Positive Real Estate Professionals

Over the last six months or so, I have refused to join any group on . I get asked at least 25 times a week why I choose not to join groups. So, in an effort to answer this question, I decided to write an article about it. I hope that this clears up the mystery of groups versus Business Pages (a.k.a. Fan Pages) on .

First, we need to take a look at the things that separate the two.

Business Page

• Purpose of a business page is to promote and generate interest and conversation around a business, organization, public figure, celebrity, etc.
• People become “fans” of your page (a.k.a. your business).
• Content posted on a business page shows up in the News Feeds of the fans
• Fan’s can’t necessarily add photos and videos, but they can post on the Wall and in discussions if allowed to. (This can be controlled by the admins in the edit section of the page)
• There are tons of applications that can be added to a Business Page to increase interactions.
• Administrators of the Business Page can send bulk suggestions to their friends to become fans of the page.
• Administrators can review visitor statistics, interactions and member demographics.

Group

• Purpose of a group is to bring people together to create a community around a specific topic, interest, activities, etc.
• There are not any stats on interactions or member demographics.
• Applications cannot be added to groups.
• People become “members” of your group.
• Members can add photos, videos, comments, links and more.
• Content posted within a group stays inside the group.
• Admins of the group can bulk invite people to become members.

Now that the main differences between the two have been defined, let me get into this a bit deeper. For the foremost, business pages are used to network your business around . Group pages are more for a person’s agenda. For this reason alone, I stay away from the groups. In some groups, it seems that people use the power of the group email to spam your inbox on a constant basis about what they think is important to the members. If you are a politically oriented group, it might be relevant that Obama signed a bill into law but you could probably care less what the weather in Pensacola is. In a nut shell, make sure which one you are joining.