Facebook Fan Pages Are Better Than Groups
Posted in Social
by Clay Mabbitt
As Facebook’s popularity continues to grow (128+ million unique visitors in October 2009) it is worth your time to consider how you can represent your business on this social network. Facebook offers you two options: fan pages and groups. I sort of tipped my hand with the title of this post. I think fan pages are better in almost every case. Certainly I believe they are better when you are creating a home on Facebook for your business. But let’s start with the one area where groups shine before we move on.
Groups
Groups give you one important feature that a fan page doesn’t: a velvet rope. Just like a fancy night club, you get to decide who is allowed in. While fan pages allow you to set restrictions on the location or age of people who can become a fan, a group gives you total control. You can accept or reject everyone that asks to join. This makes it ideal for reunions, clubs, or other closed groups you are communicating with through Facebook.
If you have a business (or even a typical not-for-profit) you aren’t looking to exclude anyone who wants to support you, though.
Fan Pages
This is where fan pages come in. You create a page that operates in a very similar fashion to your personal Facebook page, but it is for your business instead of you.
- Just like your personal page, when you have at least 100 25 fans/friends you can get a shorter, more attractive URL. Isn’t facebook.com/graybox easier to remember than facebook.com/pages/Fishers-IN/Silver-Square/3847892…
- Your fan page content is visible to someone before they become a fan. That means you have a chance to make a good impression on a total stranger, but it also means search engines can index your page.
- With a fan page you can add custom Facebook applications, so a simple example might be adding a tab that shows the RSS feed from your blog.
- The insights section of your fan page lets you see demographic information about your fans like gender, age, and geographic location.
Have you seen any other advantages of fan pages? Or do you think I’m overlooking some benefits of groups? I’d love to hear other people’s experiences in the comments.
I agree, Clay, pages are where it’s at! When you make a status update to a page, it shows up in your fans’ news feeds, just like one of their friends. If you’re responsible with your posts, they won’t hide you from their feed. You get their attention automatically.
With groups, unless you send a message or email to your members, you have to rely on them to visit the group page to get any new info. A lot of people join a group, and never revisit it.
Case in point. I’m a fan of 69 pages (including Silver Square, of course) and read my new feeds almost every day. I belong to 22 groups and have visited most of them once, receiving 1 email from a group, ever.
Lisa: Great addition. The status updates make it much easier to stay in front of your network.
Actually you only need 25 fans now to set up a vanity URL
Chad: That’s great to know. We have a client with 81 fans that I had been waiting to get the vanity URL for. After reading your comment, I jumped over to Facebook to try creating a username for the page. Worked like a charm.
Excellent. I was in a similar situation with a client, but while doing some research for a presentation I discovered it had dropped to 25. Glad I could help!
Downside of the Fan Page: I don’t think you can send messages to your ‘fans’. The only way to communicate with them is on the Wall. Also, if there are any additions/changes to the page, the fans do not get ‘notified.’ Right?
Nicole: You’re right on both points. Groups let you send an email to all the group members as long as your total group membership is under 2000. I might be wrong on the exact number, but that is a valuable feature for small groups.
[...] Do you need a Facebook fan page or a group? [...]
[...] What’s the difference between a fan page and a group on Facebook? The answer is it depends on your needs, but in most cases there’s a clear favorite. [...]