Have you been wondering how to create a Facebook aka fan page and more importantly what type of page you should create. Should it be a community Facebook page or official Facebook page?
What is a community Facebook page?
A community page on Facebook is an unofficial page designed for people to discuss an organization, topic or celebrity. Community pages do not officialy represent the business or person they discuss. You can see the community page badge on the top of the page which denotes is not an official page.
What is an official Facebook page?
An official Facebook page is managed by the business or organization it represents. Official Facebook pages are meant to be for organizations; you will have to prove you work for the company you want to create a page about.
How to make an official Facebook page
To get started making a Facebook official page, you’ll need to log in to your Facebook personal profile and click on the menu in the top right corner. It looks like this:
From there, you click ‘page’ under the create section.
You can then fill out all the details about your business. Be careful to make a business page on Facebook for your business, not a community page!
So you want to create an official page for your business, not a community page. Whatever you do, don’t create a community page for your business. The reason for that is the whole idea behind community pages is that they can be taken over by the community and as a business, you definitely don’t want to lose control of your own Facebook page.
So for your business, you definitely want an official page and just choose the closest most accurate category whether you’re a local business, a brand or a public figure. Choose whatever is most accurate.
Your page name is important because you cannot change it. I would recommend that you use your name if you have a personal brand or your business name, either one works depending on what you want to promote.
Don’t try to get clever here, just enter your business name and then if this of course is your business, you want to check this box. It says I’m the official representative and then you just hit create official page.
You don’t want to create a group to promote your business, groups are better for people who share a professional interest or hobby. For marketing on Facebook, you want to create a page and again, you want to do an official page, not a community page.
How to get started creating a community Facebook page
So the community page, the idea behind that is that’s truly for fans. So if you’re a big fan of Snickers bars, you will create a community page for other people to discuss that official Snickers page.
For this, you create your page in the same way as an official page, you just select the community page option when setting up the page. You can call your Facebook community page whatever you want, include images and links and invite your Facebook friends to like it.
What’s the difference between a Facebook page and a Facebook Group?
Just to add some confusion to the mix, there’s another type of community you can create on Facebook and that’s a group.
Groups tend to be closed communities that need to request to join and answer some basic questions to get accepted. You create a Facebook group in the same way you create a page. The difference with groups is that anyone can post on the wall and contribute to the community.
A Facebook page can only have content posted by the page owner which the page followers can then like and comment on. A page can also run advertisements, whereas a group can’t.
Groups also tend to have strict rules about what can be posted in them. This is to avoid shameless promotion and spammers from infiltrating the group.
What type of Facebook page should I create?
The type of Facebook page you create depends on your purpose for creating the page! If you want to create a Facebook page for a business, you should create an official Facebook page.
Facebook community pages are more for fun; to collaborate with and find others who share an interest or want to discuss a topic.
A Facebook group is great if you want a private space to discuss a shared interest, travel for women for example, and share useful tips, articles, and insights with one another.
What type of Facebook page do you use?
Do you have a preferred way to interact with your Facebook community? Official page, community page or group? What works best for you? Let us know in the comments, we’d love to hear about it!
