Facebook Page or Group?

There is some confusion about the difference between Facebook pages and groups among a lot of youth pastors. If you’re looking to put your church or youth group on Facebook, you might want to consider the following points.

Pages

• Intended for organizations, companies, bands, brands, celebrities etc.
• A place to post updates, not good for interaction.
• Fans can view updates in their feed.
• Updates can be pushed to a Twitter account.
• Multiple admins, but updates are always from the page profile avatar, not personal avatars.
• Unlimited number of fans.
• Cannot mass email fans.
• No privacy settings.

Groups

• Created for interaction among members.
• Limit of 5,000 members.
• Can assign other admins, list officers, and block members.
• Mass email group members (under 5,000).
• Updates show personal avatars rather than the group avatar.
• Privacy settings – invite only, public, etc.
• Updates cannot be pushed to Twitter.
• Updates cannot be viewed in member’s feeds.

It is my opinion that churches who want to throw their social networking eggs into the Facebook basket should have both a page and a group. The group can be used to collect photos and have discussions about events and the page can be used for announcements and your Twitter account. Typically, discussions are very rare within a Facebook groups, however you can use discussions during youth events by creating a poll or something similar and driving members to use it. Groups are important if you want to get news out quickly via email to all of your members. With pages, a member might miss your update if they don’t check their account very often. I hope this helps you figure out your Facebook strategy!

For more in depth reading check out Mashable’s post on Pages vs. Groups.