Does my business need a separate Facebook page?
I see lots of business, particularly new start ups, using Facebook to try and promote their business. There is no doubt that for many businesses social media provides a cheap channel through which to advertise and promote. However I see some businesses that don’t make the distinction between business and personal, that age old rule!
Facebook was originally intended for people to connect with each other on a personal level; people request to be your friend and you can choose whether or not to accept them. Let’s face it, you probably wouldn’t want someone you don’t know very well to see your personal profile….right? Well that’s what I thought, but I see businesses promoting through their staff’s personal profiles.
Facebook let businesses create their own presence on the site by creating a page (not profile!). A Facebook page for your business will allow you to gain all the benefits of social media, like posting content and updates about your business and promotions, pictures, videos, etc. Your customers can ‘Like’ the page and make comments, post reviews and find out more about what you’re business is up to.
Using a Facebook page is crucial because anyone interested in your business can like the page. If you use your personal profile for promotion then people interested in your business will have to add you as a friend and you will have to accept them before they can access anything. Your Facebook page is available to like 24/7 with no barriers to joining in.
Think about your friends!
Your friends know you are passionate about your business and enjoying hearing how you are getting on occasionally. That doesn’t mean they want their wall filled up with minute but minute updates about your working day! They also don’t want to be bombarded with adverts, promotions and invitations to sign up for newsletters! Even your closest friends will get pretty bored and may end up hiding you from their feed (I have to confess I did this to one person on my profile).
Think about your reputation!
When you create a business page on Facebook, people know what to expect and it has a more professional tone about it. Now have a look at all the stuff in your personal profile, is it all just as professional? No, I thought not.
It only takes someone to tag you in a picture from a night out to give a potential customer that impression where they start to question whether they want to do business with you. And we’ve all seen those status updates where people just venting after a bad day, moaning about things that have annoyed them at work. When that work is your business, you’d probably prefer your customers not to see those sorts of rants.
Keep it separate
So our advice is to keep your business and personal life separate on social networks. You will protect the reputation of your business and you friends will appreciate you for it.
Comments (3)
Your article was very informative! But your advice to “Keep ’em seperated” is easier said than done. My problem is that I created a personal Facebook page. A few weeks later I created a business page (not a “Fan Page” made from my personal page) yet everytime I post anywhere, even when logged in with my Facebook business profile, it shows my posts coming from my name and not my business. How do I fix that?
Business page is http://www.facebook.com/SweepimgFriends
Personal page is https://www.facebook.com/#!/profile.php?id=100002258509155
Thanks in advance!
Looking at your business page you seem to have resolved this by creating a profile with the name ‘Sweeping Friends’.
Officially, Facebook will only allow personal profiles and doesn’t like business profiles, which is why they introduced business pages. Your posts to a business page will still appear to be posted by you (your personal profile), but the things you post to the page are only visible to people who follow your business page. Your friends won’t see those posts unless they’re ‘liked’ your business page. People that ‘like’ your business page who are not on your friends list will not see the personal thinks that you post on your own wall, therefore keeping them separate.
Facebook does have a tenancy to make changes to security settings and therefore it’s work checking them occasionally to make sure everything is in order.
To keep things completely separate, you can sign up two profiles (as you have done), but you can use your real name. You could have a personal Facebook profile and then a professional Facebook profile for example. Just make sure you don’t add yourself as a friend! That way there is no link between your professional and personally presence on Facebook.
Two queries – how to I link my website with my facebook page. How do I get my business page to “find friends” but not my personal ones. I have an outlook list of business emails but can’t find how to link them to my business page.
http://www.facebook.com/scottishancestor
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