With the addition of “Communities,” a new feature on WhatsApp, Mack Zuckerberg hopes to increase its social capabilities and centralise related groups. No matter which tool you choose, whether it’s a WhatsApp group or a community, the ultimate goal is to make it easy for everyone to communicate within the app. But which one is the better option? Read on to learn more, so you can decide for yourself.
In what way does a WhatsApp group help?
WhatsApp groups are a way to have a conversation with multiple people at once. You can create a group with up to 1024 members and begin a conversation with those you’ve invited. If you’re a regular user of WhatsApp, you’re probably a part of at least one group, if not more.
WhatsApp allows users to form multiple groups for various interactions. But it hasn’t been perfect. They have been used for malicious purposes, such as spamming and spreading misinformation. Plus, there are the dreaded WhatsApp family groups to contend with. Nonetheless, there are many advantages as well.
You can use a Whatsapp group to promote your small business, arrange a trip with people in different parts of the world, stay up-to-date on what’s happening in your neighbourhood, and much more. Without a doubt, WhatsApp groups have many advantages. And if you know how to maximise their potential, those benefits will be even greater.
How does WhatsApp community work?
A community brings related WhatsApp groups to a single place. It’s like an umbrella that hides all relevant groups. Let’s say you’re an admin of different school groups, you can set up a community where all these are centralised. Sending one message using your community gets to all these different groups. You can send important messages to all group members from the community announcement group.
It works just like a WhatsApp’s Broadcast list, the only difference is that the admin chooses who is included in the annoucement group and not WhatsApp numbers saved as contacts. To create a WhatsApp community is easy, just follow these steps in one of our previous articles.
The announcement group is made up of all of the members of these related groups, and it allows for real-time information dissemination. One community announcement group can have up to 50 groups and 5,000 members. Both options are modelled after Telegram’s Channel and Group patterns, which aim to provide a clear distinction between the two.
Comparing the needs of a WhatsApp “Group” and those of a “Community”
- When you are creating a WhatsApp group, you will be required to choose contacts and give the group an appropriate name, as well as provide a description and a profile picture. The admin can allow (and prevent) members from sharing messages and media in the group, though this depends on how the privacy settings are configured. By restricting “Send message” to only admins the group is set to read-only mode for all members.
- WhatsApp previously only allowed up to 256 people in a group. The maximum number of registered users has been raised to 1024 from the 512. You won’t be able to add someone to your new group if they didn’t select “Everyone” in the Settings options for “Who can add me groups”.
- When you are creating a community on WhatsApp, you are able to select the groups that are most relevant to its name and description. In order to select a group, you must be an administrator of that group. Anyone who isn’t already part of a group can be invited by creating a unique link and sending it to them. They can also request to be added to a partciular group they are not a part of.
- Every contact in a group can check the entire members’ list. While a community member can’t check the other members’ list.
- Within a WhatsApp group, you can initiate a voice or video call. In contrast, a WhatsApp community announcement group lacks this feature. Similarly, unlike communities, WhatsApp groups have the option to include polls.
- WhatsApp group is designed for everyone to join the conversation and share their inputs. WhatsApp community is geared towards sharing updates and announcements in WhatsApp groups from a single channel.
- You can check your WhatsApp groups right from the home feed. WhatsApp offers a dedicated section to check all the communities.
- A WhatsApp group and a community share the same member and admin management features. To get more people into a group or community, you can create a shareable link or a QR code and share it to them.
- Finally, you can make somone a co-admin so he or she can manage the community tasks, such as to send messages, change group or community info like picture, description, and manage members.
Which is the preferred option – to set up a WhatsApp Group or Community?
The point of a WhatsApp group is to get people together to have similar discussions. Of course you all should share some sort of connection, like friends, family, coworkers, customers, and team members. It can be a group set up to talk about things like the newest Netflix shows, the World Cup, or your upcoming wedding. The addition of voice and video calls, polls, and emoji reactions to WhatsApp group chats has really boosted the quality of group conversations.
If you want to successfully manage your school, your neighbourhood, or your marketing groups, you need to build a community and make sure that everyone in it is kept informed with regular announcements and messages.
As you can see, groups and communities cater to different needs or cases. They serve distinct purposes. When you know the distinctions, you can make a well-informed decision about whether to start a WhatsApp group or community.
