It’s getting rarer and rarer to find brands that don’t have some kind of online presence and social media channels. Facebook is a very popular option for brands embracing social media for the first time, which brings up the question of what is better to have for businesses, a Facebook page, or a Facebook group?
Facebook pages are generally the better option for businesses, although there might be certain instances where a Facebook group would be preferable. Facebook pages have many great features that businesses can use to grow their audience and attract new customers.
That doesn’t necessarily mean that businesses should only have a page and not a group. There are many benefits to Facebook groups as well and brands can utilize both pages and groups to help promote and grow their business. It is important however to know how each of these functions in order to utilize them effectively. Let’s explore.
Facebook Page
Facebook pages are basically spaces where brands, businesses, celebrities, and organizations can create profiles (similar to the standard profiles for users) for themselves in order to showcase their brand, business, celebrity, or organization.
Pages are also powerful advertising platforms for businesses that run ads through their pages to achieve a variety of outcomes. Facebook’s advertising platform is very powerful and effective in reaching a new audience or convincing an existing audience to take action on your brand. This all depends on the purpose and quality of your ads.
Feel free to check out my article on how to target Facebook ads to specific users here.
Benefits
- You could reach a large number of people with your Facebook page as a business
- You can set a custom URL for your page to help promote your business
- You can use your page to update your audience about your brand and the latest news on a daily basis
- Through Page Insights, you get access to a lot of analytical data and information about your audience and their behavior
- You can create ads on through your page to promote your products or services, business, or specific aspects of it
- You can create call-to-actions on your page to help reach your marketing goals and guide your audience to engage with your brand
- You can use “tabs” on your page to highlight key aspects of your business and you can use one of them as your landing page
- You have the option to schedule your posts to go out at a certain date and time
- You can use import your email database and invite people to like your page
- You can assign tasks to other members of your team who have access to the admin area of your page
- Facebook pages can show up in organic Google search results that could help your brand grow as well.
Creating a Facebook page
Creating a Facebook page is fairly easy and anyone with an existing Facebook account can create a page.
Facebook Group
Facebook groups are more collaborative in nature where people come together in a forum-like way around a specific cause or for people with similar interests.
Members of groups are more relaxed and casual when engaging in groups because most of the time groups are closed and private, thereby creating a safe environment to express ideas and have discussions, etc. Groups also have moderators to drive the narrative of the groups and maintain civility in some cases, whenever it is needed.
There are 3 types of groups that can be created on Facebook namely public groups, closed groups, and secret groups.
- Public groups are visible to everyone and can be joined by everyone.
- Closed groups are visible to everyone, but can only be joined via invitation or if your request to join the group is excepted.
- Secret groups are visible to members of the group only and can be joined via invitation only.
Benefits
- By keeping groups private and closed, you can select the audience you want to accept into the group and exclude who you don’t want.
- Communications are more personal because it’s easier to directly communicate with members of the group.
- Because of the personal and closed nature of groups, it’s easier to form personal relationships with members.
- Ease of communication with members.
- Bulk messaging to all members of a group, which is a great way of informing them of a business-related matter or encourage them on a call-to-action.
- A great feature you get with groups that are not available on pages is to promote events, which is a great free advertising tool.
- Not only is it great to have your own group and build up a community around your brand, product, or service, but you can also join other groups within your same industry, etc in order to engage with members and advertising your brand, product, or service in that way.
- Members build up a feeling of community and trust each other more in a group that they would outside of it.
- Group chats are a great way of getting members to engage with each other.
- Group conversations allow for members to share text files with each other.
- People can use “for sale groups” to buy or sell things.
Creating a Facebook group
Similar to Facebook pages, creating a Facebook group is fairly easy and anyone with an existing Facebook account can create one.
Facebook Page vs Facebook Group – Which is Better for Business
As mentioned in the outset, Facebook pages are generally the better option for businesses. Facebook has set up pages in such a way that aims to provide businesses with the most options to promote and grow their business, and audience on the platform.
One of the main reasons why pages are better, in the majority of cases, is because of Facebook Ads that can be accessed and used once a page is created. This is a very powerful tool and if utilized effectively and efficiently, can deliver an immense amount of ROI (return on investment) for most businesses.
Once again feel free to check out my article on how to target Facebook ads to specific users here to help you get the most out of your Facebook advertising.
There are however many situations where a Facebook group can be the better option for businesses, but it is not the norm.
I always encourage my clients to explore both options, cause both have benefits that can help your business to grow and just because you have a page, doesn’t mean that you can’t have a group as well, and vice versa. Just be sure to understand exactly how both of these work and how to use them in the right way for your business.
Conclusion
Whether you are new to the world of social media and digital marketing, Facebook pages and groups are great tools for helping businesses grow online and offline.
The power lies in knowing which option is best suited for your business and how to effectively leverage either one to your brand’s greatest benefit.
