Which is Better: A Facebook Group or a Facebook Page?
April 16, 2008 by Tiffany Derville
(Screenshot from Tim’s Blog)
During a class discussion about Facebook yesterday, Sarah Essary and Beth Evans described the Facebook group that they use for UO’s PRSSA. Ali Grise informed us of the Facebook page that FLUX (our UO student magazine) uses.
I hopped online today and found discussions by Tim Davies and Peter Leonard (also see Peter’s second post on the topic here). I also compared several Facebook group pages with fan pages. Here’s what I’ve gathered so far.
Both groups allow you to have a wall for posts, a discussion forum, pictures, and videos. So what is different?
Advantages to Facebook Groups
- You can send messages to your members’ Facebook inboxes (update: as long as you have 1,200 members or fewer).
- There are many kinks that the Facebook administrators need to work out for Facebook pages, which makes Facebook groups appealing. I see complaints about the ability to send messages to fans and the ability to add applications to Facebook pages.
- If you already have a Facebook group, creating a Facebook page could create confusion. (update: However, you can transfer your Facebook group to a Facebook page).
Advantages to Facebook Pages
- Facebook pages let you measure your traffic. Hooray! You need at least 10 fans for the metrics to work. Jump down to “Metrics” on Peter Leonard’s discussion for a picture and details.
- You are locked into a set of applications on Facebook groups (e.g., wall, photos, video); however, you can create new applications for your Facebook page (such as allowing customers to buy products). There is also an events application for Facebook pages (see here for an example and click on the event).
- When your fans take action on your page, 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 could see the news feeds and check out your organization.
- Ali pointed out that fan pages stand out on profiles, whereas group pages get lost in the mix. See her page for an example. Look at the left sidebar items and compare her Facebook groups with her Facebook pages.
Which option do you think is better? Of course, an organization might want to skip Facebook and set up its own social network through ning, which was a brilliant move for PR Open Mic.
Do you know of any other advantages or disadvantages of Facebook pages and groups?
I think companies should have both. With the advent of causes and pages, the main reason I join groups is to get messages about events they host. If you’re a “fan” of something, I think it shows a higher level of support. At the same time, many people are hesitant to join groups because they have too many on their profile, so pages would be better for that. This is based entirely on my experience as a Facebook user and someone who has used it for publicity, not research.
I’ve heard that Facebook pages are also hard to find. For example, if you’re trying to find a particular company’s page (assuming it has one) and type it into the search bar, you won’t get any results. My roommate was asked to do this for a job once and wasn’t successful in finding well-known, multinational companies that had established Facebook pages. Groups aren’t necessarily easy to search for, but at least give some results.
I agree with Beth on this one, but I would put extra emphasis on facebook groups. Facebook pages are ineffective if nobody can find them.
Having said that, there are many legitimate ways to publicize facebook pages within facebook itself. Posting pages on profiles, group sites (if an organization opts to go with both) and facebook events is a relatively non intrusive method seems to work well.
Also note, as Peter Shankman discovered with his Help-A-Reporter project, that Facebook groups top out at 1,200 members.
[...] Which is Better: A Facebook Group or a Facebook Page? « Both groups allow you to have a wall for posts, a discussion forum, pictures, and videos. So what is different? (tags: Facebook socialmedia socialnetworking) [...]
Personally, I am more of a fan of the facebook groups. I believe you will have a better connection being part of the “group” rather than “friends” with the facebook page. Maybe a larger sense of a relationship? Maybe I’m reading into it too much. Additionally, I am a fan of the feature with facebook groups where you can assign multiple administrators, meaning you can have multiple people maintaining the group and adding any changes or updates. Oh and by the way, my blog is rocking out right now @ http://thepatontheback.wordpress.com!
[...] tiffanyderville wrote an interesting post today on Which is Better: A Facebook Group or a Facebook Page?Here’s a quick excerptYou are locked into a set of applications on Facebook groups (eg, wall, photos, video); however, you can create new applications for your Facebook page (such as allowing customers to buy products). There is also an events application … [...]
Thanks for the comments! For now, I think Facebook Pages are the way to go. Phil mentioned that Facebook Groups top out at 1,200 members. Unless you plan to have a small group over time, this is a serious drawback to Facebook Groups.
Nevertheless, note that you actually can convert Facebook Groups to Facebook Pages, which I discovered
here.
In addition, I can’t resist the metrics feature of Facebook Pages. That is why I’ll be setting up a Facebook Page for the organization for whom I do volunteer public relations work:
Cameron Siemers Foundation for Hope
I think there is some confusion about how many people can be an administrator — you can actually have multiple administrators for both
Facebook Pages and
Facebook Groups.
I tested out the “pages are hard to find” drawback and did not see that pages are more difficult to find than groups. When you type terms into the search bar, the results come up in tabs (people, pages, groups, events). I don’t see how groups are any more visible than pages with this layout. Post a comment back to me if you have an example.
I agree with Pat that being part of a group implies a deeper relationship than being a fan of something. So noted!
Everyone has really good points about both groups and fan pages! I think that it just really depends on the purpose behind a particular group or fan page. I think for organizations, as Beth pointed out, it would be important to have both. However, i think if it is for more personal use, the Facebook groups are better because they are easier to find and they convey the feeling of belonging. It is good to know that you can actually make the group into a fan page. It is a useful “upgrade” if the creators of the group feel like it is needed! I think it also depends on people’s personal preference and which one they feel more comfortable working with.
