Thin crust or thick, Coke or Pepsi, Michael or LeBron, Tiger vs. (okay, no debate there)...these are some of the great debates of our time. In recent days as social marketing has exploded another one is emerging, is it better to start and nurture a Facebook Group or a Facebook Fan page.
((BTW, here's the THP fan page, please become a Fan. No back to the blog.)
When I first dove into Facebook for our business not that long ago, I did it like many things I do in live, with a lot of gusto and not a lot of research. I immediately started a group page for THP and reveled in the number of folks that joined and started trying to interact with them. Most of the time the "gusto approach" works for me. Sorry to say this time it did not.
I quickly discovered how limited Groups were in helping me accomplish my goals. I wanted to post video, audio, share things like news clips, provide non-intrusive updates, as people to provide feedback, etc. While Groups allow you to do some of those things, they do not provide flexibility and even worse, they do not allow you to add apps to help.
Then I discovered Fan pages. They are less intrusive, allow you most of the same control that Group pages do and allow you to add many cool applications and add ones of your own that you can learn to do or hire someone to create.
If you remember the old George Carlin "Football vs. Baseball" routine, I find the similar differences between Group and Fan pages. Groups are more formal and bulky, Fans are more informal, fun and flexible.
As if this wasn't enough to convince me, I recently learned from my new favorite blog, Inside Facebook, that Fan pages are about to go through a radical re-design that will mimic personal profile pages. In this re-design, Fan pages will even be able to have their status updated like personal pages and updates will be posted on Wall, etc. Read about the coming changes here.
This clincher makes the Fan Page the potential smarter choice for those looking to promote a business, etc.
We will keep an eye on these developments and I hope it answers the question for all the folks who have asked, "Why did you switch from a Group Page to a Fan Page."
Would love to get some feedback on your Facebook experiences.
We started our fan page in late Nov/early Dec, and had lots of luck. There are limitations, but I think these will be overcome by the redesign. We've also been amazed at the quick growth of the group through word of mouth.
Posted by: Jason Roop | February 24, 2009 at 09:07 PM
Fan is a superior metaphysical FaceBook metaphor to Group especially for brands -- which is where I see a lot of social marketing opportunity as FB apps become more robust.
Posted by: bob visco | February 25, 2009 at 09:11 AM
Jon - we just did the same switch with our RichmondJobNet.com Facebook presence- went from Group to Fan page. Know why? We saw how THP experienced the issues we were facing with a Group page and the added apps you were able to include on your Fan page. So, thanks! It's a little scary to ask 300 group members to migrate over to the Fan page. We don't want to lose anyone! But, I think it is worth the effort and so far so good. And thanks for the info and link to the Inside Facebook blog! Those added features will be impactful.
Check out our new fan page:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Richmond-VA/RichmondJobNetcom/52296982134
Posted by: Jennifer Yeager | February 25, 2009 at 03:30 PM
We also created our fan page in Dec 2008. I guess due to my personal "getting aquainted with fb" stage, I was not even aware of groups and hopped on fan pages first.
One regret is regarding categories. I sometimes think I should have chosen pro services instead of a store entity. Change is not possible at this time - according to fb. Oh well, live and learn. Nice informative post Jon!
Posted by: Mary Fender | February 25, 2009 at 03:42 PM
I am a small business owner and we have been maintaining our fan page of Facebook for over a year now and I agree with you, it is better than trying to keep up a group page. For some reason, we were not getting the same results and interactions as we do now with the fan page. Maybe with the recent obsession with Twitter has people more on the following side of things? Who knows, but they are both exceptional forms of social media. We've also been trying giveaways on our pages using promotional products and it really seems to have boosted our revenue. Sales are up 25% in comparison to this time last year so I can honestly say from experience, these things do help your company gain the exposure it needs to be successful. Thanks for sharing!
Posted by: Promotional Products | January 04, 2012 at 03:28 PM