Facebook Pages Vs Groups

Once, I encountered a dilemma on whether I should put my business on either Facebook’s pages or groups. Yes, I considered the notion of having both but my logical sense tells me to dive in with both feet on just one.

Though I already have a Facebook group for Perfect Renders (visit here), a friend told me the disadvantages groups are facing compared to fan pages. After some Googling, I found out that there are a lot of people facing the same problem. So, what should we really choose between them to get the most out of Facebook? Here’s a brief comparison:

FEATURE	FACEBOOK PAGE	FACEBOOK GROUP
Max. Limit of Fans/Members	1,000,000+	5,000
Messaging to All Fans/Members	Via Updates (Wall)	Via PM (Inbox)
Extra Apps (RSS, YouTube, Twitter)	Yes	No
Separate Entity from Creator	Yes	No
Discussion Wall/Forum	Yes	Yes
Visitor Statistics	Yes (Visitor Insights)	No
Video and Photo Public Sharing	Yes	Yes
Promote with Facebook Ads	Yes	Yes
Bulk Invitation	No	Yes
“Ugly” URLs	No	Yes
Accessibility	Everyone	Facebook Members Only
Indexed by External Search Engines	Yes	No
Create Related Events	Yes	Yes
Administrator	One (Creator)	Multiple

An In-depth look:

Just by looking at the table above, we can see the pros and cons between the two. Pages have an unlimited number of fans whilst groups have a limit of 5,000. The reason for that is groups can send bulk messages that goes directly to its members’ inboxes. Pages can only inform its fans through wall updates.

You can install external apps in Pages, like have a blog RSS Feed so fans would have a Facebook-friendly way of seeing your blog’s new posts. You can also put in YouTube, Twitter updates, etc. Sadly, groups don’t have that feature.

Pages are considered as separate profiles (just how corporations are under the law) while groups must be managed by administrators. What’s great in groups is that you can send bulk invites. Meaning, you can directly invite your friends, as well as your other appointed administrators’ friends to join your group, thus, making it a great tool for viral marketing. Fan pages don’t have that feature.

Groups have “ugly” URLs. Mine is: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=102485379094 while it would be http://www.facebook.com/pages/Perfect-Renders-Multimedia-Solutions/122398774441905 if it were a fan page. Everyone can access fan pages, even non-members. Groups are like private clubs. Then can only be viewed by members, or VIPs if that’s what the administrators want.

The neatest thing about pages is that they are actually indexed by external search engines! Just like how individual and public profiles are. Google and Yahoo! can spot fan pages. That’s very important for getting more viewership.

Bottomline:

Personally, I’d prefer pages overall, but I also want the ability to message my members directly to their inbox, so it’s a tie. I guess i just depends on how you want to utilize the benefits of the two. It’s just like choosing between Xbox or PlayStation. Xbox has Halo, PlayStation has MGS4 but they both have Final Fantasy XIII. I hope that analogy helps.

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