Should your business have a Facebook Page or Facebook Group?

The pros and cons of each for your company and how to get started…

Many of our clients had Facebook in the ‘too hard’ or ‘wait and see’ basket in 2010, but have realised they can no longer ignore the power of this free social networking tool in 2011.

2010 felt like the year of Facebook for us here at Orchid, but even though Facebook is free, it’s still vital that you don’t make the common mistake of choosing the wrong type of Facebook profile for your company.

Are your customers on Facebook?

I hope you don’t need convincing that your company should be on Facebook in the first place. However, in case you’re not a Facebook junkie yourself, and you presume since you’re not, then your customer’s probably aren’t on Facebook either, so why bother? Please take a couple of minutes to read these articles:

- Facebook Statistics for New Zealand

- Choosing the right social media tools for your target market

Although Orchid is a full-service online agency, so we offer everything a business needs to succeed online, social media remains one of our most popular services.

Our clients, such as Paw Justice and Kermadec, have found Facebook has quickly become a better source of traffic than all other websites (many of which they have to pay to be listed on). Facebook Ads are also still incredibly affordable by the way, but that’s for a future article :)

What’s the difference between a page and a group?

So, now you know your customers are on Facebook – and you know it’s free to set up a page for your business – it’s important to decide whether your company would benefit from a Page or a Group before you get into DIY mode.

So what’s the difference?

If you’re not feeling very patient, then here’s the short version:

- A page is generally the right pick if you plan to build a long-term relationship with your customers (or ‘fans’).

- Groups tend to be the better choice if your goal is a shorter-term discussion or you want to quickly get attention, such as getting a following to support something currently getting attention in the news.

Facebook often adds extra features and functionality to both groups and pages, so as I become aware of new bells and whistles I’ll add comments to this article. Below are the most relevant benefits of each from a business point of view…

The benefits of a page

1 – Having a page will get you more love from search engines

Although groups do get some love from search engines, pages give you more search engine optimisation opportunities for being found in search results outside Facebook. This also means pages can be ‘seen’ and therefore indexed by search engines.

2 – You can name your page URL

Another benefit of a Facebook Page is no ugly URL. Once you have 25 fans, just go to Facebook Username and name your page. You can’t do this with groups, although I expect this will change soon as Facebook is constantly adding and expanding their features.

All other factors the same, if your URL is something like facebook.com/XYZbusinessltd then you’re likely to rank higher in Google for the query “XYZ Business” than an ‘ugly URL’ like facebook.com?/p=987-a2t

Not only does this help you get more love from Google, this also gives you a short, memorable, more professional URL you can put on marketing materials such as your business cards and email signature.

3 – You can add applications

There are a phenomenal number of free and paid applications you can add to your Facebook page that you cannot add to a group. This gives you more capacity to expand your page and engage with your members.

4 – You get visitor insights

Although you won’t get anything close to the level of insights that Google Analytics gives you about your website or blog, Facebook does give you some interesting insights about your fans that aren’t available unless you have a page.

Here is a screenshot showing some of the insights you’ll find out in the demographics area of Facebook insights. These come from one of our other client’s Facebook page…

5 – You can link events

You can still use Facebook’s events application if you have a group, however when you have a page you can actually link the event to your page.

6 – Your updates come from your business, not you

Unlike a group, when you post something on your page, anyone set to admin shows as their action coming from your company, not from each person personally. This is great if you expect you’ll have multiple people in the company looking after your page in particular otherwise it can get confusing who actually represents the company versus who is just a member of the page.

7 – Post insights

Facebook pages give admins extra insights about each post such as the reach / impressions achieved.

The benefits of a group

1 – You can ‘bulk invite’ friends

You can send a bulk invite your friends to join your group. With a page, you have to manually select friends to send invites to.

This makes groups better for viral marketing. This also means your group’s friends can send bulk invites to their friends and so on.

2 – You can send a Private Message (PM) to your members

With a page, you can only get a message out to all your members by adding a status update, which appears on their ‘wall’ (news feed) along with their friends updates ( meaning it can get missed).

A group allows you to send a PM (‘Private Message’, Facebook’s version of an email) direct to all your members.

3 – You can restrict group access

Unlike pages, groups allow you to restrict who can access them. A group can be open, closed or secret. Open groups are still visible but to join the group, admin has to approve the request first. Secret groups are not even visible in Facebook search results and are accessed by invite only. Pages are always public.

Caution

For some, number 2 is a pretty major benefit of choosing a group, but beware relying on Facebook for direct marketing to your customers. Also, be aware that once you reach 5,000 members you can no longer PM them.

Remember that Facebook owns your business page or group, not you, so break their rules and you can have your page taken off you. You’d lose that essential direct contact with your group members. That’s why it’s always vital with both pages and groups, that you convert your Facebook members onto your own email database for direct marketing.

Benefits both pages and groups offer you

1 – Host a discussion

2 – Include a ‘wall’ and discussion forum

3 – Message all your members (remember with a group you can email your members direct, but with a page you can only message your fans through a status update).

4 – You can add video and photos

Now you know the basic difference between the two, it’s time to get started.

What next?

If you’re already a confident user of Facebook you should find it quite easy to get your business set-up yourself. If you’re not as confident, or get stuck and prefer it done for you, by all means feel free to contact me at Orchid for a professional set-up for under $200 for new clients, including SEO copywriting and graphic design for your business profile image (by the way, that price excludes GST and is only valid for a limited time).

Create a page

To create a page, log in to Facebook using the same login you do for your personal profile, then go to Facebook Pages and click the + Create Page button top right.

Create a group

To create a group, log in to Facebook using your login for your personal profile, then when you’re on your ‘news feed’ view, on the left hand side you’ll see a ‘groups’ link. Click that, then click the + Create a Group button top right.

And yes, you do have to have a personal profile on Facebook yourself first before you can set-up a page or group for your business, but it will not means your group / page members can see your personal profile.

Once you’re done, why not pop back here to Marketing Gum and post a link in the comments with your new page so we can all like your page to kick start getting you to those 25 members :)

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 26th, 2011 at 9:29 am and is filed under Facebook, Online Marketing, Social Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.