Facebook Profile Or Page For Business?

[nehadas87]

Originally Posted by KirkEisele

I wrote this post for my blog and thought I would post it here for the forum. Hope it is useful! - Kirk
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Facebook Profile or Page?

Should your business use a Facebook profile or a Facebook page? One of my clients asked this question and I thought it would make a good post. The right answer, as always, depends on the business and the owner.

First, it is important to understand that you need to have a Facebook profile from which you can create a page. Even if you don’t want to actively use it, I recommend creating a page using your business name as the URL for the page just in case you want it later. It would be a shame a couple years down the road to want to have www.facebook.com/yourbusiness and have it be gone. At the moment if your business page doesn’t have 1000 fans you can’t specify the username yet but that criteria is purported to be released soon so be ready to check it. For other social media sites to secure your username on, check out my previous post Protect Your Business Name on 5 Social Media Sites.

There are a few key differences between a page and a profile. First, a profile is limited to a maximum of 5000 friends whereas a page can have an unlimited number of fans. If you reasonably expect to have more than 5000 fans/friends then the decision is made for you. Get a page. If not, keep reading.

Another difference is in the assumed public nature of a page. Facebook assumes that it is a public space and exposes it by default for search engines and the like. A profile has an assumption of relative “private-ness” which you can turn off but need to take steps to do. It isn’t a big deal but make sure to review your privacy settings if you stick with a profile. This difference in assumed privacy preference points to an underlying difference between a page and a profile. Facebook assumes that a profile is a single, specific person and a page represents a public entity of some kind other than a person. Even in the case of a celebrity, their page is not the person but the brand as a whole from Facebook’s point of view.

How does your business interact with it’s customers? My recommendation is that if you are a charismatic face for your business and deal with the majority of clients personally, go with a profile and use its personal nature to let clients be closer to you as a person. Share pictures of your family, updates of your thoughts on a wide range of topics and in general use your Facebook profile to promote your business by the quality of your personal relationships and integrity. This can be a very powerful approach and is in general great for lawyers, real estate agents, CPA’s, and other professionals/consultants. If your business is YOU and support around YOU then go with a profile.

If your business is based on a systemized interaction with your customers in which there isn’t a persistent personal connection between a given employee and client, or you have many such relationships, then go with a page instead. Save your profile for your own personal connections and friends. You can still connect with customers on a personal level through the profile if you wish. The page will serve as a more natural hub for your business with its own identity. This is a weaker connection in most cases but if it is the most appropriate then that is correct.

And now a note on the future… Nobody can predict with 100% accuracy what Facebook will do but it makes sense to assume that their internal perception of the uses of profiles vs. pages will continue and result in features and benefits that strengthen each of those types of identities. New features for pages are likely to be “broadcast” types of things while features for profiles are likely to be designed to strengthen the bonds between individuals. I hope that this information is helpful in choosing the correct path for your business. Good luck!

Thanks for the article. But i h ave a question for you. I have a business page under my facebook profile account. When I visit another page and like what I see, I want to share it with the fans on my business page. But when I click "share" it just gets posted to my profile, and not my business page. How can I share with my business page?

Regards...
Neha Das

[tenfor2]

Originally Posted by nehadas87

When I visit another page and like what I see, I want to share it with the fans on my business page. But when I click "share" it just gets posted to my profile, and not my business page. How can I share with my business page?

It's better to have an app with canvas page, then when signed in, you'll have an option to "use facebook as %NameofApp%" this, way it will be liked by your business page

[SanWay]

We try to use FB for SEO purposes, but i cant say that it brings us much traffic...for me FB is more a social site for chatting that for making business...

[NinjaVirtual]

Originally Posted by mattlilly

Great post. I have been struggling to answer this simple question.

KirkEisele explains it very well, I would just add also, that if you use personal profile you are limited to 5000 friends - fan page has unlimited number of fans ability, most of the time those 5000 clicked on your profile so you would click on theirs, and with fan page only those who are really interested will join so you have a better quality of audience, and fan page gives you many tools you can use for better marketing: attracting more quality fans and at the same time building a list of leads to market later on...profile page does not do that...

So my vote is fan page for all businesses.

[iamlegend]

Thanks KirkEisele... I really learned a lot from your post. I definitely do think that having a Facebook fan page helps a lot-especially not with the Live News Feed. It is constantly being updated not with just people's statuses but everything they are up to! I've stumbled upon many different pages because of my friends liking a certain page and it showing up on my news feed.

