I get some great questions from my Social Media Bootcamp community – around 80 people now, who either took my 2 day workshop or bought the product.
I figure it’s pretty important to share some of these questions and answers with you too – since I’m sure you sometimes wonder the same thing. Plus as a Social Media Personal Trainer it’s my job to kick your butt into shape!
So here goes:
Question:
I set up a Facebook group for my website, following advice I read from an internet marketing guru who said groups are better than pages because you can send e-mails to the members. I have over 800 members, and I hesitate to create a page on top of that. It seems redundant, and I personally don’t like it when my Facebook friends bug me to join lots of their stuff. I know the downside is I can’t create a badge or a sign up page but is there any other compelling need to shift from group to page?
Answer: Great question. It depends on what you use your group for.
The benefits of a Facebook Group
The upside to a Facebook group is that you can message people directly to their inbox which is very handy. You can also make them closed (private) or open which gives you flexibility depending on what you want to use it for. It can act as a private forum, a coaching group tool or a learning centre.
In addition people can easily add documents and notes for all to see and you get notifications every time someone posts in the group (luckily you can disable email notifications which I advise).
I think the downside to groups is you can only have 5,000 members and they’re not publicly searchable. So people who aren’t on Facebook can’t see them or learn about you as they can with a page –which is public.
Plus any information you and your group members are sharing inside your group can’t be shared across Facebook. So people can’t like stuff or share it in their newsfeed, which is a primary way of attracting people to come and join your Facebook Page and connect.
The benefits of a Facebook Page
Most people will see that their friend has just joined a page and that prompts their interest to go and check it out too. You never see this for groups in your newsfeed as they’re private.
The other bonus of a Facebook page Is it acts as a miniwebsite essentially and it also effects your SEO rankings – in that it’s fresh content and the search engines love it.
Plus you have the ability to have a unique landing page that can direct people to like your page, visit your website, sign up to your newsletter and more. As I said it’s a great mini website and I know several businesses who use it as their website.
With Facebook Pages you only have the ability to `Send an update to all fans’ that go in to the updates section of your messages which is far less effective unless people check them!
But you can add applications to your page, which groups don’t currently have, and this can extend the functionality of your page allowing you to run competitions with the likes of Wildfire App or set up a store front with Payvment for example.
In my opinion a Facebook page is a superior way to expose your business, gain potential customers and clients, get more referrals, build a community and even a thriving fan base.
A Facebook group can work really well for interim, short term projects, clubs or private, specialist interest groups.
What if I have a Facebook Group and want to transfer my members to a Facebook Page
I thought I’d add this question in as it’s pretty common. The easiest way is to simply let your members know and give at least a month’s timeframe.
Set up your page. Then message your entire group telling them in brief why you’re switching over to a page and that the group will be shutting down and shifting to the new page by XXXX date.
Provide them with the direct link to your page, if you have 25 plus fans then get a Vanity URL e.g https://facebook.com/womanzworld by going to https://facebook.com/username and insert this in the message to send them straight there.
Also post a message on the group wall and then send 1-2 more messages before you shut the group down or delete it. At the same time you can ask your members to share the page with their friends they think may be interested in `liking’ it which means new community members for you.
What experiences have you had with pages vs groups? Share it below.