Do you want to start a Facebook group to rally folks to your cause, organization, content or personal brand? Don’t do it.
Let me tell you why Facebook Pages are better than Groups, with an eye to Web 2.0 newbies.
Many organizations and individuals are jumping on the social media bandwagon by moving content to Facebook.com. There are many compelling reasons to do this. I’d also concur with many smart people that serious thought and discussion needs to happen first for any serious effort. The first thing you may thing of doing is creating a group, which is very easy to do and at first seems like a great idea. Heck, I’ve done it – with moderate success, even.
But Facebook groups are ineffective for most serious purposes.
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Thanks Adriel, I read your post and I agree on principle. For a Facebook pilot project we are undertaking at the Fish and Wildlife Service (hoping that the new administration gets an alternative terms of agreement with Facebook for federal agencies) is using a group mostly to identify active, engaged employees (almost using Facebook to enhance internal social networking within the agency) and then using a page for external audiences (i.e. getting people to sign in to our brand, learn about new announcements and programs, etc.).
Would that approach make sense, or will we miss the boat entirely when it comes to our employees and Facebook. You’re right, in that I cannot get folks to upload pictures, post to the discussion board, etc. in the group.
@michael Sounds like good initial thoughts. You might also consider a Ning network for employees for internal networking, but of course it’s also good to go where they already are. There are SO many options, which is why I think it’s worth a few thousand bucks to get a really good consultant in at designing the initial phase and ensuring you have something that will run and grow itself. Steve did such a good job with GovLoop, that it now almost runs itself with just a little steering from the founder. That’s what I’m talking about. Also hoping people who know a lot more than me will jump in on this topic or offer their services through comments on my blog.