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64 responses so far ↓

• Bloggeries on Oct 1, 2008 at 8:12 am

  I’d go with Fan Pages. Groups are good as well and hey in a perfect world do as you did; make both!

  Sphunnnnnnnnnnnnnnn!!!!!!!!

• Garbanzo on Oct 1, 2008 at 8:16 am

  We had set up a group page, but it seems like fan pages are the better way to go. In my experience, they tend to attract members more quickly, although it would be interesting for some folks to comment upon whether there’s more engagement with groups versus fan pages.

• ADMAVEN - The Interactive Advertising Blog on Oct 1, 2008 at 8:42 am

  I have used both to varying degrees of success. I agree with the conclusion of the article, “Groups are generally better for hosting a (quick) active discussion and attracting quick attention.”

• Dror Tirosh on Oct 1, 2008 at 12:38 pm

  Ann,

  We have started with using groups a bit over a year ago and added a page early this year. We have one page and 4 groups created by the hotels (loki hostels), but also a few other groups created by ex-guests and workers.

  We have been using related events and mass messages from our groups which have proven to be affective at times, but also should be used in moderation, otherwise people leave the group. We have not found a good way to use the facebook page for ex-guests or for promotions.

  I have to admit that scanning facebook pages and groups, there are very little with active discussions and we haven’t found ones that seem to work well for marketing, CR or PR purposes.

  Dror

• blue star web development services in tipperary, ireland on Oct 1, 2008 at 1:18 pm

  i agree, create both, but given a choice pages stick out more than groups, tho groups have a more communal sense to them

• darknight247 on Oct 1, 2008 at 2:47 pm

  Congrats on TechMeme front page status. Cheers!

• SEO Coalition on Oct 1, 2008 at 9:14 pm

  As we finish our website we will be doing a similar experiment, but we should view Facebook as a major player in the any SEO Strategic Plan. It just works.

  Good Article!

• Brooks on Oct 2, 2008 at 1:37 pm

  I’ve found the same differences/similarities from experimenting on my own but it’s really nice to have it all laid out in a comparison like this. Thanks for the artical!

• seo mumbai on Oct 4, 2008 at 5:48 am

  Hey I will try it on our new seo website. Thanks for your tip. I think we should go with both of these options first and later on see what our analysis say.

• Joe Crawford. on Oct 4, 2008 at 9:36 pm

  I don’t see the practical point in either. Another place for people to waste their time when they could be building something that matters.

• mike ashworth on Oct 5, 2008 at 6:18 am

  Just wanted to let you know that Facebook now allows indexing of discussions with groups that are available globally within Facebook (no restriction or closed groups) I tipped off Allfacebook and Insidefacebook about this recently. stories are here

  http://www.insidefacebook.com/2008/09/07/discussion-in-facebook-groups-and-pages-is-public-and-searchable/

  http://www.allfacebook.com/2008/09/facebook-grants-google-access-to-groups-and-events/

  In the UK I think people are more aware of groups than fan pages (they think fan pages are for huge Corporate Brands and musicians and not more local offerings). I also feel that the notification for the fan page isn’t as likely to get engagement as a message in the inbox.

  Positive for Fan Pages: In the feed settings, users can alter the amount in their feed related to certain apps such as groups. I know it sounds odd to join a group then not want to hear about stuff however it can happen. Often people join a group as a sign of allegiance with others (social glue although they many not want to participate / engage).

  Negative for groups: Once a group gets to a certain size you will be unable to message all members of it.

  Positive for groups: If you are an admin / officer, you can select certain peopel from your friend list join a group, ones who may like that topic.

  I think having both a group and fan page dilutes a Company presence on Facebook unless the group is set up to discuss a specific topic and not the Company only.

  One possible course of action, get a group out there, grow it, then when it gets a to a decent size convert it to a fan page (their is a process for this if you have a look in the Facebook FAQ)

  Mike Ashworth
  Marketing Coach and Consultant
  Brighton and Hove, Sussex, UK

• Ann Smarty on Oct 5, 2008 at 7:13 am

  @Mike, huge thanks for a most insightful comment!

• Lyn Mettler on Oct 5, 2008 at 2:21 pm

  Facebook has made Pages incredibly hard to drive traffic to. Changes to pages do not show up in the newsfeed, which is what helps things spread viraly on Facebook. I’ve also noticed recently, when you search for something on Facebook, pages don’t come up anymore. Facebook could sure help people promote their pages by fixing these two things and I don’t understand why they don’t, unless they want people to pay them to advertise them.

  Great post though comparing Groups and Pages.

• Hjortur Smarason on Oct 7, 2008 at 12:28 pm

  Nice comparison, Ann.

  I go with Mike on this one, though. I’ve been running several groups and fan pages on Facebook, both local and international ones, and in all cases I’ve been much more successful with the groups. They tend to grow much faster and members get more engaged.

