Starting your Facebook business pages? Group Page vs. Like Page

The most important thing to do when using FB for your Direct Sales business is to make sure you’re *Compliant*. If you make sure you’re playing by the company's rules, you can make FB really work for you. If you have any questions make sure to read the compliance information or reach out to the company itself.

Watching/reading the Forums, there seem to be quite a few consultants out there that make it their mission to find and report anyone they think are breaking the rules and they will turn you in, in a heartbeat. But, if you have submitted your plan to compliance before you make your move, you’ll have nothing to worry about. Trust me.

Ok. Let’s get started.

As I understand it, you have 2 options to go with, a LIKE PAGE and a GROUP. Let’s talk about each individually along the pros and cons.

Facebook Group

With a FB Group, you’ll be making a separate page from the personal one you use to talk to your friends, friends of friends, and people you vaguely remember. When making this page, it is going to benefit you to make it *PRIVATE*. By making this group private, you are going to have so much more freedom in your advertising. You can invite your customers to join your group and you have the power to approve who you want and who you don’t. Privacy allows you the luxury to promote your personal specials. For instance, you may say, “Hey! I have a retired "item name" in my stock that needs a new home. This week only, you can buy it for $20 and get a free "item name" too!” You may post your own personal pictures, and giveaways too. You got that? Good!

Now, the downside to having a Private Group, is that it’s private. You won’t be visible to random people just browsing FB and they won’t be able to join without asking first and that might make them move on. Facebook Like Page

Now, a page cannot be made private. You will not be able to promote your own personal specials on this page. The key to a *Page* is being vague. You may say, “The new "company name" Fall/Winter catalog is out! Yay! Contact me for details.” Or You may say, “The new "company name" Fall/Winter catalog is out! Yay! Be one of the first 10 people to contact me and get a *"item name"*”.

That last offer may or may not meet compliance of your company so make sure to check your rules. Not every consultant can afford to do a special like that and some companies insist that you keep your specials private. Comprende? Good.

With Like Pages you can schedule your posts which is an awesome feature!!! I like to take a couple hours each month and schedule out posts for up to 3 months. That way if life gets busy it is always going on without me.

Now let's talk about ads and sponsored posts. With a Like Page you can do these things to attract new customers and interests. I will go into running campaigns in more depth in a future blog. No need to overwhelm you when you are just starting out.

Both myself and my Upline have a Like Page and Group Page. You should customize your page so that it stands out from the many others.

So, that’s it for right now. I’m sure we’ll have to revisit this topic again, and lots since Social Media is always changing.