www.kickstartall.com

Facebook for Organizations: Pages or Groups?
by Mary Gospe

Just this month Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that the company has 300 million active users and is now cash flow positive. According to the Facebook Statistics page, the fastest growing segment is people over the age of 35 and about 70% of users are outside the United States. With this phenomenal growth, more and more organizations are jumping on Facebook to promote themselves and build a fan base or community. HP has over 22,000 fans on its Facebook Page, Oracle has 17,000, and Google has a whopping 331,000!

Facebook offers two ways to promote your organization: Groups and Pages. Groups are better suited for causes, topical discussions and small non-profits. Pages are better suited to companies and brands. In this article, I’ll describe the differences between Groups and Pages and walk you through how I set up a Page for KickStart Alliance. 

Facebook Groups
A Facebook Group can be created by any Facebook user about any subject. For instance, there is a Salesforce Discussion Group created by a Salesforce.com customer for people to share ideas and help each other. A Group creator will have their name appear on the Group and when they post an item to the Group it will be attached to their personal profile. What to know about Groups:

  • Groups are not indexed by search engines
  • Applications can't be added to Groups such as an RSS feed
  • Only Facebook users can view Groups
  • Groups can be open to any Facebook user, closed (meaning that members must be approved to join) and secret (meaning that members are invited to join and the Group is not searchable in Facebook)
  • Group attributes include Type (for instance club, music, non-profit), News, Location, Description, Pictures, Videos, Events and a Discussion Board
  • Group members can comment on the Group’s Wall and get the latest news by either visiting the Group or by receiving a message from the Group in their inbox
  • Groups have a 5000-member limit for sending mass emails

Facebook Pages
According to Facebook, "a Facebook Page is a public profile that enables you to share your business and products with Facebook users. Pages can only be created by an official representative of the business or organization, who remains anonymous." Pages are ideal for companies, brands, artists and celebrities. What to know about Pages:

  • Pages are indexed by the search engines and viewable by non-Facebook users
  • Key attributes include: Year Founded, Website URL, Company Overview, Hours of Operation (depending on the type of business), Photos, Events, News, and Notes
  • Tabs are listed on the top of all pages, making content easy to organize and find
  • You can add applications, such as RSS/Blog feeds, Flickr photos, Twitter links, etc. to Pages
  • Fans can suggest a Page to their friends
  • Fans can receive feeds when a Facebook Page has been updated
  • Pages are displayed as a thumbnail with a picture and name, thus promoting the brand

Here is a chart summarizing the attributes of Groups and Pages:

Table.jpg

So, for businesses looking to promote themselves, increase their "findability" via search engines and establish a fan base, Facebook Pages are the best fit. For topical discussions, clubs and small non-profits, Facebook Groups are ideal. Some companies have multiple Pages for the corporate entity and many Groups – either set up by employees or by customers or others. See this example on a search of Cisco Systems which shows 9 Pages and 265 Groups!

cisco_facebook.jpg

Interesting to note it's a Cisco Group that has the most members (17,000+) versus one of the Pages that has 6,000 fans (not shown) in this screenshot.

In writing this article, I decided to set up a Facebook Page for KickStart Alliance. Here I’ll walk you through the steps to do this:

  1. Log into Facebook
  2. Click on the Advertising link on the bottom of the page
  3. Click on the Pages link – at the top with an orange flag icon



  4. Click on "Create a Page" in the Green Box



  5. Select the type of Page (for instance Brand, Product or Organization), enter the Business name, click that you are authorized to create the Page, and enter your full name as an electronic signature.

Here’s how the KickStart Alliance Page first looked after following these steps:

And once I had added year founded, overview and product information, a photo and an RSS feed for our blog, it looked like this:

It was easy to do and just took an hour or so. Adding the RSS feed for the blog was a bit more challenging, but I was able to do it with an add-on application called Social RSS.

I hope you now have a better understanding of the differences between Facebook Groups and Pages and how you can leverage one or both for your organization. I invite you to become a KickStart Alliance fan.

About the Author
Mary Gospe is principal and co-founder of KickStart Alliance. She helps B2B tech and clean tech companies build and nurture their sales pipelines through integrated marketing campaigns, sales development programs and inside sales operations. For more information on using Facebook for your business, contact Mary Gospe at 650.941.8970. You can follow Mary on Twitter at www.twitter.com/marygospe.

September 2009