Facebook’s rapid evolution as a social channel and business has sometimes created a breakdown in communicating the exact feature sets of certain features. A prime example of this is the “Group” vs. “Fan Page” debate. Here we’ve collected a few respected opinions on the issues and the jury suggests while each has merit – Fan Pages are able to provide the data we are looking for “click-to-action”.
First, from Mashable (the king of the social media blogs); their extensive post sums up with this “bottom line”.
“Groups are great for organizing on a personal level and for smaller scale interaction around a cause. Pages are better for brands, businesses, bands, movies, or celebrities who want to interact with their fans or customers without having them connected to a personal account, and have a need to exceed Facebook’s 5,000 friend cap.”
Over at Beth Kantor’s blog – she is a world leading social media and non-profit communications consultant – her post “So you want a Facebook Fan Page for Your Nonprofit? Here’s the Scoop!” is a compendium of great resources and tip sheets for using Facebook Fan Pages and Groups. Beth’s call in the Fan Page vs. Group debate?
“Best Answer yet: Set up a Facebook FanPage as your main presence or outpost and use a group for more adhoc, smaller organizing”
And, she also addresses another frequent question: Our organization has too many groups; how can we delete our group?
From Beth’s post we also learn “Deleting groups is difficult – there is a form you can fill out to have the group deleted – use the help page to do it.”
Perhaps the best advice comes from BroadBrand In their Nov. 1, 2009 post titled, “The Facebook Groups vs. Fan Page Marketing Saga Continues”:
“So the question is- which is a better option for marketing your brand, message or persona? And why does Facebook continue to have both options available, when they now seem so similar?
While we may not know the answer just yet and need to get our arms around all these new changes to understand how they work, the one thing we do know is we can always expect Facebook to keep evolving and changing the rules.
The takeaway as a marketer? Both seem to be good options for creating a presence and destination for your brand.
The other takeaway? Do your homework and prepare to stay nimble, because Facebook intends to keep us on our toes.”
