Today, you need to leverage the different platforms available that connect you to your audience. And for most businesses, Facebook is the top platform to leverage aside from their own website.
When you have an account on Facebook, you can use it to build a business page and create a group. A group is a closed space where your audience does more than follow you. Facebook Groups allow you to have conversations with your audience where’s there’s more back and forth flow of information.
In this post, we’ll look at how Facebook Pages and Facebook Groups differ. By understanding what each feature does for your business, you’ll know what to create and how best to leverage the features offered by a Page or a Group.
When to use a Facebook page
Regardless of your business type and audience type, you should have a Facebook page for the following reasons:
- To protect your brand name and image by ‘owning’ social media property with your name in the URLs. That is, a domain name that looks like this: www.facebook.com/yourbusinessname
- To provide users who look for your business on social media with more information. People rely on social media to get updates and to see real-life interactions taking place between your business and other people, something that isn’t necessarily visible on your website
- To appear as a web search result when people look for your brand online. Search engines will recognize your Facebook business page and use it to provide users with information about store timings and more
In other words, your Facebook page is like a proxy for your website but one that has the social media connection advantage. There are different ways you can use your Facebook page.
Provide business information
People frequently head to businesses’ social media profiles to get information about the company.
You can add details like your store timings, hours of operation, website, contact information, and more. It’s a type of business listing too. And your audience can leave reviews and ratings on your business page.
Customer support via chat messaging
You’ll get inquiries for products and other information via chat messages on your business page. The Facebook chat messaging option is another critical channel that you should use to carry out customer support tasks.
Add timely updates
There are times when people look for recently updated information about a business. You may not want to alter the front page of your website just to make minor updates.
But a social media page (and group) is a great place to put up updates on a regular basis. You can let people know if you’re operating during the holidays or inform people about shutdowns and maintenance updates on social media.
Create business ads
You need to have a business page on Facebook to create an advertisement on the platform. And this is a good idea since you can target your market effectively with the help of filters like audience demographics and interests.
So, if you need to push your product and services with the help of ads, then building a Facebook page is a must.
When to create a Facebook group
There’s no reason why you can’t have both a Facebook page and a group, but do remember that whatever your choices are, you should be able to sustain your activities in each property over time and not just for the short run.
While a Facebook page is a must for every business and individual brand, a Facebook group is optional. Let’s look at when you need to make Facebook groups and how best to leverage it.
Enable discussion for knowledge-based business
For businesses that rely on knowledge sharing to improve the lives of their customers, a Facebook group can provide a free and easy-to-use platform to engage customers.
Businesses that do coaching, train people or otherwise rely on content and knowledge as products can benefit greatly from creating a Facebook Group.
Use groups to share information that goes beyond what’s in your book, online course, or coaching content.
In a Facebook Group, your audience can discuss topics and share relevant content. And because there are privacy settings available to you, you can create a safe space for people to ask questions and get help from other members.
Support unique cases and individual questions
In our blog, we offer the largest free source of information for WordPress issues. While we do cover virtually every important topic related to building and running a WordPress site, it simply isn’t possible to help each unique and individual user with specific content.
That’s where our online group comes in. We created a group for our readers so that they can pose their questions there. These questions are often specific and relate to problems they face managing their websites.
Other groups members and moderators come in and drop helpful comments to solve problems. In this way, we’re able to help more people than if we relied on customer support alone to solve our audience’s questions.
Build a loyal customer base
Social connections and identity form critical factors that influence whether a customer is loyal to a business. If you have a large number of competitors or are trying to compete against a monolith of a brand, then your best bet to standing out is to drive more personalized interactions.
When you have a Facebook group, you automatically create a sense of community. And by nurturing this group by asking questions and creating helpful content, you can create more dedicated customers.
Back to you
While all businesses need to set up a business page on Facebook, not all of them need to set up a group.
When making a group, you need to consider the nature of your business. Is it likely that your business needs to support group discussions and knowledge sharing? If so, then a group will be a great asset.
However, Facebook Groups are limited since you lack control over the image and branding and won’t be able to do things like creating an online course on it.
The insights and analytics you get will also be limited. If you do have a need for a community-based platform, then consider building a membership website.
Whatever you go for, remember to be present and to support your users and you’ll get support back and grow your business.
