1) broadcasting
2) direct commenting
3) viral marketing effect
4) attaching media
These differences, especially for a business, are critically important to understand.
Here we go, the 4 main differences between Facebook Fan Pages and Facebook Groups:
1) Broadcast messaging: When you update / add a new message to the wall of a Facebook Group, the message does not broadcast to all of the members of that group. People have to physically come to the Facebook Group location to see the messages and conversations that are unfolding.
With a Facebook Fan Page, as the admin (or owner of the page) you have the massively important capability of broadcast messaging right from the wall. Let’s say you have 500 fans on your Facebook Fan Page, you can instantly update those 500 fans by just sending out one update from your Facebook Fan Page wall.
2) Direct commenting: On Facebook Groups, you cannot directly comment on a wall posting. If you desire to comment on something someone has said on a Facebook Group, you will have to go to their profile wall and add a comment there.
With Facebook Fan Pages, the fans can comment within the stream of updates. This allows not only easy commenting on your part, but allows a conversation to unfold by easily allowing any other fan to add comments to the conversation.
3) Viral Marketing Effect: With Facebook Groups, any commenting that is done, since you have to be taken to some one’s wall to comment, will be greatly discouraged because of that extra step. And even though ultimately any comments made on some one’s wall will be added to your wall news stream for your friends to see, the extra step is a huge road block to engaging a conversation and benefiting from a viral marketing effect.
With Facebook Fan Pages, the viral marketing effect is one of the most powerful features for a business. As fans of a page add comments to a conversation, all of their friends are able to see, follow, and even comment themselves, to the conversation that’s unfolding from that particularFacebook Fan Page.
The more people that get involved in the conversation, the more of a viral marketing effect that Facebook Fan Page gets since all of the friends of those who are commenting are able to see the conversation AND it’s originating source – yourFacebook Fan Page.
4) Media Integration: I really enjoy my Facebook Group called “News for Geeks”. There’s not a lot of members, and there is no conversations unfolding from it – primarily because of the lack of efficiency in commenting – but it’s a fun group that I enjoy updating.
My biggest frustration however, and it’s a major difference between Facebook Fan Pages and Facebook Groups, is the fact that Groups do not allow media attached to updates.
With a Facebook Fan Page, you can easily add media (photos, videos, links, events, etc…) right in your update. So let’s say you’re a church and you want to share the latest church service with all the fans. That’s easy, just embed the video into your wall posting on yourFacebook Fan Page and instantly, all of your fans will be able to see it.
Those are my 4 main differences between Facebook Groups and Facebook Fan Pages.
Can you think of any more that I’ve missed?