Facebook: Should you show your face on a Fan Page, Group, or Profile?
Facebook is the unquestioned market leader in the social networking space. Their growth over the last three years has been mind-boggling. In December 2008, the site had 42 million registered users in the U.S.
As of December 2009, there were 100 million U.S. citizens on Facebook, and 350 million worldwide. That’s an enormous audience, one that authors, actors, and others around the world are trying to figure out how to use to promote their books, connect with their fans, and do market research.
But Facebook can be confusing so I’m going to focus on the question: What’s the difference between a Facebook Profile, a Facebook Fan Page, and a Facebook Group, and which one is best for me?
In a nutshell, Profiles are for individuals, Groups are meant to foster discussion, and Fan Pages are designed for actors, authors, businesses, bands, and the like to broadcast information to an audience.
Facebook Profiles
This is the most familiar and simplest page to set up on the social-networking site, and the one that you probably already have if you're at all savvy about social marketing. (If you don't, this is definitely the place to start.)
A Facebook Profile is basically a page where you can tell the world about yourself, post pictures, videos or songs, and connect with other people. Profiles can serve personal and professional uses, but they are all about you as an individual.
Facebook Groups
Anyone can create a group about pretty much anything – say you decide to start the “I Hate Reading Long Explanations Group” – and huzzah! You are now the Admin for that group, and all you have to do is go out and find like-minded people to join your cause. (I expect to see you all outside my house with virtual pitchforks and torches soon.)
One of the advantages of Groups is that you can send messages to members of a group, such as invitations to a party or event, but only if your group has fewer than 5,000 members. Once a group exceeds 5,000 members, Facebook disables the feature that lets you send out messages.
However, information posted on a Group Page is also posted to the News Feed of all of its members on their profile pages. This relatively new feature greatly enhances the ability to broadcast information through a Group.
Another distinction, Groups can be secret. Fan pages (not surprisingly) are designed to be public, but you can set up a Group so that its contents are visible only to people who have been invited to join.
Groups can have multiple administrators and they can also list officers. All administrators and officers' names and positions are listed on the Group page, but only administrators can send out messages to the Group or add/remove other administrators or members.
Also note, once you’ve created a group, you can’t change it from a network-specific Group to be a Global Group. Unless you want to create a private Group in a very limited network, start with the Global setting to have the broadest options for inviting members.
Navigating from a profile to the page where you create a group can be tricky, but you can get to the Create a Group Page directly via this URL: http://www.facebook.com/groups/create.php (Note: You have to have a Facebook accoutn and log in to view this page.)
You can find further instructions (and rules) for Groups in this Facebook help page
http://www.facebook.com/help/?ref=pf#/help.php?page=826
Facebook Fan Pages
Fan pages are designed to be very public places where you can post pictures, news updates, video, etc., but they have a few restrictions of their own.
The main restriction with a Fan Page, according to Facebook, is that you can only create a Fan Page “if you are the official representative of an organization, business, celebrity, or band.”
If you’ve been thinking about impersonating Elvis, or organizing a demonstration in front of the new Starbucks on your block, Fan Pages are not the place to do it.
Another difference between Groups and Fan Pages is that the name of the administrator is not posted on a Fan Page -- perhaps because Facebook understands that the Disney Fan Page probably isn’t managed by Walt himself. (Both Fan Pages and Groups can have multiple administrators.)
When you run a Fan Page, you can send individual messages to fans, but they appear in a separate Updates tab of your fan’s Inbox.
Another limit of Fan Pages is that you can only see the barest of information about your fans (their profile photo and name). In contrast, if you have a Group or Profile page, you can access the full profiles of all your contacts. This fits another quirk of Fan Pages --anyone can join a Fan Page and there is no approval process required (although you can remove fans if you choose to).
With Profiles and Groups, you must ‘invite’ and ‘accept’ each other to join or connect. The one exception to anyone being able to sign up for a Fan Page is that if you list your age as under 18, you can’t join Fan Pages that are designated as ‘adult only.’
To create a Fan Page, start here:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php
Once you've created a Fan Page, just log into the profile account you associated with the Fan Page, search for your Fan Page names, and you'll find the editing options when you get to the page already logged in.
For more on the rules specific to Fan Pages, visit this Facebook Help Pages: http://www.facebook.com/help/?page=903
Is it worth the effort?
If this all seems a bit too much to deal with, keep this in mind: the marketing gurus behind the “Twilight” series of books turned to social-networking to promote the books and movies in the spring of 2008. At that time the series had sold about 4 million books.
Less than a year later, thanks in large part to their social-networking campaign, the “Twilight” series had sold 42 million books.
When your efforts take off and go viral, the return on your investment of time and effort can be spectacular.
