I have a FB page for my business which is just a public page with sparse information. I also have a private FB group for my current client base. I've had it for about 5 years now.

The down side is in order to add someone to a private group, they have to be a friend and a public group won't work because of the photographs of the children.

What I do is tell anyone coming for interview about this group, I explain that it's current clients only because of the photos, and I explain that if they use FB I am happy to add them but...I will and do put them on a restricted list so they can't see anything other than the group information. No one has ever responded negatively about my statement that I will be restricting them. I tend to further explain that with all my family in England, and the time difference, FB is how I share information about my own family with those in the UK and because I can't control the settings of FB friends, in order to protect my elderly parents and aunts (and indeed my own sons) from inappropriate content from "friends-of-friends". That seems to be understood so it's never been an issue.

The group is fabulous though. I have master copies of my handbook and contracts in it so if they have misplaced theirs and want to double check anything, they can. I also encourage all my day care families to share information/tips. If someone is sick, the tend to post the information in the group so other families can watch for the same symptoms. And it's also great for when someone is running late - much better than a phone ringing and waking the whole house in the early hours. FB events in the group are created by me for any vacation dates - I add all the stat dates when I'm closed at the beginning of the year so as the time approaches, my day care parents can see it right on their screen, and I do the same for annual leave days too. It tells me who has seen the posting so I know if any of my day care parents haven't seen that I've booked a day off. By titling my vacations dates as "Day 1 of 10" there is a running count with all the historic dates so they can look back and see that I've not taken more than I said without having to keep track themselves.

So in summary - I love having the private group and feel it needs to be private for parent's peace of mind. Making it a secret private group means it can't be found by searching and you can just send a friend request to a new client and once accepted, add them to the group and place them on restricted access to your own information.

Oh - And I don't tag any images I post in there. If the parent wants to tag themselves, so that images can be seen by their own friends and family, that's fine, but I won't tag. It gets flagged to be to approve their request to tag, and I then do so providing it's an image which just has their own child, not the group.