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Facebook for business – using a profile vs. a page
I have a pet peeve to share with you – businesses using a Facebook personal profile as their official business presence … it’s wrong so STOP IT (please). I’ve seen countless examples where they have amassed hundreds or thousands of ‘friends’ and they don’t realise what the price is that they may end up paying.
I’ll explore here why businesses do it, what’s wrong with it and the benefits of using a business page. I’ll cover using Facebook groups in a separate post.
[NOTE: I'm not talking about one-man bands/small businesses who are themselves on Facebook, I'm talking here about personal profiles being used with a business name, not a person's name]
Why are businesses using personal profiles on Facebook?
1. You don’t understand Facebook and set it up as a personal profile in error – I like to give people the benefit of the doubt and some genuinely have no clue.
2. You think it will be easier to collect ‘friends’ than ‘likes’ – to a large extent, they are right. On average we have 130 friends on Facebook but only ‘like’ 10 Facebook pages on average.
So what’s the problem then?
Either way, you need to understand that they are violating Facebook’s T&C’s. As a result, Facebook can [and have] suspend you from Facebook with immediate effect which means the businesses lose their loyal fan base in one fail swoop – oops…., bet you didn’t write that part into your online marketing risk analysis eh….
What’s so special about business pages?
There’s plenty already written about the many benefits of a Facebook page, including:
1. Facebook advertising – you need a page to do advertising on Facebook, it’s growing in popularity and is a very useful tool to have in the marketing toolbag for most businesses.
2. Insights & analytics – why are you using Facebook (or any other social media site for that matter) if you’re not tracking the success and impact, or otherwise, of what you are doing?
3. Added functionality – you can offer a better user experience by adding plugins/apps to your page such as surveys,
4. Multiple admin function – for many businesses you have a team operating the page.
5. Welcome tab – you can make your page have the same look and feel as your website which offers a seamless online experience & a welcoming effect.
Eek! So I need to convert my profile to a page, what do I do?
Go to the Facebook help pages here and follow the instructions – just note that:
- your ‘friends’ will become ‘likes’
- your profile picture(s) will be carried over
- your content will be LOST so be sure to download a file of anything important as you’ll have to build the content up by scratch
Don’t risk Facebook closing you down and undoing all your hard work – convert now and reduce the risk to your business.
Do you see personal profiles being used as pages? Does it bother you? As always, I’d welcome your thoughts….
TTFN
Jan 
I’m sure its more likely to be in error than deliberate. I’ve set up a facebook “page” as well as my personal profile, but my coaching posts still appear on the personal pages. It might be because I am incorrectly clicking the wrong button on hoot suite? My WordPress blogs seem to go on the business and personal pages, although the facebook link has been set up to go to the coaching page. Thanks for the heads up, I’ll need to be more careful in future and look at my post settings in case its something I’m doing inadvertently.
Hi Judith, many thanks for your comments. Sadly I do know of businesses who have deliberately set up using a personal profile!
Sounds you might be posting incorrectly from hootsuite – have you linked both your personal profile and your page within Hootsuite? If so make sure you only select the page icon when posting. Anything you post on your busness page should not also appear as a post from your personal profile, but it will show up in your personal profile stream as I assume you like your own page?
Thanks again
Jan
Good post and you are, of course right.
Just wanted to add one point about WHY Facebook disallows this. There is a degree of trust implied in the “friends” relationship on Facebook. The service uses this to present you with some data about “friends of friends” (you can choose to share some of your private data with “friends of friends”. If one of those friends is a brand or an organisation not a real person this warps the relationship and will almost certainly lead to data being shared with people who have no basis of trust between them.
So, as you say, STOP IT.
Ben thanks for your comment, really valuable insight.
But don’t you have to make a personal profile before you can create a page. I stumbled through the process over the last 2 years, and then changed the business name to my own name, with the threat of having the profile shut down, thereby losing control of the page. A colleague was made administrator to ensure control should my personal profile be shut down, and they have since left the company. The thought of starting up again is a nightmare. Did you see the Emily Maitlis programme on Facebook. I gained a greater understanding of the value for my business ans why I am constantly tagged in others albums!
You can actually create a page without a personal profile but you don’t get full functionality so I generally don’t recommend it. I’m not sure I follow exactly what happened with your page/profile forgive me. If you do set it up again just make sure you think it through and know what you are trying to achieve, if need be get someone who understands Facebook more to hold you hand through it so you manage your fears about it.
I did watch the Facebook programme, there was nothing really new for me in it but it was good to see inside Facebook HQ!
Many thanks for contributing.