Tuesday, August 02, 2011

Personal Profiles are intended for real people. Facebook Pages are intended for businesses, organizations, public figures, etc.



If you market on Facebook you know that you have a decision to make when creating a Facebook personal page or business page for your company. We notice that many small businesses like restaurants, bars even boutique shops are creating personal profiles to promote their business because they feel it is easier and cheaper to get a ton of Friends. This may seem like a good strategy, but we are not so sure.

Personal Profiles are intended for real people. Facebook Pages are intended for businesses, organizations, public figures, etc.

You build up a Facebook Page by getting people to ‘Like’ your page, instead of adding you as a friend.

If you are thinking about giving your business a presence on Facebook, I recommend you start a Facebook Page.

6 reasons to not use a Personal Facebook Profile for your business

1. Facebook Terms & Conditions

Creating a Personal Profile for your business is not how Facebook is intended. If Facebook finds out you are running a Personal profile for business purposes, they may pull the plug on your entire profile.

2. Limited to 5,000 friends

On your Personal Facebook Profile you can only have a maximum of 5,000 friends. The number of ‘Likes’ on your Facebook Page is unlimited. Call me silly, but I would rather not be limited in the number of fans for my business on Facebook!

3. Search Engines

In contrast to your Personal Profile, your Facebook Page gets indexed by search engines. This means that your Facebook Page can be a part of your search engine strategy. Another way to get found by your customers!

4. Promotion & Competitions

Facebook does not allow you to use your Personal Facebook Profile to promote your business or run competitions. If you do so, Facebook can shut down your account.

5. Insights & Analytics

Your Facebook Page comes with all kinds of analytical data about the people who ‘Like’ your page such as city, gender, age, etc. Also, you get insights into how these people interacted with your content and which content was most viewed. This way you can see what people really liked and do more of it!

6. Advertise your Page

And last but not least you can advertise your Facebook Page to people who otherwise might have not heard of you.

Moving your Facebook friends to your Fans Page

Here’s what you do:

1. You log into your Profile

2. Open a new tab and go to this page:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php?migrate



3. You then get the ‘Migrate a Page’ Facebook page which looks similar to the normal ‘Create a Page’ Facebook page.

You now need to select the kind of Page you want to set up. Select Local Business or Brand or Institution, etc.

Once you make your choice, only your (confirmed) friends will be converted to people who ‘Like’ your new Page. Also your profile photo will be converted to your new Page.

The other content such as your uploaded photos, your wall content, etc will not be converted to your new Business Page. So, before you make your choice, make sure you dowload your profile information!

After you have made your choice and have created your Page, you will still be able to log-in with your original email address and password.

So, you can now select a type of Page and create it!



4. You now see your new Page and the ‘Get started’ screen

As you can see, your profile picture is converted and your friends are now converted to ‘Likes’ on your new Business Page.

***

Anything else you need to know?

Well, yes. It’s good to know that your old Personal Profile now does not exist anymore.

It became a Business Account.

The Business Account is still under your old email address and password. So you can log in to your new Business Page.

The Business Account allows you to administer your Pages and run ad campaigns.

Of course you can assign new admins to your Page, as well as operate your new Page ‘as a Page’. Which is one of the changes Facebook made when they launched the redesign of Facebook Pages.

For more information, or to get more Facebook Help contact us here.





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