If you’ve been following our Facebook Marketing Week, you’ve read that Facebook Pages are the way to go to establish a business presence on Facebook. In light of that, I wanted to break down the differences between Facebook Profiles, Facebook Groups and Facebook Pages so you have a solid understanding of how they work.
Facebook provides three types of “profiles” for people to use to facilitate communication with their audience. Those types of profiles are:
- Facebook Profiles are what people use to maintain their online identity with Facebook. One example that comes to mind is my local coffee shop, Coffee Rush. While they have a Page, their personal profile provides for 1:1 messaging with the business owner.
- Facebook Groups are ideal for people operate a topic or interest-based group and offer restricted access to it. Phoenix Marketers is a great example of a cause-oriented group that unites peers and prospects together with events and updates.
- Facebook Pages are intended for businesses, brands and public figures. We’ve got a pretty cool page, but I have to pay respect to Pages that really work it: Vitamin Water, Red Bull and Starbucks.
For a comparison of exactly what each type of profile can and can’t do, I’ve put together a table to indicate the features and how each type of profile supports it. Click the image to see it full-size.
![[CHART] Facebook Pages, Groups and Profiles Feature Comparison](http://www.infusionblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/Facebook-Pages-Groups-Personal-profile-Comparison.png "[CHART] Facebook Pages, Groups and Profiles Feature Comparison")
As you can see, there are features and benefits in using a personal Profile, a Group and a Page for your business. To minimize confusion, I recommend choosing one type of profile and work on building up a raving-fan audience.
Pages provide better long-term benefit, but personal profiles offer more flexibility with interacting with people. Groups are great for driving interest outside of a specific brand, but rather a cause to get people to connect with each other. Nothing precludes you from operating both a Page and a Group; ultimately, it depends on the type of interactions with your online audience.
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Great post. Love the information and especially the table you uploaded. I love infusionsoft! What I like best about facebook is its ability to refine your marketing message and really connecting with your audience. Creating a marketing campaign is not easy and when you involve the power of social media to build your brand, it could be powerful but could get confusing. Thanks for clearing that up. I'll be re-posting this on our blog.
[...] Facebook Pages VS. Groups VS. Profiles [...]
[...] Facebook Pages VS. Groups VS. Profiles [...]
Thanks, I appreciate it. Glad I could help clear things up.
Nice breakdown here, and like the Black Card Marketing Group, I find your table most helpful. Have you heard when/how Facebook plans to monetize the default landing tab for Pages? I know they changed this temporarily last week, but it was changed back the next day in response to the backlash over not announcing it first. We offer a do-it-yourself Fan Page landing tab design service, and solid information on this topic would be helpful, but I haven't read anything official from Facebook.
Thanks,
Candis Hidalgo
FaceItPages.com
Thanks for the feedback. I've only heard the rumor mill citing Facebook will restrict default-tab views for unauthenticated views. Unsure on timing, but I imagine it will tie into their Ads platform. I'm not too disturbed by this – it's still an inexpensive medium and w/ out default tabs, brands can walk away with a lot of value from Facebook.
Facebook's silence speaks volumes — I suspect they're working on a reasonable strategy to not strong-arm the little-guy but to encourage the bigger brands to pay up. When you find out, could you let us know?
Thanks again for taking the time to share your thoughts; it's much appreciated.
~joseph
If they can come up with a practical way to “authenticate” Pages without requiring 10k fans or the 25k ad spend (which is what they were asking), then I think they can keep big and small brands happy. But I suspect you're right in that they are probably looking for a way to squeak out the big bucks from the big brands. We'll be keeping our eyes and ears open, and will sure let you know if/when anything surfaces about this.
Do you guys know if Facebook has figured out their business model. Last I heard they were generating peanuts for revenue but worth over $15B – their valuation was all out of whack…
Do you know if they are more sustainable these days?
Thanks. I haven't started using FB for my business yet, I am in a “learning mode”. Good resources here. I am subscribed to you newsletters and I often come here to learn marketing tricks
Just finished reading your eBook about Follow-up marketing.