  Going with both might get your readers/consumers confused. I’d just choose one and stick with it.

• Lyn Mettler on Oct 7, 2008 at 12:33 pm

  Hjortur-
  Does group activity show up in the newsfeed?

• Alexander Gounder on Oct 10, 2008 at 3:54 am

  Hey we need to Understand one basic fact about Facebook Pages and Facebook Groups.

  Facebook Pages are a promote a business, band, shop and so on…

  whilst Facebook groups are to promote a common interest.

  Hence the tools given are pretty different.

  On FB Pages you have more Tools like targeted Message sending (you can filter by age, sex, country, etc. whom you wanna send the message to) then the options for stats and even promotion of the page using ads. It gives a good reason for someone to come and use their ad platform.

  On the other hand, FB Groups allow you to have group structure with group officers and admins and stuff, in order to regulate and facilitate discussion.

  and the other addons like photos / videos and stuff are just part of the package to fill it up and make it look big.

• Jim Turner on Nov 5, 2008 at 9:55 pm

  Although Facebook Fan Pages are great, their biggest drawback is your limited ability to communicate with your Fans. The messages you send through your FB Page is delivered into your Fans’ Update Box rather than the FB Inbox.

  I found this out the hard way. My Fans were asking me when I was going to start sending updates. All along I’d been sending updates but no one seems to be aware that they have an Update box.

  So, in essence my messages weren’t getting to them. For my purposes, Groups are a lot better when it comes to communicating with your members.

  Jim Turner
  http://facebook.dj/smmnetwork

• Alda on Nov 19, 2008 at 6:25 pm

  I’ve been doing some online research on pages vs. groups and one thing that doesn’t seem to get mentioned is that groups have links to related groups, which I think is a great tool. It has the potential to pull in people with a common interest, which is highly useful when you’re trying to promote, say, a blog or product.

  I don’t see this happening with pages.

• Heath on Nov 25, 2008 at 9:56 am

  This seems like the $64 question. I don’t think there will ever be a definitive, but I agree with Alexander. The two pages serve two different purposes.

  Thanks for writing the post. I am glad others are having the same dilemma as me.

• Manuel on Dec 9, 2008 at 2:02 pm

  Best Advantage to Facebook Pages:

  Do you know about #PAGENAME ?

  One friend is a fan
  Become a Fan

• Software Testing Training on Dec 16, 2008 at 11:36 pm

  Thanks for Article……

  Good Article Writing

  Software Testing Training
  http://www.qacampus.com

  Our Software Testing Partner
  http://www.cresech.in

• alex on Jan 3, 2009 at 10:11 am

  I have a been building groups on facebook for 1 and a half years, the larges has over 11,000

  you can now only mail upto 5000.

  pages are no good because they only get updates NOT emails !!!

  the only way to contact all members with a large group is to post an event, does anyboy know wether u can invite all members to the event ????

  many thxs in advance

  alex

• Fabie on Jan 4, 2009 at 1:59 am

  Facebook has done a nice job at making us having to choose! Thans Ann, Mike and Alexander for your very insightful posts and comments.

  I work with tourism operators and tourism organisations - Pages are more suited to operators and Groups to organisations promoting a tourism region… However, I am sure that the operators will want to have the features of the Group …. my role is to explain to them that they can’t put the carriage before the horse!

  Cheers,

  Fabienne

• Stewart Turton on Jan 16, 2009 at 8:11 am

  I think the key difference is how groups lend themselves to viral spread better than pages do. So if you haven’t got the budget to spend on Facebook advertising then starting with a group is a good plan. Once your group has stopped growing you can then transfer it to a Page as described here - http://collegewebeditor.com/blog/index.php/archives/2008/05/09/how-to-transfer-your-facebook-group-members-to-your-facebook-page/.

• Dave Wiliams on Jan 17, 2009 at 8:21 am

  Som additional insights . Based on our experience, the major drawback of Pages is that you can not message or send event updates to your audience through their inbox. The message goes through their “update” folder which no one uses. In the article above, it notes that your can’t create events from Group pages which is not true. You can create events from Group pages and this is one of the most powerful functionalities as the event messages are sent to the user’s inbox and not to the update folder. The drawback of Groups is that it is meant for smaller organizations and does not permit custom Facebook applications. I can’t understand why Facebook would want to offer more functionalities to Groups and less functionality to Pages which are typicaly created by some of Facebook’s largest advertisers. I have been really dissapointed in the functioanlity provided to Pages vs. Groups and would highly recommend a Group set up for smaller organizations who want to grow virally on Facebook. I am hoping the functionality of Pages is soon expanded for brand advertisers as I think this is a major shot coming for large scale advertisers that want to invest in and promote their brands on Facebook.

