Facebook lets brands, publishers connect Groups to their Pages

Facebook is finally letting brands, publishers, celebrities and all other Page owners create Groups connected to their Pages. Facebook’s chief product officer Chris Cox announced the opening up of Groups to Pages in a Facebook post on Wednesday.

Facebook has been testing Groups for Pages since at least April, when CNET reported that brands like HBO had created Groups tied to their Pages.

There are a couple ways to create a Group for a Page (assuming you are an admin for a Page). On Facebook’s desktop site, there should be a “Groups” tab listed in the left-hand menu. If it’s not there, you can click “Settings,” then “Edit Page,” then “Add a Tab” to add the “Groups” tab.

The “Groups” tab serves multiple purposes. For users, it’s how they will access a Page’s Groups. For the Page Administrator, the “Groups” tab is how they can create and manage their Groups.

Clicking on the “Groups” tab will display a prompt to create a Group. If you already have a Group that you want to link to your Page, it should appear on the “Groups” tab with an option to “Link Group.” Pages can only be linked to existing Groups for which a Page admin is already a Group admin through that person’s individual Facebook account. Page owners can post in a Page-linked Group as the Page or using their individual Facebook profiles.

As with normal Groups’ three privacy setting options, Page-connected Groups can be “public” so that anyone can join or see the Group’s posts; “closed” so that anyone can find a Group and see its members, but people can only join the Group after being added by a member and only members can see the Group’s posts; or “secret” so that people can only join by being added by a member and only members can see who’s a member of the Group and the Group’s posts.

While Page-connected Groups would create a pool of people that a brand might want to advertise to on and off Facebook, Pages are not currently able to create Custom Audiences of Group members to target with ads, according to a Facebook spokesperson. That also means that Pages can’t take a Custom Audience of Group members and target ads to a “lookalike” audience of people with similar characteristics.