Facebook Group Vs Facebook Page.

Most organisations on Facebook only have a page, I however think it is important that businesses have facebook groups as well.

I will outline some of the benefits of a facebook group over a facebook page. On a facebook page only 8% of people who "like" your page will see on their timeline when you post something new, on a group over 50% will see the post.

Facebook pages post do not send out notifications, Facebook groups do all the time and guess what Facebook notifications still has a 80+% CTR, it means when people get notified, they are very likely to click, which means more people will come to your group because they have been notified of new postings or fun stuff happening.

(You can however increase the 8% for page by posting great content, consistently; sharing posts and tagging, so more people can deliberately seek out your page and visit).

Facebook groups now have analytics and stats you couldn't previously measure (Now, being since early this year).

Facebook is designed to make money- pages are the routes hence Facebook will bury information on your page, so you can do more ads to get more people to see it and you are constantly encouraged to boost post or advertise so that they can make more money. (It's science, its algorithm and its business)

Facebook groups are the hacks for that... Facebook is growing its user base on the power of communities, right now "communities are encouraged". More people on a group tell more people not on Facebook or not active on Facebook about activities on a group... they come online and get active on Facebook. More people with shared goals/ community will "stay together & be active together" because family.

The Edgerank (Facebook algorithm) hates hashtags.. If you use a hashtags in a post especially on a page, you would have drastically reduced the number of people who typically would have seen the post by a high percentage.

Groups encourage interactions, interactions increases engagement which thus increases every other thing to be honest sales (if you are selling something), growth in number of followers (which will increase impressions and awareness) and at the end of the day - money.

You can start a group and have a page, the group will be for interactions with your clients (a complaints desk/ town hall of sorts) and the page will be like a formal business page, creatively working out a growth strategy with fun contents for both.

Professions that can ordinarily not advertise can have group pages like Medicine and Law.

Case study: A lawyer can have a group page where he shares legal tips; maybe for young Startups, they are allowed to ask questions on things like IP, registrations. He answers, they add friends, share issues, he helps and he is also growing a user base.

Thought leadership. Great content. Top of mind awareness.

Finally, there are automation tools that allow you get details of all the people on your group (for e-mail marketing or for advertising on facebook) and you can then set up look alike audience which improves your ads targeting thus ensuring that your ROI on every ad is increased because you have targeted only interested people.

I also learnt from a friend that naming your group based on the demography and psychography of your target audience works very well. E.g. Lagos Moms, Girls in Tech, Skaters in Nigeria, etc. It increases the joining rates especially when people search out interesting groups.

With these few points of mine I hope I have been able to convince you and not confuse you that a Facebook group is a great hack for growing your Facebook audience. :)

At the end of the day, you can always later link your Facebook groups and pages together.