Facebook Group vs Facebook Fan Page: What’s Better?

October 1st, 2008 by Ann Smarty | 20 Comments

Facebook allows for 2 networking tools:

Creating/ joining a Facebook group;
Creating/ joining a Facebook fan page.

While the major differences become evident only after you try out them first, we decided to create and promote both for Search Engine Journal:

Now what we have found from this experiment..

First and foremost the 2 major differences include:

Unlike groups, fan pages are visible to unregistered people and are thus indexed (important for reputaion management, for example);
Unlike pages, groups allow to send out “bulk invite” (you can easily invite all your friends to join the group while with pages you will be forced to drop some invites manually). Groups are thus better for viral marketing, meaning that any group member can also send bulk invites to the friends of his.

Now let’s go into some details:

Key Feature	Facebook Page	Facebook Group
“Ugly” URLs	No	Yes
Hosting a discussion	Yes	Yes
Discussion wall, and discussion forum	Yes	Yes
Extra applications added	Yes	No
Messaging to all members	Yes	Yes
Visitor statistics	Yes (”Page insights”)	No
Video and photo public exchange	Yes	Yes
“Related” event creation and invitation	Yes	No
Promotion with social ads	Yes (never tried it)	No

To conclude:

Pages are generally better for a long-term relationships with your fans, readers or customers;
Groups are generally better for hosting a (quick) active discussion and attracting quick attention.

Comments

20 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.
Software Testing Training on Nov 4, 2008 at 8:33 am

Hi
I like quarkbase though. I am using it to get information about websites i find interesting. Seems to be more than just seo.

http://www.crestech.in
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.