Optify’s Facebook Fan Page Rebuild Series: Part 2
This blog post is the second installment of our Facebook Fan Page Rebuild Series. Even though Optify already maintains a Facebook Page, we felt it pertinent to explore the other presences available on Facebook, especially to account for the possibility that our small fan base could be related to our use of a Page instead of a Group. We looked through several blog posts and found these articles to be the most insightful in our decision-making process: Facebook Pages vs Facebook Groups: What’s the Difference? and Facebook Group vs Facebook Fan Page: What’s Better? Based on our research, we’ve compiled this list of key differences between Facebook Pages and Groups:
- Main Purpose
- Collective Voice or the Individual?
- Applications
- Insights Dashboard
- Fan Page Communication & Word of Mouth Marketing
- No Limit on Fans or Members; Groups Limited on Messaging
Facebook Page or Group? What’s the Difference?
- Facebook Pages are ideal for brands and companies who are looking to interact with their customers or fans, whereas Groups are better for rallying around a cause or campaign on an individual level.
- Pages are typically best for fostering ongoing interactions with fans, visitors or customers; Groups are more often employed for short-term engagement and driving traffic to your company’s Facebook quickly, although for a brief period of time.
Collective Voice or the Individual?
- A Facebook Group administrator’s actions are directly connected to their personal profiles, meaning each post they make on their Group’s site appears as coming from them personally.
- Pages offers the best of both worlds, in that Page administrators can upload content to the site without the action linking to them as the individual, but rather as the voice of the company. At the same time, Page admins can still interact on an individual level (i.e. using the”Like” button on their Page will display and link their personal profile name).
- Pages don’t publicly display the names of admins; Group admins are visible to everyone.
Applications
- Applications are only currently available for Pages and personal profiles. Groups still don’t have this capability.
- Pages can be far more individualized, as well as show more content than Groups through the employment of applications.
Insights Dashboard
- Supplementing our Marketing Analytics Feature, Facebook’s Insights Dashboard allows us to track visitors and our fans’ actions on our Facebook Page.
- The Insights Dashboard is not currently accessible to Groups.
Fan Page Communication & Word of Mouth Marketing
- Content posted by Page admins is considered an “update,” which depending on a fan’s custom settings, can appear in a fan’s News Feed.
- Page fans can share their brand support with their Facebook friends, in that their Page interactions will display on their friends’ News Feeds, which can act as a way to drive users to click through these stories and potentially become a fan of the Page.
- A fan also promotes their Pages through their personal profile under “Likes and Interests.” If a friend is interested to learn more about that Page, they’re able to click through the
hyperlinked text or Page’s profile photo.
No Limit on Fans or Members; Groups Limited on Messaging
- There’s no maximum number of fans or members a Facebook Page or Group can have.
- Groups can message all of their members at once as long as their member base is fewer than 5,000 people.
- There is no limitation on messaging for Pages–they can send updates to all fans or to a specified subset.
- Pages send updates that appear in the “Updates” tab of a fan’s Inbox.
- Groups send messages that act more like e-mail, in that they appear in members’ Facebook inboxes.
Making a Case for Optify’s Fan Page
Not all the Facebook Group and Page features highlighted in the aforementioned articles were relevant to Optify’s goals and best practices for our Facebook presence. This list, however, outlines the key takeaways we found most essential to our company specifically and as a B2B business. We’ve showcased the features we believe best support our decision to retain our existing Facebook Fan Page instead of creating a Group.
Join the Process
This is the second blog post in Optify’s Facebook Fan Page Rebuild Series. We hope that you’ll continue to read our blog updates as we continue to revamp our Facebook Fan Page. Our next series topic will provide advice on creating a staging page during your rebuild, as well as choosing the best graphic design and IT team for your project.
