Social Media – The Power and the Groups (LinkedIn & new on Facebook)

This week Facebook launched some new functionality. They've trumpeted the fact that you own your data on Facebook, and can now extract all your data to transfer to a rival service (at least in theory). You can also see more clearly what data is being passed to external applications. But of more interest to businesses is the new “Groups” functionality, that replaces a more simplistic “Old Groups” facility.

Many of you will, be familiar with Groups on LinkedIn. Anyone can set up a group there. Any user can join any group, though you do have to ask permission to join some of them. Groups are typically used for topics like Cloud Computing, alumni of a firm or college, clubs or locality. But also anything else where a group of people share a mutual interest.

LinkedIn Groups provide the opportunity for discussions between members who share that interest. The Group manager can post messages to all members without necessarily being connected. This is also effectively true of anyone who posts to a group discussion. It’s therefore a great way to get in touch with people you don’t know, in addition to keeping in touch with people you do know.

The new Facebook Groups is similar. The official Facebook view on Groups is that they are for families, “bestest friends” and other personal groups where you would want to share photos and information you wouldn’t want to share with friends generally – who might include parents, clients or boss!. There’s a lot more to it than that. For example someone can add their own friends to their own Group, so unless you get email notifications, you won’t easily know what Groups you have been joined into!

For business the temptation might be to have a Facebook group for your business and/or individual brands. This could be instead of or in addition to a presence with “Pages”. “Pages” is much more than the name implies. It lets you set up discussion groups under a number of headings. There are various choices.for businesses, entertainers and celebrities.

The name “Camwells” is set up as both a “local business” and a “product”. That was mainly to prove that a brandname can be set up in each category, by you or indeed by any one else. Likewise I have set up a Camwells “Group” to at least reserve the name!

Therefore from both a personal and business perspective it’s worth making sure your presence and admin settings suit you for each of these services, now and each time the functionality changes. It's also worth monitoring your business name and brand names, whether formally registered or not. This is recommended even if you don’t expect to make active use of the services.

But the Groups and Pages services of LinkedIn and Facebook can be highly beneficial when used well. It’s great these tools are “free”. The challenge is to use them effectively without it costing an arm and a leg in time or extra people.

How are you going to use Groups and Pages for your business?