How to Use Google Groups as a Mailing List

Google Groups are a great way to manage simple community discussion–especially when it’s a small group that you don’t want to design an entire website for. Making a Google Group instead is very quick and easy.

If all your members have Google accounts, it can serve as a simple forum where you can post some reference information and discuss matters.

But if can make for an effective mailing list as well, and for that people don’t need a Google account–all they need is an email address.

Once you create the Google Group, just view the group and see what URL you have chosen. It may look like “https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/mygroup” for example.

Google doesn’t make this easy, but all you have to do to join is send an email to:

mygroup+subscribe@googlegroups.com

Similarly, unsubscribing is as simple as:

mygroup+subscribe@googlegroups.com

And you can post a message to the list by sending the message to:

mygroup@googlegroups.com

As a manager, you can change the settings of the Google Group to control who can post messages to the group, and if a reply to a message goes individually to the post author or is sent to the entire group.

I’ve used Google Groups for tasks such as having Toastmasters clubs post speech openings, so would-be speakers can contact them, or distributing information to a group about upcoming group meetings and allowing for discussion of some points. The advantage in that latter case is that instead of managing a manual list of email addresses and synchronizing it among all the organizers, you have one place, with an automated system for people to subscribe and unsubscribe. That makes it easy to keep people in the loop.

Reference information:
Google Groups Help
An Introduction to Google Groups
Ways you can use Google Groups