Fan Page or Group Page

While I have experience creating and managing personal, group, and fan pages on Facebook, I took some time to actually research the difference between all of them. This site seemed to offer the most information in a format that was easy to understand and compare.

Obviously all three of these designs offer unique pros and cons, and the advantages/disadvantages for each should be considered before deciding how to brand your business or organization.

Sharing Options and Visibility

Your profile, fan page and group all have privacy settings that enable you to control sharing permissions and visibility. Here is how these differ among the three:

	Facebook profile	Facebook fan page	Facebook group
Set who can update the wall	yes	yes	yes
The differences	You can set the update visibility globally AND on case-to-case basis.	You can only choose who can update the page wall: admins only or all members	You can set global settings separately for links, videos and photos
How?	Account tab -> Privacy settings	Edit page -> Wall settings	Group settings

Note: There’s one weird thing about sharing for admins within the page: when you (as admin) are trying to post something at you page wall, you get “non-personalized” – posting as a page (not as yourself).

Promotion Tools

Facebook Pages are known to have more visibility and (viral) marketing potential than groups due to these important features:

• They are displayed in each fan’s profile “Info” tab
• They are public and can be linked to externally
• They have various widgets that allow for external promotion (e.g. from a company blog)
• They can be added added as your “Page favorites”

To make a long story short, here’s a quick recap of page versus group versus profile (viral) marketing-friendliness:

	Facebook profile	Facebook fan page	Facebook group
Private? (seen after you register and become fan/friend)	Yes	No	Yes (BUT: discussions are public and crawled)
Usernames? (facebook.com/username/)	Yes (Should be verified via mobile phone)	Yes	No
Visible within fan / friend profile?	Yes (Friends box)	Yes (Info tab)	No
Promoting to friends	“Suggest friends to…” (one by one)	“Suggest to friends” (one by one)	“Invite people to join” (one by one)
			“Import from email”

Overall, if you are a small organization or club that needs to rely a small amount of info to a smaller amount of people, a group is your best best. It allows more control of who is allowed in the group, who can see things and post things, etc, and is really the most customizable.

Pages are a better option if you are a larger organization or brand that wants to get more publicity, and you also have more of an anonymous option because you don't have to put your name or any information on there. It's easy for people to simply click the "like" button, and they aren't bombarded with a million updates, so I think this is the best option for brands and big companies.

Want to know how to create a page? Click here!
To learn more about groups, go here.