Typically, businesses and organizations choose to create a page when they want to be present on Facebook.
What if the creation of a group also had its interest? For refine your communication, address a more specific audience or speak in a private place, groups have certain advantages. Especially since, since July 2017, Facebook has offered pages to create their own groups.
- Group, page: definitions
- Features
- How to choose ?
- How to create a group on facebook ?
- Community animation
- Link a Facebook group to a page
Group, page: definitions
On Facebook, companies have two types of space to be present: the page and the group.
Usually, they create pages.
A Facebook page is a space dedicated to a brand, a company, an institution. Facebook members can "like" the page, they then receive the page's posts directly to their feed and can interact with the brand. It is necessarily public.
A group is created by an administrator. It brings together people, invited to be part of the group, who wish to discuss a problem or a center of common interest. Depending on the desired level of confidentiality, the group can be secret (invisible to other members), private (visible but with private exchanges) or public (visible and with public exchange).
Features
The page: communicate visibly
A mark goes unite your community on one page Facebook. It will be at the center of the discussions. The "about", the photos, the contact details, the avatar ... everything will talk about the brand, the company or the institution.
The aim is to promote the brand.
The challenge of creating a community attached to the brand. Not always obvious. It will have to show commitment, respond to its customers or its public and instill its values. It allows you to work on your brand image.
The group: promote thematic exchange
The group has more of a dimension of exchange "between us". We do not seek to make ourselves known and shine but more to facilitate exchanges between members and circulate ideas. Of course, a public group necessarily reflects an image outwards.
How to choose ?
We will create a page if we want:
- Formally develop its image (from a company to its customers, from an institution to its audiences, from an association to its current and future donors)
- Increase its visibility (often, we try to have more and more likes)
- Communicate openly to others and to the outside world,
- Unite a community around its brand, without limit of people.
We will create a group if we want:
- Facilitate exchanges around a theme or a community of interests (a passion, a profession, a point of knowledge ...)
- Create an emulation around a specific point,
- Breaking down the barriers of geographical distance in a common project, professional or not.
So a company, an association or an institution can consider creating one or more groups by asking the questions for whom? and why ? For example, she can imagine the Facebook group as:
- an internal communication tool, especially in the event of a geographical breakdown of teams,
- a place of animation more or less open around a strong value of the company. Why not a group to collect ideas around a new product?
- promote exchanges around specific know-how
We can therefore see that to use in a certain way, the group can also become a tool branding services.
Another possibility: create a page, the official space of the institution, and in satellite, one or more groups that can be promoted on the page.
How to create a group on facebook ?
We find the button "create a group" on the left column.
The confidentiality options are managed in the "confidentiality" section: be careful, when a group reaches more than 250 members, you can change these options only once and always in a more restrictive sense (from public, to private, to secret) .
As an administrator, you can appoint other administrators, restrict or open the right to publish or even invite other members to join the group.
The administrator of a group is visible.
Community animation
Facebook has been offering news for a few weeks features to facilitate group management and community animation. Since September 2017 for example, the administrators of a group are indicated by a badge next to their name, to give more visibility and weight to their interventions.
They also have the option of configuring questions, which are automatically asked to applicants when they register for the group. It is a valuable tool for validating a registration by ensuring that the Internet user is a member of a defined organization or company, or that he has read the group's rules.
Since the end of October 2017, Facebook has deployed a feature that allows other members of the group to view the simplified profile of another member. This profile takes into account public information and facilitates contact between Internet users.
Finally, the social network should offer statistics on internet user engagement in the group, as well as a viewing the best niches to post.
Link a Facebook group to a page
Since July 2017 (and before in test), Facebook has offered a new functionality to page managers. This is the possibility of create one or more groups, linked to a page. Concretely, the group is declared as belonging to a page as soon as it is created, and it appears on the page (“groups” tab). The administrator of the page can post there under his own name or as a page, and he has access to all the management functionalities of the group.
The administrator of a group can also decide to link an already existing group to a page. To do this, he must also be the administrator of the page.
Go to the page> "groups" tab> "Associate your group"
Advantage:
- Simplified group management for administrators,
- Better visibility of public groups when they are linked to the page,
- Better visibility of the content posted by the page directly in the group,
- The possibility of adapting and refining its communication according to the chosen themes.
Read here all the administration conditions of a group
