Facebook, as you very well may know by now, is good for a lot more than posting pics of your recent vacation in Mexico or cute snapshots of your cat. While it may be fun to catch up with old friends and post articles that inspire you (or get your blood boiling), that’s not all there is to it.
In fact, the social media platform strives to connect people with similar interests, and, in awesome professional news, serves as a fantastic networking tool. Whether you want to find freelance work, learn more about an industry, or speak to more women in communications, chances are Facebook Groups has got an option for you.
And now finding those groups just got a whole lot easier with the new Facebook Discover tool that debuted on the app. (Although it appears to be available on some people’s desktop browsers, so keep an eye out for it.)
Here’s how it works: Go to the app on your phone (iOS or Android), go to the “More” tab on the bottom right, and then touch “Groups.” Once under that section, you can start discovering. Along with seeing groups you recently visited, you can add groups to “Favorites” and you can “Discover” local communities of interest. You’ll see approximately 25 categories at the moment, including Professional Networking, Science & Tech, and Arts & Culture.
Private groups may or may not show up, depending on whether the administrators allow for its existence to appear. But in cool news, you can check out groups your friends are in, and you can check out communities connecting people across the globe. Suddenly networking from your couch just got so much easier. Seriously, you can be watching TV while simultaneously commenting on industry news on Facebook.
So, if you’re not yet taking advantage of the social media platform’s wide range of possibilities for enhancing your network, you’re probably missing out. And now with this Discover tool making it making it easier than ever to find a group that suits you and a conversation that you want to be a part of, you have no more excuses.