Brand Interaction: Facebook Fan Pages, Groups, Sponsored Groups or Widgets?

In response to my post, Facebook Pages: Are they or Aren't they?, Jeremiah Owyang asked:

So for brand interaction what's better than Facebook Fan pages? Groups? Sponsored Groups?

My reply was pretty lengthy, so I've decided to publish it as a post of it's own:

Hi Jeremiah,

Thanks for your question. In most cases, I believe that widgets are the best way forward, as they allow for full interaction in any way you want, with as many pages as you want - so ideal if you have a lot of quality content you want users to be able to interact with.

Although standard groups allow for great interaction between users, there is simply not enough control over their interface and design to make them worth any significant spend by a company. However, they can be of use in specific circumstances, for example to use them for time specific competitions. 

Because of the ease in which groups can be virally spread (no daily limit on invites, unlike apps), if you have a good enough concept for the group then it could be a very cheap and effective marketing vehicle - the group "Six Degrees Of Separation - The Experiment" being a huge case in point. The author Steve Jackson started this group with the concept that everyone in the world is connected by a maximum of 6 people. Using the group as an experiment to see how many people he could find simply by inviting his friends, and inviting them to invite theirs, the group now has over 3.6m members. Moreover, he has kept the group relevant with a daily 'celebrity nomination' and other regularly updated features.

Obviously this has worked brilliantly for Steve, but it would be a very hard trick to pull off again. 

Sponsored groups are great for specific marketing campaigns, as they combine the best elements of groups, pages and widgets - although you only have the one branded page, you have a lot of freedom on how that looks, and it is possible to build applications directly into the page, as if it were a page within a widget. 

Sponsored groups are also ideal if the main reason for a brand's presence within Facebook is to create a sponsored discussion forum. The Apple Students sponsored group is a good example of this.

However, from what I know of the price for these groups, a company would have to be very confident in their rate of return, considering how much cheaper it is to develop and even promote a widget.

So, for companies not willing to go to that expense, widgets, or pages with widgets built into the page are the best way forward to achieve high branding and interaction in a cost effective manner.

It should also be remembered that of all the choices, widgets have the possibility of being transferable between platforms - both through the licensing of the Facebook API, and by tweaking them to fit Open Social. Of course, this has to be balanced against the differing demographics of different platforms, but as most widgets will be demographically targeted, this shouldn't be too much of an issue.