Statistics show that there are now over 1 billion users on Facebook, and many of them are using it to connect with businesses. A common mistake business owners make is using their personal page for their business marketing. To properly promote your business, you must create a Fan Page for it. What’s the difference? We’ll tell you.
It’s important to note that it is actually against the Facebook rules to advertise your business on personal profile pages. Facebook profiles are typically for individuals to connect with their friends and share daily updates about their lives. Facebook profiles are specifically for personal use, and if Facebook discovers that your profile is not of a real person, they will terminate the profile. Some additional facts that cause personal pages to be less useful than Fan Pages are:
- They’re limited to a maximum of 5,000 friends.
- They’re not indexed by search engines – which means people can’t find your page easily in a Google search.
- They do not have access to Facebook tabs and cannot be analyzed with Facebook Insights.
- Others cannot ‘Like’ or ‘Check In’ at your personal profile.
Fan Pages, on the other hand, are managed through your personal account and are specifically designed for businesses. You can change the settings or add other Admins to the page without creating a whole new account. And since Fan Pages are indexed by search engines, everything that is posted publicly there will also be indexed, drawing more eyes to your business. Other features Fan Pages offer that personal profiles do not are:
- There is no limit to the number of fans a Fan Page can have.
- They have tabs and can by analyzed with Facebook Insights – this feature allows you to dig into your analytics such as your reach, the demographics of your fans and the number of times each of your Page tabs were viewed, among other page data collected.
- People can check in at your business, which will help other people see your business.
- The ability to use third-party apps.
- The opportunity to expand your reach via Facebook’s advertising platform.
Facebook Fan Pages offer different features for businesses, public figures, brands and organizations. If you’d like to communicate with your audience on a day-to-day basis, enhance your reach with applications or track your page engagement data, then creating a Fan Page is the way to go.
Want to see our Facebook Fan Page? Connect with us!
Alicia
That’s all fine and good however unless you PAY Facebook your “fan page” posts don’t show up in all of your followers timelines. But with a regular profile page, they do. If my business didn’t have numbers in the title I WOULD have a profile page instead of a fan page.
Carina Calhoun
Hi Alicia,
Thanks for your comment.
We agree that ii is frustrating that not all of your fans on your business fan page see every post… but not all of the friends on your profile see every post either. It’s just the way Facebook’s algorithm works. But, paying for posts is not the only way to get more people to see your posts (in fact, we rarely recommend it). Being consistent with posting, and creating relevant, share-able content can also help you get more visibility in the newsfeed. The more that your fans interact with your posts, the more Facebook shows them to people. Good luck with your business page!
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