• Tim Hill on Jan 18, 2009 at 10:23 pm

  I noticed that you can’t setup a group without being an actual member of facebook. with pages you can sign up as a company but with groups I believe you need to sign up as an individual?

  Anyone verify?

• Emily on Jan 21, 2009 at 1:20 pm

  Do you have a suggestion for how I can attract new fans quickly without having to purchase a facebook ad?

• Arab E-marketing on Jan 27, 2009 at 9:57 am

  Dear Ann
  Good and useful post
  I was looking for an article talking about steps to do e-marketing on face book????
  thanks

• Loren Baker, Editor on Feb 8, 2009 at 10:49 pm

  @Emily Befriend people who are interested in your business and if they don’t pick up the Fan Page off your Social Map, then just ask them to join. When they join, their friends will see it and join themselves … hence a viral process.

• Tim Owen on Feb 21, 2009 at 6:04 am

  Great help, thank you!

  Tim Owen
  “The Mastermind and Implementation Coach”

• Yoon Ho Um on Mar 2, 2009 at 9:35 pm

  Hi Ann,

  I set up a Page & Group for Plurk…

  The Plurk Group is at 105 Members
  while the Plurk Page is @ 6,278 Fans!

  I was wondering why almost NOONE responded to my admin updates… now I know! No direct messages to Fans… I wonder why not?

  The last Wall post for *”Plurkers” Group was @ 5:00pm on November 2nd, 2008

  The *”Plurk” Page was @ 5:57am on February 28th, 2009

  * the actual names used for the group/page

  So based on these results it seems like Pages are the way to go(obviously this needs to be tested with other topics/niches, would love to see some stats)…

  Thanks &
  God Bless,
  Yoon

• collin on Mar 3, 2009 at 5:37 pm

  One note:

  You can promote a group or a page (or anything online for that matter) with Facebook social ads.

• Bertil Brunnegard on Mar 9, 2009 at 1:52 pm

  Great help - for helpless people
  Thanks & Skål
  Bertil

• Taylor on Mar 12, 2009 at 9:46 pm

  I’m quite frustrated with Facebook pages. After working hard to build up a solid fan base before starting to send out updates, I found out the hard way that no one actually gets them!!! The updates go into an impossible to find update folder and no alerts are sent. Thus, we’ve built up this big group and have no way to send them messages!

• Julia on Mar 16, 2009 at 6:33 pm

  I’ve heard that Facebook is going to be phasing out groups– Is this really true? I really like the fact that you can message all the members of a Group, whereas you can only do updates on Pages. What’s a good alternative if Groups go away?

• Bob on Mar 19, 2009 at 12:03 pm

  Reading some above comments, i’m wondering if myspace is better than facebook which seems to be not found properly by google. I’d prefer that folks can leave a message without having to join/ create facebook profile.

• Mkcoy on Apr 2, 2009 at 11:44 am

  This was very helpful a great post and some really good comments as well i learned something new thankyou. I hope FB doesnt phaze out group o have a couple that are getting quite big now. im sure they wont do that though am sure they will do something else but I am just wondering if its worth just creating a page now anyway for my group or if i should convert my group to a page but after reading these comments im not sure now!!

• JorgeFitz on Apr 2, 2009 at 6:05 pm

  Thank you all for an excellent, insightful discussion!

• wendy wanda on Apr 3, 2009 at 4:06 pm

  recently facebook changed some things about pages. does that change the discussion here at all? I’m still not sure whether i should have a page or group for my organization.

• Jaan Kanellis on Apr 13, 2009 at 2:48 pm

  So do page notifications go to the same hard to find folder?

• Hesham on Apr 13, 2009 at 4:53 pm

  I have learned from your post, thanks a lot!

• Steph on Apr 14, 2009 at 8:50 am

  Is it better to post to the discussion board or the wall when using a facebook group. We were told that when information is posted it is “pushed” to the entire group via e-mail. Is there any truth in this and if so how does it work? We want to get some a community dialogue started. Does anyone know if this push of information is possible with group discussion or wall posts?

• Buns and Chou Chou on Apr 24, 2009 at 5:46 pm

  This was awesome. Thanks so much !

• Ravi Gehlot on Apr 25, 2009 at 5:00 pm

  How do I see a list of all pages I have become fan of in facebook?

• Zeduction Photography on Apr 28, 2009 at 6:30 pm

  working well for me so far- thanks for the tips - http://www.facebook.com/pages/Zeduction-Photography/70445568485

• Suzanne Franco on Apr 29, 2009 at 4:20 pm

  Thanks for the great info (post and comments) … for those who have a page … do you have a profile attached to it to? Is a group attached to a personal profile or can it be attached to a page? Thanks! *SmiLes* Suzanne

• Binh on Apr 30, 2009 at 4:01 am

  Thanks, this totally answers my question. The chart was especially helpful

• Nayan on May 19, 2009 at 7:09 am

  Thanks Ann. I was very confused about Face Book pages and groups and was not sure which one is better for me. Your post and some really good comments helped me alot as i am now using Face Book with good results.

