Looking for love with Facebook Groups?
Preparation of your Facebook Web page should be just as important as preparation for a date. A date with a prospective customer or connection, that is.
You want to be interesting, and appealing to your Facebook fans (likes). We’ve seen confusion out there about when to create a Facebook page, and when to create a Facebook group. You surely want to make the most of your date by choosing the right look and fit! After all, there may be only one chance to make a good first impression. Make sure you aren’t using a Facebook group, when you should be using a page, or vice versa!
Facebook Pages
Facebook pages are designed to build brands, and market them to the public. Pages are available for business persons, celebrities, authors, and any size business or organization. If you are an admin or owner of a business page, you are representing and posting as the brand, not as an individual.
Facebook pages offer statistics (See Insights below) to learn about your audience, and what posts they are responding to. Pages also provide opportunity for targeted advertising by interests, age, and geographic areas, for example (Promote Page below).
Applications can be added to Facebook pages which is really cool if you want to feature videos, get email sign-ups, show your Website, other social media feeds, and more. Pages also can have vanity URLs , or their own Facebook page address. These features are ways to customize pages, and they aren’t available for groups.
Tip: Event tabs are available for both Facebook groups and pages!
Marketing Blog and About/Services are custom apps via 3rd party software
Facebook Groups
Facebook groups are a place where people network, collaborate, and post ideas among a specific group or around a topic. For example, you may belong to a Facebook group for your city, set up to market local events and business opportunities. There are many community groups, such as churches, support groups, and professional groups. These types of groups are typically open groups you can join, with an invitation request that has to be approved.
Tip: Facebook groups can be closed or secret for more online privacy.
*Posting Content*
Members of groups create posts as individuals. Facebook page owners or admins create posts as the brand. Documents can be uploaded to groups (under the Files tab), which makes it really handy for working on projects or collaborating.
Tip: If there are members of your community that appear to be businesses, they are using a personal profile rather than a page. (This is against Facebook’s terms of service, and they need to create a page instead.)
*Messaging and Tagging*
If you are a Facebook group admin, then you can send a Facebook message to all or select members of your group. This is not possible with a page, with the exception of sending an individual message back to someone that messages the page first.
Since individuals (not pages) are group members, it is very easy to tag other group members. Tagging and messaging are both great ways to bring people back to the group, or to call their attention to a specific post.
It would be great to have these features available on Facebook pages. However, it is difficult, if not impossible, to tag fans on pages. Facebook has made advertising essential to not only increase posts being seen in fan’s news feeds, but to successfully build a fan base.
Overall, it is much easier to communicate with members of a group, than it is with fans on your page. There are also chat and email functions in groups. These are important points to consider when you are developing your online marketing strategy.
Keep in mind that it is possible to have a Facebook page and a group. For instance, if you are a service then you can use a page to reach fans and prospective customers. If you need focus groups to improve products then you can use groups. The page and the group would be used for two different purposes.
Let us know if you have any questions below. We appreciate your comments!
More Facebook help:
Facebook Page vs. Group in 2013
4 Unique Ways to Use Facebook for your Business by Social Media Examiner
Facebook – About & Create Groups
Another Small Business Internet Marketing Blog by Tina Reed Johnson