Have you heard of Facebook Groups? If you have heard of them, have you wondered what’s the difference between Groups, Pages and Personal Profiles?
You are not alone! At first glance trying to figure out the differences and advantages of each can be daunting. So, I thought I’d do a little research to help you out!
To start out I’ll talk about Personal Profiles. You probably have a Facebook account which is also known as your Personal Profile.
According to Facebook itself a profile is a place on Facebook where you can share information about yourself, such as your interests, photos, videos, current city and hometown. To see your profile, click or tap your name or profile picture at the top of Facebook.
So what’s a Page? Again, I went to Facebook for clarification: You must have a profile to create a Page or help manage one. Pages are places on Facebook where artists, public figures, businesses, brands, organizations and nonprofits can connect with their fans or customers. When someone likes or follows a Page on Facebook, they can start seeing updates from that Page in their News Feed.
Here’s the reality, few of the people following your Facebook page will actually see anything that you post on your page! Instead, Facebook wants to sell you ads, either by “boosting” your post or by creating an actual ad.
The third way to use Facebook is to use a Group. Here is what Facebook says about them: You must have a profile to create a group or help manage one. Groups are a place to communicate about shared interests with certain people. You can create a group for anything — your family reunion, your after-work sports team, your book club — and customize the group’s privacy settings depending on who you want to be able to join and see the group. When you join a group on Facebook, you starting seeing content from that group in your News Feed.
This is great! Read that last sentence again! Whereas pasts on your FB page have little visibility, posts to the group get sent to every member of the group!
The next question you might have is how to create and use a group. I found two excellent sources for you.
First up is AdEspresso by Hootsuite who has written “Everything You Need to Know About Facebook Groups Marketing”.
The article explains the benefits of using Groups, discusses the differences between Pages and Groups, How to Create a Group, How to Post to a Group and finishes up with 6 Tips and Features for Facebook Group Marketing.
Read the article here: https://adespresso.com/blog/facebook-groups-everything-you-need-know
The Hootsuite Blog has this article, written in May of 2020, How to Use Facebook Groups to Grow Your Business and Engage Customers.
They cover some of the same ground as the article above. (Maybe I should say this the other way around as the first article was written in November of 2020!)
They do have some differences though, so I recommend that you read both articles.
Read the second one here: https://blog.hootsuite.com/facebook-groups-business/
From my perspective, if I was of a mind to use social media, and more importantly, Facebook, I’d give serious consideration to using Facebook groups!
