While Facebook’s Pages may be a better option for launching an official presence on the network for your organisation, the humble Facebook Group still offers many useful features for less formal (or less official) collections of your supporters. With Facebook adding more features to Groups, maybe it’s time to take a second look at how a Group could empower your supporters, service-users or fans.

Facebook itself describes a Group as a way of ‘sharing with the important groups in your life.’ Far from being the poor relation of the FB Page, Groups offer a space that’s designed to share resources with other people around a shared cause or topic. (To remind yourself all about Groups, here’s a run-down of tips about setting up or managing a Group.)

Earlier in the year, FB announced that Groups would be able to upload and share documents (something that would be handy on a Page, too). Now Facebook has announced that Groups can use Dropbox to share resources (thanks to Mashable for these links). This will be really handy for any group of people working on a shared document, or developing a project. When added to the existing feature that allows members of a Group to see who has read any particular post, I can imagine that this file-sharing will be extremely useful for small, voluntary groups wanting to work together on plans, minutes or other documents.

It’s not all champagne and roses, however, as a potential vulnerability of email sent to members of FB Groups has been identified (see All Facebook for more details). And remember, you can do similar file sharing in G+ too!

Are you encouraging your supporters to set up Groups? Or is your organisation making use of this feature to help with your own work?