Only about 5% of Facebook groups are active. It’s because most aren’t built by people with any skill in building online communities. Facebook is a wasteland of inactive groups.
Here is the problem…
When people create a Facebook group, they send invitations to most of their friends to join. Being friends, many accept and the group grows at a speedy rate. Too speedy.
It grows too fast to develop any relationships. Too fast for the creator to identify the important contributors. Too fast to develop some culture, traditions and etiquette.
All in all, it grows too fast to do the foundation work a community builder does.
Once people join there is nothing to keep them coming back, they have nothing invested in the success of that community. They have no relationships to keep up, no time and ego invested and nothing to gain. At no point did these members want to be part of the group.
This is the equivalent of mass e-mailing your customers and inviting them to join your community. It’s the easy road, one that lets you skimp on hiring community builders and get a quick result. The result being a list of members you just e-mailed.