[DennisChang]

Originally Posted by nehadas87

Thanks for the article. But i h ave a question for you. I have a business page under my facebook profile account. When I visit another page and like what I see, I want to share it with the fans on my business page. But when I click "share" it just gets posted to my profile, and not my business page. How can I share with my business page?

Regards...
Neha Das

You can choose to "use Facebook as your business page" rather than "as your individual". There is a little triangle at the top right-hand corner of Facebook, click on it and you can choose to use facebook as your business page.

[DennisChang]

Thanks for the article.

One thing to correct: You only need more than 25 likes to create a unique username for your facebook page (Eg. http://www.facebook.com/yourbusiness).

Another thing is, it is much more easier to Add friends as a profile, than to request for likes as a page.

I am also wondering, would it be good to create a facebook group too? It is much easier to add people into facebook group, although the activities will not appear on their news feeds.

[InSavvy]

Thank you for your post!

[waynemorrise]

Originally Posted by KirkEisele

I wrote this post for my blog and thought I would post it here for the forum. Hope it is useful! - Kirk
-------------------------------------------------
Facebook Profile or Page?

Should your business use a Facebook profile or a Facebook page? One of my clients asked this question and I thought it would make a good post. The right answer, as always, depends on the business and the owner.

First, it is important to understand that you need to have a Facebook profile from which you can create a page. Even if you don’t want to actively use it, I recommend creating a page using your business name as the URL for the page just in case you want it later. It would be a shame a couple years down the road to want to have www.facebook.com/yourbusiness and have it be gone. At the moment if your business page doesn’t have 1000 fans you can’t specify the username yet but that criteria is purported to be released soon so be ready to check it. For other social media sites to secure your username on, check out my previous post Protect Your Business Name on 5 Social Media Sites.

There are a few key differences between a page and a profile. First, a profile is limited to a maximum of 5000 friends whereas a page can have an unlimited number of fans. If you reasonably expect to have more than 5000 fans/friends then the decision is made for you. Get a page. If not, keep reading.

Another difference is in the assumed public nature of a page. Facebook assumes that it is a public space and exposes it by default for search engines and the like. A profile has an assumption of relative “private-ness” which you can turn off but need to take steps to do. It isn’t a big deal but make sure to review your privacy settings if you stick with a profile. This difference in assumed privacy preference points to an underlying difference between a page and a profile. Facebook assumes that a profile is a single, specific person and a page represents a public entity of some kind other than a person. Even in the case of a celebrity, their page is not the person but the brand as a whole from Facebook’s point of view.

How does your business interact with it’s customers? My recommendation is that if you are a charismatic face for your business and deal with the majority of clients personally, go with a profile and use its personal nature to let clients be closer to you as a person. Share pictures of your family, updates of your thoughts on a wide range of topics and in general use your Facebook profile to promote your business by the quality of your personal relationships and integrity. This can be a very powerful approach and is in general great for lawyers, real estate agents, CPA’s, and other professionals/consultants. If your business is YOU and support around YOU then go with a profile.

If your business is based on a systemized interaction with your customers in which there isn’t a persistent personal connection between a given employee and client, or you have many such relationships, then go with a page instead. Save your profile for your own personal connections and friends. You can still connect with customers on a personal level through the profile if you wish. The page will serve as a more natural hub for your business with its own identity. This is a weaker connection in most cases but if it is the most appropriate then that is correct.

And now a note on the future… Nobody can predict with 100% accuracy what Facebook will do but it makes sense to assume that their internal perception of the uses of profiles vs. pages will continue and result in features and benefits that strengthen each of those types of identities. New features for pages are likely to be “broadcast” types of things while features for profiles are likely to be designed to strengthen the bonds between individuals. I hope that this information is helpful in choosing the correct path for your business. Good luck!

Good job Kirk.
We must all know what's the difference between this two. So that we can promote properly without any problem to encounter.

[morganbarnhart]

Originally Posted by SanWay

We try to use FB for SEO purposes, but i cant say that it brings us much traffic...for me FB is more a social site for chatting that for making business...

Facebook is a social network and should be used accordingly. If you're getting engagement from it, then you're using Facebook exactly as it should be!

As far as the personal/page debate goes, this is a really well-thought out article and each business should think clearly about what is best for them.

Personally, I started my personal FB page way before I got into the business side of things, so I have more friends & family on there, so trying to use it for business would be a big no-no for me.

So it is important to keep the other people on your FB page in mind; are you going to be talking about the crazy night of drinking on your personal FB page which happens to have a lot of business contacts on there as well? If so, would probably be a good idea to separate the two.

You get the idea.

Again, great article!