Facebook Group Page or Fan Page: What is Best for My Business?

May 7th, 2009 by Amanda

Share This Post:

I had a meeting the other day and the topic of the difference between Facebook fan pages and Group pages came up. I will admit I was not aware of all the subtle differences . So I did a little research and here (as simple as I can put it) is what I found out.

You have probably seen both of them – Fan pages (top image) look like regular profile pages and group pages (bottom image) have profile pictures in the top right and the content stream is below.

Facebook fan pages are meant to be set up to “represent a real public figure, artist, brand or organization, and may only be created by an official representative of that entity”. Group pages “can be created by any user and about any topic, as a space for users to share their opinions and interest in that subject.” More info here

If you are a group admin your name will show up as a representative of that group. Fan pages do not display the admin’s name.

Facebook Group pages have been around the longest and are very easy to set up. One of the biggest differentiators seems to be with how you communicate with the members in your Group. When you communicate with your members they get a facebook email in their facebook inbox (as long as your group has less than 5,000 members).

When you send an alert to fans it appears as an alert in the top right of your home page (no limit to number of members). With Fan pages you can target your messages by sex, location and age. Sometimes these alerts on the home page can get lumped in together and not read. A word of caution, too many emails to your group members and you are sure to be ignored so go for quality over quantity.

Search Results for Fans vs. Groups

Groups are not search-able through traditional search engines like Google, you can only search them within Facebook. Fan pages ARE index-able by search engines and in Facebook.

Recruiting and Adding Members

In groups you can send bulk messages to friends asking them to join your group which makes recruiting easier if you already have a large list to connect with. With fan pages you can connect with people one at a time or provide a URL on your website or your Facebook page pointing people to the fan page.

Fan pages are also randomly suggested to you on your home page in the upper right hand corner. Facebook will often just show other fan pages that your friends are also fans of and will position them them so you can easily join them if you choose.

On both group and fan pages you can add photos, videos, discussions etc. However, on fan pages you can also add your blog feed, Twitter feed, StumbleUpon, quizzes etc. Some feel this adds useful content to their Facebook page, others think it just clutters the page. With group pages you cannot feed in outside content.

With groups you can restrict access or make it mandatory that people are pre-approved by an admin before joining group. With fan pages you can only restrict people by age or location.

Fan pages offer you “Insights,” or daily reports on how many people are visiting your fan page and offer you the option to place social ads on facebook. Groups do not.

Which One Should You Choose?

Facebook fan pages seem to be trending as popular right now but Groups are still holding on strong. You need to weigh these subtle differences and decide what aspects are more important to you. A major generalization I am going to make is if you need more control over your content perhaps a Group is a better choice for you. If you are looking for your Facebook page to be more of a running conversation from all walks of people interested in your products, services, company, employees etc. a Fan page is best.

	Fan Page	Group Page
Look like personal profile page	Yes	No
Analytics or Insights (tracking)	Yes	No
Option to advertise ($$)	Yes	No
Applications – Blog feed, Twitter Feed	Yes	No
Admin can post photos, videos, discussion	Yes	Yes
Members can post photos, videos, comments, discussions	Yes	Option to be approved by Admin
Admin name shows up on Page	No	Yes
Communicate with Members	Alerts on members home page	Emails in Facebook Inbox
Indexed by Search Engines like Google	Yes	No
Recruiting members	URLs or alerting people individually	Bulk Facebook email option
Restricting who joins	Age and Location restrictions only	Option to be pre-approved by Admin

UPDATE 02.24.10 – If you are looking for some more information, Facebook just published a blog Facebook Tips: What’s the Difference between a Facebook Page and Group?

UPDATE 03.05.10 – Mashable also has a nice post about the differences between Facebook Fan pages and Groups. Thanks to Charlene Burke from Third Tribe for bringing this one to my attention.

Posted in Facebook, Social Network Marketing

heather B

Good post – someone just asked me this the other day. I’ll just send ‘em here for a more in depth answer.
jlbrown

Great article, thanks. I am the admin for a Page for a business, and am having problems making it searchable. It just doesn’t show up, no matter what I do; and Facebook Help q&a’s don’t shed any insight.

The link is functional — I sent it to about a half-dozen people, and they were all able to become Fans. But the main Page just doesn’t show up in any search results (although some of our events do in Events), even though I am using all the right keywords in my Info section. Any thoughts would be much appreciated.

Page is about a week old — perhaps it just takes time for the engine to fully index it? I am at my wit’s end.
jlkoenig

you hit it on the head with your last comment; “perhaps it just takes time for the engine to fully index it.” You’ll be indexed by week 2.
Kyle

Thanks for your reply! It usually takes a little more than a week to index depending on the engine. Results are going to come, but patience will be required!
http://www.cameraphones.com Camera Phones

question: do you recommend calling your fan page your domain name, or your business name? I own the domain cameraphones.com…just wondering if I should call my page cameraphones.com, or “Camera Phones”. I ask because I’m assuming in facebook search, and someone types in the keyword, camera phones would probably come up more then the domain, correct?
Thanks,
Alan Deadman

Is it possible to have either a Fan Page or a Group where only the admin(s) can add comments etc.

For example, a college which wants to list its courses and doesn’t want anybody posting anything on it all – just an “information only” page?

Many thanks!!
http://hallme.com Amanda

Camera Phones – I would suggest using your business name especially with such a search-able term such as camera phones.

Alan – Group pages you can set so that an admin must approve all comments so that may be your best bet. If someone does try to post something you can kindly just reply to them that the content is for information only posted by Admins but you would be more than happy to pass their comments along or point them to a fan page where they can participate.

Good luck to both of you! I think both of your campaigns have an opportunity to be very successful using Facebook!
http://www.people.iola.dk/arj Anders Rune Jensen

Thanks. Very informative article. Helped us decide what to focus on at http://www.yayart.com
Pingback: Is Facebook right for your business?
Pingback: What Facebook Mentions Mean for Your Business
Pingback: How to Add a Facebook Like/Fan Box to Your Website

Holistic Technology Enabled Internet Marketing Solutions