Marketing Your Business on Facebook: Group or Page?

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Posted on January 23, 2009 under Social Media

Small business owners such as myself are always on the lookout for ways to promote their business. With over 150 million users and still growing, Facebook can be a great way to do that.

My business is almost entirely dependent on word-of-mouth referrals, so making sure that as many my friends and contacts as possible know about Addicott Web is crucial. The vast majority of my social network is on Facebook already, so it’s the perfect way for me to reach a broad audience.

What are the two approaches?

There are two tools that Facebook offers that can be used to market your business: groups and pages.

The differences between groups and pages are subtle, and average Facebook users probably don’t notice how they are different. In fact, I didn’t realize the difference myself, even after I started looking into which to use – which is how I ended up creating a group before I realized the error of my ways and created a page instead.

So why did I ultimately decide to use a Facebook page instead of a group? Simply put, because pages offer more flexibility to post such things as:

Customer reviews of my work
Recent blog posts through the RSS application
Connections to pages of my clients

But groups can have their benefits too – just not for my purposes. Here is a quick table that summarizes the differences between the two tools:

Key Feature	Page	Group
Shortcut URL	Yes	No
Discussion forum	Yes	Yes
Discussion wall	Yes	Yes
Extra applications?	Yes	No
Messaging to all members	Yes	Yes
Visitor statistics	Yes	No
Video and photo galleries	Yes	Yes
Event creation and invitation	Yes	No
Promotion with ads	Yes	No

Facebook Groups

Facebook groups can be created for just about anything. They are typically used as gathering places for people who share a common interest, support a common cause, or participated in some program or event together.

Why might you want to use a group to market your business?

Administration – As the group administrator, you can easily send messages to group members, making it easier to communicate with them about your business.
Familiarity – Facebook pages are relatively new, only having debuted in the last year or so, but groups have been around since the start. Because of that, people are a lot more familiar with groups and how to join and use them than they are with pages.

But there can be some drawbacks to using a group, such as:

Not widely accessible – Groups are only visible to Facebook members, so someone who’s doing a search on Facebook won’t be able to see it unless they have a profile and are logged in.
No extra applications – You can’t extra features to Facebook groups – what you see is what you get, which is generally the bare-bones stuff such as discussion boards, a wall, photo gallery, and basic administrative features.
Need to visit regularly – If you post a message to the group’s wall, you won’t see if or when someone responded to what you wrote unless you go back and visit often. This can be a big drawback if you want to facilitate a flowing conversation.
Less visibility on people’s profiles – When you join a group, it gets added to a long list of the other groups that you’re already a member of – and one that isn’t bulleted and lists the groups in no particular order to boot. If someone has a lot of groups that they’re a member of, it’s not easy to find yours amongst everything else.

Facebook Pages

As I detailed in another post on this topic, pages were created to allow people to connect with brands or famous artists. Pages can be created by anyone for any group, person, or business, although generally only an official representative of that business or person is allowed to maintain a page for that group or individual.

One of the biggest differences from a group is that you don’t become a “member” like you do of a group; rather, you are a “fan” of the page.

There are a lot more benefits to using a page versus using a group, such as:

Are widely accessible – Pages can be seen and found on the wider Internet to people who aren’t members of Facebook, so you do gain wider exposure in that sense. But even so, you have to be a member of Facebook to interact with the group.
Applications are available – As the page administrator, you can add applications to your page, similar to the way you can add applications to your Facebook profile. For example, on Addicott Web’s Facebook page, I’ve added an application that imports my RSS feed from my blog and displays my new posts whenever I post something to my blog.
Tracking – Facebook has provided page administrators a tool that lets them know how many visitors that they’re getting.
Better visibility – On your profile page, groups are displayed at the bottom with an image associated with that group next to it. The presentation and use of an image means that you get better visibility on their profile, making it easier for them (and others) to find your page.
Actions are documented – If a fan of your page takes action on it, such as writing on your wall or posting a video, their actions will be documented on the news feeds of their personal pages. Their friends will see the news feeds and if curious, check out your page – giving you more exposure.

There are still a few drawbacks though, including:

No mass invitations – If you want to invite people to become fans of your page, you can’t send invitations to large groups of people like can with a group. I’ve encountered this problem myself and it is quite frustrating.
Less familiarity – Longtime Facebook users might still be less familiar with pages than they are with groups. In general though I think this is becoming less of a concern, so I wouldn’t factor this into your decision between the two.
Messages might get less attention – As the page administrator you can send an update to your fans, but they might not notice it. Rather than appearing in their inbox, it gets displayed on the side of a user’s homepage – a less prominent spot that is unlikely to grab their attention.

Thoughts?

So now that you know the difference between Facebook groups and pages, which would you use to promote your business, or that of a business or organization you work for or with?

If you’re a small business owner and already use a Facebook group or page to market yourself, which approach do you use and why? Is it working for you?

Share your thoughts with everyone on both of these questions and more by filling out the comment form below!

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Marketing Your Business on Facebook: Group or Page?

Are you new here?

What are the two approaches?

Facebook Groups

Facebook Pages

Thoughts?

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