Facebook Fan Page VS Group – Which is Better?

For all you marketers, hustlers & businesses out there wanting to use facebook for promotion there are basically two options: You can start your own fan page or you can start a group. Both can be really effective but which is better?

Group Advantages:

• Easier and quicker to set up a decent group – This makes it a good option for beginners.

• You can send out “Bulk Invites” and so can others – This can potentially put your group into overdrive. If you invite all of your friends and just 5 people invite all of their friends that’s a lot of extra members.

• You can message all members – This is the biggest advantage for me. You can send a message to all of the group’s members pretty much as often as you like. This is just like having your own email list.

Group Disadvantages:

• Limited Future Potential – You can have an unlimited number of members in your group BUT, you can only send out messages to the members if there are less than 5000. This is a pretty big limitation considering the messaging is one of the key advantages of a group.

• More susceptible to other’s marketing messages on the wall.

• Limited customization.

Fan Page Advantages:

• Add Your Own Customizable Pages – For me this is Fan Pages most powerful feature. Using the “Static FBML” application you can add your own pages which you can completely customize with your own html/fbml. You could add a lead capture page or you could add some sort of interactive page or something completely unique. Don’t be afraid to get creative. Good examples of great interactive fan pages are: Red Bull Fan Page, Adidas Fan Page & VW Fan Page.

• Branding – As you probably know branding is very important, and a fan page is one of the best possible ways to brand yourself or a company anywhere, not just on facebook. Because of the customization possiblities, you can create your own unique apps and content to build your image.

• Increased interacton – A good fan page will have more interactive fans than a group.

• Promote with PPC ads – You can use Facebook’s own PPC to drive traffic to your fan page. If you have a good lead capture page set up on your fan page you can generate leads cheaper than Google Adwords AND if your fan page is good, they will share it with their friends. That’s viral advertising!

Fan Page Disadvantages

• You need to know or hire someone who knows html/fbml to get the most out of your fan page.

• Once you’ve created a fan page you can’t change the name.

• You can send updates to your fans but this isn’t as good as sending out a message. I don’t know about you, but I rarely check the updates section of my inbox and I bet a lot of people aren’t even aware of it.

Fan Page VS Group Summary

I think Facebook Groups are a great way to get started promoting on Facebook. I started this way and it was a great way to learn and got me some good results.

However from a commercial and branding point of view, the Fan Page is far superior. It may not be able to provide the short term results of a group (assuming you are starting for scratch and aren’t already an established brand) but long term, the sky’s the limit. Plus you have the ability to put your page on steroids with Facebook PPC, but that’s for another article