-by-step guidance.
An admin of a Facebook group can choose from a variety of template programs and select the one that best fits their community’s needs.
Group members can then choose to sign up to be a mentor or a mentee. The group admin then pairs people together depending on what the mentor can do and what the mentee is looking for.
The paired mentor and mentee get to know each other and work through program steps in their one-on-one mentorship program on Facebook. They can share and comment on posts there or communicate through Messenger.
The pairs progress through a guided program that encourages them to check in with each other weekly
The feature has good prospects but the result you will get depends on how well you use it. When it becomes available for your Facebook group and it’s what you want, you can enable it and give it a trial. You can decide either continue using it or not. Hopefully, Facebook will keep innovating on the Facebook mentorships feature so as to make it more valuable to group admins and members.
