subject: Should I have a Facebook Group or Fan Page for my Personal Training Business? [print this page] Hi as you begin to read this as a fellow Personal Trainer on Facebook I am guessing you already have a group or a Fan Page to promote your business?? If not you may be missing out on dozens even 100s of leads and potential clients.
If you are like me when I first got on Facebook I was like...ummm...where do I start?
How do I use it to promote my business and communicate with my clients more effectively?
It appears the 2 most popular ways are by having a group or a fan page.
So which one is better and which one should you have?
The answer is both, I will explain why:
Firstly lets look at some of the pros and cons
Group:
Pros
Displays detailed information about your business and services on the primary page
Easily accessible and when updates are made to the group it shows
The ability to rapidly grow the group in numbers and people or more likely to join who haven't seen the group before because there is plenty of info already on the front page
Cons
Can be quite intrusive through sending messages to members when how often do the members read the entire message anyway.
Not very interactive
People seem to leave the group due to receiving promo messages rather than useful info
Cannot communicate via peoples walls
Can only invite a person once to the group
Fan Page:
Pros
Very interactive
non-intrusive
more opportunity to create conversation
Less likely to have members leave due to less intusive-ness
Gives reports and stats of visitors in the form of graphs and charts for male/female ages etc... and a rating
when you post a status update all members see it on their wall
Cons
Less info on the primary page causing many people to not join when invited
not as visible to non-members
These are just the tip of the iceberg...
There are dozens of books perhaps even 100s on how to use Facebook and the majority of specialists recommend the following:
Start with a basic group with info about you and your services use a few testimonials, photos an article (keep it simple) and use it to rapidly grow a database without sending too many messages once you hit a target eg 1000 then start a Fan Page to begin daily communication with your members including a lot more info with video testimonials, video profile of yourself, articles, make comments about your clients on the wall and group photos of all your clients tagging them.
I have used this strategy myself and had clients and other companies use it very effectively, give it a go and you may be surprised at the great results you get.
