So here’s the question: If you are looking to promote your business on facebook – is it better to use a facebook profile or a facebook page?
The answer is simple – you should use a facebook page. and there are some very important reasons – which anyone who chose to set up a profile for their business should consider…
But first – what’s the difference?
1. A facebook profile page – this is what you have for your personal page. This is where you post your personal information and make friends. You ask to add people as friends – and facebook sends them a message asking them to confirm that they want to connect with you.
2. A facebook page – this can be used for the purposes you see on the left which is the starting point within facebook.
There are some significant differences but perhaps the most important is that people can simply like your page – you don’t have to approve their request to like your page – they can simply click on the like button to start following your company.
But clearly there are many businesses who are using a facebook profile to promote themselves. Here are the top five reasons this is not a good idea:
1. It’s against the facebook rules. And facebook can simply delete the page. It has happened – the fact that it might not have happened to your page yet doesn’t mean it will not. If facebook think that you were doing this deliberately to try and bypass their rules they will not only remove that profile, but they might also delete your own related personal account. You would lose all the contact associated with the accounts. Period.
There are good reasons for this policy, which a few moments of thought will make sense – this is perhaps a subject we can cover in another post – suffice to say here that it simply breaks rule 4!
2. You can optimise a facebook page for SEO reasons. and you can use the page as you would a regular website page. We are currently running a Google AdWords campaign for a Canadian client who has a Special Offer on their facebook page and people who click on their Google ad are directed to the facebook page rather than the website. You can’t do this with a profile.
3. When you become friends with another person on facebook – through their profile – they get access to a lot of your personal information. People are unlikely to want to give that level of access to a company, no matter how well respected the company is. With a facebook page people simply “like” your page. The company does not have access to their personal information.
4. Your business could run out of friends. A facebook profile has a limit of 5,000 friends (Who has 5,000 friends? I hear you ask – you’d be surprised how many people cannot make any new friends having reached the 5,000 limit). facebook pages have no such limit. Cocal Cola’s facebook page has over 45 million followers!
5. A facebook profile is one dimensional – you can list your posts, but everything is on the timeline. A facebook page, on the other hand, has the option to add apps – these used to be called tabs – and are the small thumbnails under the cover photo which can take the visitor to sub pages. We use these for things such as competitions, forms, offers and specials. Apps open up a whole range of possibilities that profile’s don’t offer.
But don’t panic – facebook recognise that many people have set up a profile for their business for purely innocent reasons. For this reason there is a simple process which helps you migrate from a profile to a page.
