When I set up accounts for films and filmmakers on Facebook, I generally like to set up Fan pages rather than Group pages. Some ask what the difference is and here is a little explanation.

Fan pages are better used to create long lasting relationships and offer a more interactive community. They are meant for businesses, public figures and brands. Your film is a brand. Group pages are used to rally people around a certain cause or common interest, like guerilla filmmaking or users of the RED camera.

Group pages are not circulated into the members’ “feeds” on their user profile, therefore to see any updates, the group members must go directly to the page to see posts there. With a Fan page, updates are circulated into the home “feed” of the users. Fan pages are randomly suggested on the home page in the upper right hand corner. Facebook will often show Fan pages that friends are  fans of and will position them so one can easily join them. This spreads the word about your page through your existing fan base and their friends are more likely to become a fan of your film if they know someone who is. 

Fan pages also provide the ability to track who is visiting your page, their demographics, how often and the interactivity level of fans on the page through their metrics function. Group pages do not have a metrics capability. However, there must be more than 10 fans for the metrics capabilities to begin. Fan pages are indexed by search engines and are visible to people unregistered with Facebook. This helps with your overall film presence online. Groups are not indexed in the search engines.

When you want to bring attention to your Facebook presence, you have more options with a Page than with a Group. Group updates are  dependent on either  members taking an active interest in the group by visiting regularly and/or members’ personal News Feed settings being configured to show sufficient updates from the  group. Neither variable is under the control of the group owner.  A Page supports notification in update streams. These updates stand alone in a side-bar to the right hand side of the page under Highlights and are much less likely to get lost in the stream of other kinds of notifications on a profile newsfeed.

Pages allow for sending mass updates to all fans with an opt out function. Users can also specify which of their Fan Pages can notify them. This promotes good will to your fans that you are not spamming them with useless notifications and if they think you are, they can opt out. Updates also appear in a special subsection of your fans’ inbox, helping segregate it out from the rest of the messages they may be receiving on Facebook.

On Fan pages you can add applications such as quizzes and games or content from other sites such as your blog feed, Twitter feed, Digg, etc.  With Groups you cannot feed in outside content. Both Group and Fan pages allow for wall posts, video and photo uploads.

Facebook Pages — but not groups — can utilize the built-in demographic information to create micro-targeted ads. Through the use of your Fan metrics, you can determine who is likely to respond to your message and you only pay to target those people. You can set daily budgets that cannot be surpassed, but Facebook advertising is another conversation.

A Fan page is more of a running conversation with your audience. It provides interactivity between you and your fans and the fans with each other. This is what social media is all about. I would also suggest leaving the privacy settings on the page open so that all fans may post links, photos, videos etc. If a fan takes advantage in a spammy or objectionable way, administrators of the page can delete posts and report the behavior.

Tags: Facebook, Fan page, Group page