Should you allow business pages to join your Facebook group?

There are two ways to join a Facebook group: as a personal profile or as a Facebook page.

As an admin, you get to decide what types of profiles you will allow to request to join your group:

• personal profiles
• Facebook pages
• or both.

Here’s how to manage the setting:

Currently, Facebook allows you to change this setting at will. On a desktop, you can access this under the “Manage Group / Settings” menu.

Under Settings, scroll down to “Manage Membership” and select either “Profiles and Pages” (which will allow both personal profiles and Facebook pages to join your group) or “Only profiles” (which will only allow personal profiles to join your group).

And now to the big question… do you let pages in – or not?

In my local town Facebook group, I currently allow Profiles and Pages to technically try to join – but 99% of the time, I don’t let the pages in. I know this sounds a little crazy, so let me explain:

I don’t want business pages in my group because frankly, I don’t want businesses to be able to post and comment on threads, since I do not allow free advertising and I don’t allow businesses to recommend themselves.

That being said, I still allow pages to submit a join request. I know that sounds weird, so let me explain why…

If a business has interest in joining my group, it probably means that business would like access to my audience. And if they’d like access to my audience, their attempt to join the group makes them a warm lead.

I like warm leads because there is a very good chance they will pay to advertise with me.

So, when a page joins, I reach out to them by messenger or email and let them know that I don’t allow pages to join the group, and then I let them know about my advertising options for local businesses. This is much better than “cold messaging” local businesses because they inquired first.

We then decline the request… and with a little luck, we get a new advertiser!

What about you?

Do you allow pages to join your Facebook group? Why or why not?