Image Courtest of AllFaceBook.com

Facebook is simply a fantastic marketing tool. It’s far more targeted than Google and far more engaging. We’ll talk about advertising on Facebook another day – today’s topic is a quick primer of the difference between Groups and Fan Pages.

First of all, my personal prognostication is that Groups and Fan Pages will merge closer together with every upgrade. Most of the features in each are similar, but not the same and my guess is that eventually they’ll be one.

Groups are designed to be collaborations of people that like the same thing. A local little league, film society or a local school board election are all great examples of groups. Generally, they’re not attached to a single business.

Fan Pages, on the other hand, usually are attached to a business. They offer a lot more customization opportunities, especially through the use of FBML (Facebook Markup Language) like the custom page here.

There are two key differences when considering how to maximize the use of a Group or a Page. One is mass messaging and the other is membership restrictions.

Mass Messaging
One of the advantages that a group has over a page is the option to send a message (to the recipient’s Facebook Inbox) to all the members of the group. Fan pages, on the other hand, only allow updates which post into the user’s stream – meaning it’s a little bit of a mystery if they’ll see it for sure.

Membership Restrictions
Another feature of a group is the ability to restrict membership to only those that the admin chooses to include. A Fan Page is open for anyone to “like” – although mean people can be banned later on. We used the “private” feature for our Mastermind Group, which allowed us to use the discussion threads, messaging and other features without worrying that anyone outside the group could see anything.

Last tip – choose carefully. Most of the time there’s no going back. For a more in depth analysis, head over to AllFaceBook.com and read their very clear explanation. It’s a little deep diving, but worth it if Facebook is part of your social media plan.