I was always under the impression that Facebook Groups and Pages ALWAYS required that people have a Facebook profile in order to participate or Like the page. I’ve never seen Facebook Groups or Pages allow for joining or liking without a Facebook Profile. However, perhaps what you are thinking of is that they can’t “see” the group without being logged into Facebook, whereas, people can “see” the Facebook page without being logged in, although they do need to login to “like” it.

I recommend all businesses and organizations create a Facebook PAGE, because it is more publicly accessible and a better marketing tool than a group. Groups are better for community discussions. For example, I belong to the Vintage Travel Trailer Group on Facebook, and I can get email notices whenever someone posts on that group. I do not get email notifications whenever someone posts on a page that I like — I just see the page’s updates in my news stream.

Groups are a bit more of a commitment for people, because they will get lots of emails related to the group, that’s why for general purposes, pages are more practical. So, the short answer is, yes, definitely create a page and you can always invite the people who “like” your page to join the group for more engaged conversations if they want.

I hope that helps! If what you are saying about groups is true, that people could “see” the group page without being logged in, then perhaps there is a simple privacy setting on the group that would allow you to make it viewable to users who aren’t logged in. Facebook did recently change privacy settings, and perhaps restricting public access to groups was one of those changes. Definitely, check the group settings and see if there are any new options. However, I suspect for a variety of reasons, that groups can only be seen by logged in Facebook users. Here’s one help page: http://www.facebook.com/help?page=982

Let me know what you discover!