FAQ | Should I create a Facebook Fan or Group page?

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Facebook is now the largest social network. I can see why? It’s by far the easiest one to set-up a profile and connect. I’m still blown away with the connections to high school classmates after twenty years of no contact. It only takes one person requesting to be your friend and then you are connecting with who they have connected with and vice versa.

I just finished reading Hubspot’s Join the Fan Club: Facebook Fan Pages are Better for Business than Groups and Profiles. I agreed with them, but I mainly work with authors. Authors have to treat their books as a business, but there are some things to think about before creating a fan page. Like do I really need to? Is the Facebook Profile page enough?

This is a break-down of how I have found authors using Facebook:

Facebook Profile Page

Most authors I see, use their own individual page as the main spot for fans to see their activity. If you only stick with using your individual profile, you are limited on the number of people you can send a message to. You also have to keep in mind whatever you post on your wall is visible to people who you may not want as much knowledge about your life as you would like.

I am connected to family and friends, but I decided to use my profile page mainly for professional networking and book promotion. Every once in awhile, I will post something outside of that realm, but it’s pretty obvious I’m all about literary projects.

If you are an author who prefers to keep your profile page more for family and friends you actually know, then you definitely want to go the fan or group page route.

Facebook Group Page

Since I started coordinating blog tours or virtual book tours for authors this year, I have tried all types of social media campaigns. I chose the Facebook Group route for most of them, mainly because as a bookworm and a writer, I felt authors would want a sense of community with a reader’s group. I do like the inclusion of traditional type forums on the group pages for discussion. If the author doesn’t manage their group, you will want to think about including a moderator or virtual assistant to help keep the group active.

In recent weeks, I found out there is a limitation to the number of messages (limited to 5000) you can send to a group. This may not be a problem for authors unless you are really big-time already.

I would like to see if Facebook will redesign the group pages in the future. There is a lack of intimacy you expect for a group, but the functionality is there.

Facebook Fan Page

As a business, I set-up a Facebook Fan page for the blog tours. With the recent redesign, I really love how the interface for the fan page resembles the individual profile page. With each blog tour, I switch out the graphics to bring focus to the author being promoted that particular week. By importing the blog tour rss feed, all the day to day activity for the blog tours are included on the fan page wall. In a lot of ways, the fan page can be set-up to run with relative ease without a lot of manual interaction.

If you are an author, I hope I provided you with a few tidbits to think about when using Facebook. Like all social media, it really depends on the individual and how using the medium works for them.

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3 Responses to “FAQ | Should I create a Facebook Fan or Group page?”

Cheryl Bemis on July 11th, 2009 3:00 pm

Hello! I got a good vibe from your site and FB page so here goes.

My question is this, on FB can you operate both a group page and a fan page or do you have to choose one or the other and I will continue to have my personal account. Just heard about people getting kicked off and don’t want that to happen. Searched and searched for answer.

Can you help? Also what is a blog tour?
Thank you.
Ty on July 13th, 2009 8:17 pm

You can operate a group page and a fan page at the same time, but I definitely suggest using one or the other. Fan pages work best for businesses. If you run an organization, a group page would work best. Keeping that in mind will help you decide if you want to expand beyond your personal FB page.

Blog tours are the same as virtual tours. Authors are featured and visit a blog (book review site or book bloggers) for a certain number of days.
Jim B on July 20th, 2009 9:12 pm

I’ve have a FB personal page and a Fan page under the same “account”…using Tweetdeck or Seesmic to manage my Twitter and FB accounts, any posts seem to go to my “personal page” when I want it to go to my Fan Page. Any suggestions?
NOTE: my Twitter account is also for my “business”…that’s why I would like the one app to manage both.