There is lots of remaining confusion about what is the best Facebook strategy to use for your organization.
I was recently asked by a great conservative Texan politcal movement what our strategy should be here. CDOT already has both a Fan Page and a Group, and new people volunteering to manage content come and go pretty often, so I felt I should re-research this topic again and break it all down for them. When Googling about it I saw most of the posts were 2 years old, but this one from Fathom had the best breakdown of the advantages of each. For the group however, I needed to streamline the advice. Perhaps this will help your organization as well.
Here is my summary as explained to CDOT via email about what is DISTINCT for each:
Fan pages (or simply ‘page’ in most of the FB headings)
1) ARE visible from the outside, which means the content there gets updated on Google. It is good to have this happening for issues of outside exposure.
- - that is why it is good to post our CDOT pages to it at least once a week.
2) Pages can be ‘liked’, thus James put the like box on the site. Good feature we should keep IMO.
3) Think of the Fan Page as where we post public announcements
4) Posts here are share-able. This is the power James has been referring to. The thing about it is that for the power to work (geometric exposure) people need to share the posts there on to their timeline as well. It is NOT automatic.
(being share-able makes a page pretty much like an FB ‘person’)
Group pages
1) ANY member of the group can post. That means it is a free for all regarding the content.
2) All posts put here are by default sent as a notification to other members.
3) You can as the administrator mass-mail all the group members. This is important for special events, etc.
So… STRATEGICALLY…
FB page:
I believe we should use it as a controlled extension of the site where we control the content focussed on violations and event announcements, our site page urls, etc.
For all involved with our organization, we should encourage regular sharing of the posts there.
FB group:
This should be promoted as a ‘get involved’ tool. Quasi-Inside discussions can be held about our focus, etc. but always be kept positive. This is the ‘next step’ for those who ‘like us’ (fans) to become part of the conversation
Exceptions to note:
- both pages and groups can have settings changed to share ’some’ of the attributes I declared distinct above, but the purposes of each are still intact.
- The notification options can be changed by the user for both pages and groups. They are simply defaulted to on for groups.