• Hitesh on May 19, 2009 at 7:12 am

  Hi Ann. Nice Post. But for me there is plenty of other things you can do to produce great results than wasting time on Face Book as not many people able to produce great results. Anyways great tips for Face Book users.

• Jayesh on May 19, 2009 at 7:15 am

  Great topic Ann. As an SEO Expert my self i have been able to produce some success with my groups and pages on Face Book. Both are useful depending upon what you are promoting.

• grace wieber on May 22, 2009 at 9:55 am

  Ann, thanks for providing the forum to explore the possibilities of pages vs. groups.

• Andrea Hill on May 22, 2009 at 4:42 pm

  I came across a link to this post on twitter, but now I see it’s a few months old. With the speed at which facebook evolves, I can’t help but wonder if it’s still relevant? I know many groups have migrated over to fan pages since groups are increasingly harder to find on the site…

• GossipCrunch on May 28, 2009 at 4:11 pm

  I have a facebook fan page created and just need to customise it.

• Content Writing In India on Jun 1, 2009 at 12:11 am

  good article, need more 2 grow… what about bing.com

• Christy Taylor on Jun 4, 2009 at 12:05 am

  This was a very good discussion on the difference between using FB pages and groups. I do agree that each serves two difference purposes. As an owner of an Internet Marketing firm, I know that it all depends upon what your overall strategic purpose is to using Social Media. Once you get this figured out then you can decide whether to use a FB fan page or group for build brand awareness and gaining followers.

  @Gossip Crunch We build fan pages. Let me know if you are interested.

• MICHAEL ETAKWA on Jun 5, 2009 at 2:14 pm

  I NEED HELP ON HOW TO START MY OWN GROUP. I MEAN SIGNING UP

• ageor on Jun 6, 2009 at 6:21 pm

  Great comparison, thanks!

  Groups do have events while Pages do not; you might want to correct this…

• Andrew on Jun 12, 2009 at 1:42 pm

  I’m still getting my head around the groups when I discovered fans, so this article helps a little to clarify the effects of both
  Thanks
  Andrew

• Markus on Jun 15, 2009 at 6:56 am

  What about creating a profile instead of a fan page or a group? Instead of getting fans you would be getting friends. The updates go straight to the uptade inbox, but I think (I might be wrong) that there are no limitations in mailing your friends. Plus you could create “events” and invite them to attend as a way to promote whatever you are promoting.

  So what about a Profile vs. Fan Page vs. Group comparison?

  Thanks
  Markus

• Jack Ryals on Jun 23, 2009 at 6:25 pm

  The comments are great, but it seems I am a year behind the times.

  Jackson Stoneworks launched a national campaign to “Help Stop Cancer with Granite” to increase awareness of the work done by the American Cancer Society and raise funds by matching $10 donations with our granite vanity top customers at all of the Lowe’s Home Improvement stores nationwide. All of our customers were invited to become Jackson Stoneworks Fans to promote awareness of this campaign but it seems we could be more effective with a “Help Stop Cancer with Granite” Group. If interested, you can go to http://www.jacksonstoneworks.com/relayforlife to learn more and make recommendations of how you believe we could be more effective .

• Akila on Jun 25, 2009 at 2:54 am

  Thanks for the info.
  One correction though,
  You can create related events with Facebook group easily.

• Paul Garcia on Jun 27, 2009 at 6:35 pm

  Another consideration is GROUPS only can send messages to their members IF THEY ARE 5,000 OR LESS , pages are unlimited

• Lindsay on Jun 30, 2009 at 2:05 pm

  Very helpful, thank you. Now can someone tell me something basic? On my FB home page I can’t even FIND my fan page OR my group. Where the hell are they?! I have a postgraduate degree and I can’t find them… is it just me, or is FB seriously badly designed, and getting worse all the time? So counterintuitive. I have a group already, but it doesn’t seem to work well for me, so I’ve just added a fan page, and we’ll see. I’m sorry to ask another dumb question, but why aren’t these two options bound into one option that does everything? A setup in which I need to maintain my user profile, fan page AND group seems extremely clunky.

• Marc on Jun 30, 2009 at 9:09 pm

  Lindsay,

  I agree as I try to figure out where my fan pages or groups are myself. The trick is you have to click on the INFO tab (right next to the WALL tab) and you will see your fan or group pages on the bottom. Another thing is that it will not show all…only like 4 at a time randomly.

  This was a great discussion about facebook and fan pages and it seems like everyone’s squared in the middle. So I’m back to square ONE. Which is really better, fan pages or groups.

  In my experience alone, the Group pages have been more viral and had more members join. But I wanted to make sure that I’m getting the same results as everyone out there.

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