I’m sure you can have more than 1,200 members in a facebook group. Check out the group for Stephan Colbert that has more than 1,000,000 members.
Yes, that’s weird about the group size limits. I wonder if that’s a new anti-spam feature. I’ve noticed Facebook making it increasingly harder to use it for free mass communication since last fall when I could invite all the public relations majors at the U of O to a Facebook event in one night.
[...] profile and create events for your page just like you can a Facebook group. Tiffany Derville at the PR Post and Tim at Tim’s Blog discuss the pros and cons of Facebook groups and pages, while the [...]
Eeeeek… My bad…
It was FB’s 1,200 *messaging* limit that vexed our dear Mr. Shankman, not the *membership* limit.
D’oh. Dumb mistake.
My beliefs are that, in general, if you’re are tapping into the world of Facebook for a company or organization, you generally make a group. Yes, it is probably more convenient for the company or org. using it to have an actual page, but I think that the general etiquette is for non-humans to stick to the “group” world an leave the actual FB pages for real humans. You can’t ACTUALLY be friends with PRSA. You CAN be friends with PRSA’s founder.
Thanks for the clarification, Phil.
Stacey, I think you’re misinterpreting what Facebook pages are. You can be a “fan” of an organization’s Facebook page, not a “friend.” Please see the links in my post for more information or chat with me about it.
[...] I’ve read that we can transfer a Group to a Facebook Page, which has more promo capabilities. Not sure on how [...]
Yes, you can transfer a group to a page. You can find the instructions here: http://www.facebook.com/help.php?page=175
Facebook says:
“If you have a group that fits into one of the categories offered for Pages and you are the official representative of that artist, business, or brand, we can help you convert your group into a Page. Please fill out your request here by providing us with the URL to your current group and the URL to the Page you have created that you would like your group members and group content transferred to.”
So how do you do the transfer? What forms do you fill out? and where?
Thank!!!!
Justin,
Send Facebook the URL to your Facebook group and the URL to the fan page where you want your group content and members to be moved.
You can give Facebook this information here: http://www.facebook.com/help/contact_generic.php
Tiffany
Hey Everyone,
I have a group with over 8000 people. I have no way to get in touch with my members so having a group is pretty much useless. I’ve sent facebook a link with my group and a new link with a page. I am the owner of the company and we fit in the real estate category.
Question:
-has anyone successfully transferred a group to a page?
-how long does this process take?
-are there any restrictions
Cheers,
Shane Harder
http://www.bchn.com
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1255023780#/group.php?gid=11432683868
Shane,
Thank you for joining this discussion. I do not have the answers to your questions — hopefully someone will. If you go through this process, I hope you will report back with your experience. Good luck!
Tiffany
This article has really helped me as I’ve been running a group for about six months - the group is centred around clubnight events that I run and I have nearly 1,500 group members.
This is great news… but on the flipside now means that I cannot invite them to this month’s event as I’ve had over 1,200 members now.
I’m going to try out the “convert to pages” option that you’ve spoken of - I am very relieved that this option is out there so thanks.
Frenzy,
I’m glad that my blog post was helpful! Please let me know how the experience of transferring to a fan page goes. Good luck.
Tiffany
Hi Tiffany,
Well, I submitted a request via the Facebook contact section and within about 5 days or so I’d had a reply from them.
Facebook literally updates all your Group members profiles so that they are now fans of your pages.
It is worth noting that they still also remain members of the Group.
So I now have fans pages with around 1,500 members, plus a group with the same - so I am now in the position of still duplicating content.
I’m not sure what the best approach is.
One thing I have noticed, and perhaps someone can advise.
In a Fan’s page I’ve created an event, but cannot directly invite all the fans to it. All I can do it create an update.
Anybody know anything more about this?
^^ That was Frenzy by the way
Dear Frenzy-Hardhouse,
Here is a message from Facebook about how to delete a group. This will fix your duplicating content problem:
“Our system automatically deletes groups once they’re empty (no members). If you created the group or are one of the group’s administrators, the easiest way to delete the group is to remove all members and then remove yourself.”
Thank you for identifying that fans cannot be directly invited to events. Instead, we are limited to sending “updates,” which appear on the updates tab of each fan’s inbox.
Also, here is what I found from Facebook:
“At this time, it is not possible to message all the fans attending an event you have created on your Page. You will need to use the Page’s “Updates” feature in order to send out a message to your fans.”
and
“Facebook Pages do not yet have an Inbox. We may add an Inbox for private messages to Facebook Pages in the future. Until then, users cannot send private messages to your Facebook Page, and you cannot send users private messages from your Facebook Page.”
Good luck!
I made a page a couple weeks ago, had good response, and was using it to post all the events we have. Then recently, I went to post an event and the admin is now me. Before the admin could be the page and the events would show up on the PAGE. What gives? Anyone know what happened? The page was working brilliantly but now it seems only groups can host events.
Jay,
Thank you for commenting on my blog. I admire your university’s debate team!
I have not experienced the problem you are describing. I did not find the answer to your question on the events help page: http://www.facebook.com/help.php?page=413
However, at the bottom of the page, you’ll find a place to contact Facebook. I suggest posing your question there.
Tiffany
It’s a real shame that you cannot directly invites Fans to an event. I hope this gets resolved as soon as possible.
Hard House Blogger, I agree that this is a major problem with Facebook fan pages.