Facebook Fan Page Vs Facebook Group

With more people using Facebook Fan Pages lately I also have heard people talking about Facebook Groups and how they relate to Facebook Fan Pages. For the most part people are looking for the difference between the two and when they should use one versus the other. This is a quick post just to outline some of the key points to be aware of when thinking about creating one or the other:

• Facebook Fan Page updates show in the fan news feeds which is very powerful, it takes advantage of the true value of the social network. If your fan likes it that goes along way with their friends, then their friend, etc, etc. This does not happen with Facebook Groups. This makes Facebook Fan Pages much more useful for a business to use for social marketing.
• Facebook Fan Pages are visible to users not registered with Facebook, this means that you have a chance to get your message to people that may not be Facebook users. This is important since Google indexes Facebook Fan Pages.
• Facebook Groups allow for bulk invites, one of my biggest frustrations with Facebook Fan Pages is having to manually do invites once the page is created. With a group you can do a bulk invite and so can the people that join the group. As other have pointed out, this makes them very powerful for viral networking of the group.
• Facebook Fan Pages allow for custom Facebook usernames which makes it easier to promote your page in text and offline places.

In my opinion a Facebook page is preferable for marketing messages and business promotion, a Facebook group is more for active discussions. To me the real value is the fact the Facebook page updates show in the fans news feed which is really a downfall for Groups since the group member has to proactively go to the group to see the updates, etc.