Facebook Page or Group

Facebook is a great business tool for communicating with your audience. You can do this with either a Page, a Group, or both.   So which one is best for you?  Or do you need both?

They each have their pros and cons and to top things off, Facebook constantly changes the way they do business so it’s hard to say which way to go but we’ll cover some of the key benefits and if or why you should have them as part of your social media efforts.

Facebook Page

A Page is like your storefront or website for your business.  This is where you can have information about your business, location(s), hours of operation, and contact information. Some of its features include:

• • Posts can be promoted or boosted
  • You can track your audience engagement and post reach with analytics
  • Groups can be linked to your Page

Facebook Group

A Group is like a community.  A place to share information and have discussions with people who share an interest, location, or anything in common. Some of its features include:

• • Privacy Settings for your Group
  • The ability to set Group Rules
  • Short surveys for people requesting to join your Group

So What’s the Difference?

Most of it comes down to what your audience sees, privacy controls, advertising, and analytics.  Let’s take a look at three key differences between Pages and Groups:

Your Feed:

• • Page: The admins are more like ‘leaders’ on a Page. They start and lead conversations; your followers can either like or comment on these posts (they take on much more of a passive role)
  • Group: Anyone can create Posts within your Group, you can set it up where admins have to approve these posts before they go up.

One key point to keep in mind is that most of your posts on your Page will not show up on your audience’ Facebook feed because Facebook wants you to pay for advertising!  This is not the case with Groups, most your posts will show up on their wall.  But like everything else with Facebook, this can change from one day to another.

Access & Privacy:

• • Page: Like a website, when published, a Page is always public for anyone to see. You can unpublish a page, but then no-one except you can see it
  • Group: This depends on your Group’s privacy Settings; it can either be Public (anyone can see who’s in the group and what’s being posted) or Private (only members can see who’s in the group and what’s being posted).

Advertising & Analytics:

• • Page: By having a Page you can boost & advertise your posts.  This is one of the key points of having a Page.  You’ll be able to run Facebook Ads, boost posts, and have insights into your audience demographics, post reach, audience engagement, and other important analytics
  • Group: There’s no advertising or analytics for Group.

So it basically comes down to this…

• • A Page is a must to advertise on Facebook
  • A Page is a must if you want to do analytics
  • A Group is great for having engaging conversations
  • A Group is great for having most of your Posts show up on your audience’ Facebook feed (for free).

And remember, you can always have both and add your Group to your Facebook Page!

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Published on March 11, 2020. Written by Athenée Mastrangelo.