• Fan Pages or Groups?

    As an event organizer looking to leverage the power of Facebook to promote your site, there are many things to take into account.  One point of confusion is which is better, a Fan page or a group?  At first glance, they seem to be practically the same thing. However, there are distinct advantages and disadvantages to each.  I’ll cover the two most relevant differences here to help you decide how to use Groups and Fan Pages to market your events and dance organization.  Those two things are streams and events.

    First, events.  Obviously, having a Facebook event-page is desirable because, for a workshop or exchange, Facebook event-pages are the main way to hook into Facebook’s social graph.  As users RSVP to your event, stories are displayed on their wall for their friends to see and more and more people become aware of your event.  Awesome!  That’s putting social media to work for you.

    If you have a group, you can create events “as” that group and invite all of the members of your group to the event.  Unfortunately, Fan pages cannot create events.  At this point, you might be thinking, “well, that settles it.  Groups are the way to go.”

    But hang on.  Fan pages offer something arguably even better that groups do not: access to your fan’s stream.  When someone becomes a fan of your event on Facebook, it’s pretty much like them adding your event as a friend.  Things you post to your Fan page’s wall appear in your fan’s streams just like other posts by their flesh & blood friends.  You now have a direct channel to alert your fans of things like deadlines, new venues & bands, and any other exciting news about your event.  Posts you make on your group’s wall, however, just sit there on only the group wall and the only time people see them is if they visit your group.

    Yeah, the decision just got a lot tougher now, didn’t it?  So which do I think is better?  Well, luckily, you can have both, but if I could only choose one, I’d choose a Fan page over a group.  I believe organizers should create Fan pages for their events and organizations and build their “fan base”.  That way you can “reach out and touch people” and put your event and organization in their consciousness at will, without needing them to do anything differently than use Facebook how they normally do to interact with their friends.

    But what about events?  If you have a Fan page, you can either create events with your personal account and promote it on your fan page.  Or you can have a group that you use to create events with…and then promote the events on your fan page.  But the bottom line is if you’re not using Fan pages to promote your event, you’re not using Facebook to its full potential to market your event.

    “But John, all I see are organizers using groups!”  Yeah, I know, and they’re doing it wrong.  Setup a Fan page and start promoting it.  You won’t regret it.

    And while you’re at it, become a fan of Dance Weekend!

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     March 6th, 2010  John Ford   8 comments

    8 responses to “Fan Pages or Groups?”

    • Good write-up, John. But how do you address those stubborn facebook users (sometimes I’m among them) who refuse to be a “fan” of anything? It would seem the only way to address that part of your event stream then would be through the group option.

    • That’s a good point, Breanna. If I were the organizer of a large regional or nation event, or a regular dance like Hot-Jam or Jam Cellar, I’d probably create both a Fan page and a group. But I would strip the group’s page of things like the photos, videos, discussions and links tabs and reserve those for the fan page. I’d also disable posts to the group’s wall. That way you could still provide information to the people who prefer groups but still have your Fan page be the main focus of your Facebook “identity” and interaction with dancers.

    • Also, as the # of friends/groups/fan one has grows, the stream becomes more and more diluted. I can’t keep track of the posting of the 200 or so active friends I have on facebook. Therefore, I disagree with you and think that Groups are the way to promote. The trouble is that you must distinguish Your LOCAL from your NATIONAL/Wide-Area Group.
      The folks from out of town that want to come to your yearly superbig event do not want to hear about your weekly class schedule even if you think it’s a good opportunity to increase your audience size for local events.
      Watering down the message was the downfall of myspace advertising, and is creeping on facebook.

      What about starting a new friend page for your event and becoming friends with people instead of fans or groups? It would allow you to both show up on the news-stream as well as email and invite folx? Or do they cap the #s in something?

    • There is a cap on numbers but I’m not sure it’s a big deal for our purposes. Groups are capped at 5000 members. Fan pages can run into the millions. But I don’t know of any swing events even pushing the 5000 mark yet.

      As for diluting the stream, that’s the nature of advertising. But I’m not sure what you think you get from a group that you don’t get from a fan page. Basically, for the purpose of mesagging users, everything you get in a group, you also get with a fan page. PLUS your posts make it into their stream. There is one thing missing from fan pages: the ability to send an email to all users. But you can do that from an event-page, so you’re not really losing that option, at all.

      You make a good point about the national crowd not wanting hear about your local weekly event, every week. But that comes down to the organizers knowing their audience, not diluting their brand, and not spamming their fans with irrelevant info. If it’s a “FubarEX” fan page, people want to hear about “FubarEX”, not Mom & Pop’s weekly Swing-Throwdown. (I apologize if these are actual event, ha!) An organizer wanting to do a good job of marketing their event should realize that and act accordingly. Otherwise, they will get their posts marked “Hide” by their fans. But even then…to that user, their fan page is practically the same as a group. So have you lost anything?

    • i’ve found i’ve started leaving more and more groups… sick of the constant notifications, even for events i might want to go to. i’m not sure HOW i’d recommend event organizers get to me anymore… maybe just go back to the good ol’ lindy calendar (or dance weekend, why not?) system? :)

    • Yeah, I know what you mean kait. That’s another reason that as a user, it’s better to be a Fan than in a group. Fan pages can’t arbitrarily send out a message to all of its fans like groups can. Not pointing any fingers, but some organizers send me an email (well, a message on FB, which ends up in my gmail inbox) about their event Every. Single. Day.

      Now, I don’t mind seeing that their “pre-registration closes in 4 days!!!!” Really, I don’t, even though I’m not going to their event. What I do dislike is the medium they chose to use to tell me because now I can’t just process the information, decide it doesn’t pertain to me right now, go on about my life, and let the post fade into the history of my feed. By sending that info as a message, they are now forcing my hand and making me take some action, even if it’s only to delete the email. Seems like a small thing, but like you say, deleting tons of message and emails gets old.

    • i’ve found i’ve started leaving more and more groups… sick of the constant notifications, even for events i might want to go to. i’m not sure HOW i’d recommend event organizers get to me anymore… maybe just go back to the good ol’ lindy calendar (or dance weekend, why not?) system? :)

    • Yup, I know what you meant, Steve. Groups are flat-out annoying because the owner of the group can -and usually will- email you about any little thing whenever they feel like it. That’s why as a consumer, I prefer fan pages over groups. It really doesn’t bother me if there’s a post in my stream that I can simply ignore. But I hate having to delete tons of useless, to me, emails.


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