You’re a company, or a brand, an artist, or a marketer who wants to promote your cause and you want a presence on Facebook.  You’ve seen it done before, but you just don’t know what your options are.

Should you create a Facebook Group?

Or is a Fan Page your best bet?

In the past, Fan Pages and Groups both had a similar problem: they tended to get initial fan interest, but couldn’t keep fans coming back for more.  There was a lack of social functionality and value for both the fan and the cause.  In essence, the Fan Page and Group used to act like the Facebook version of the brochureware web site back in the day. That now seems to have changed.

While the new redesign of Facebook has infuriated many of its users, it has also created more benefits for marketers and those who want to engage with their audiences and fans.

Facebook has thoroughly revamped Fan Pages in the past few weeks to offer much more viral potential with their built-in news stream integration and dissemination features: any action is seen by each users’ friends and actions are more easily shared.

While the Facebook Groups page still looks and feels the same, the Fan pages have been improved to look and feel more like user profiles.  These new features have driven a lot of users to them while making Facebook Groups a much less influential and used communication tool than before.

Some things to keep in mind if you’re considering a Fan Page:

• When updating your wall, your updates will be included in all your fans news streams
• Fan page editors can update their fans about new content, promotions, upcoming events, and more.
• Fan page editors can send messages to either their entire fan list or segment their update to targeted fans
• Messages from fan page editors appear in their inbox “Updates” tab
• Fan page editors can click on a tab called “insights” which gives information on fan page views

We suggest before starting a Group or Fan Page, you should thoroughly read through Facebook’s FAQs:

Facebook Pages: http://www.facebook.com/help.php?page=175

Facebook Groups: http://www.facebook.com/help.php?page=414

With Facebook’s recent redesign of user home pages and updates to the Fan Page template (and very few updates to Groups), we at KML couldn’t help but wonder if the Fan Page is future home for any and all who want a Facebook presence to interact with their fans and audience.

And if so… how long will we enjoy that feature for free?