Over the past couple of months I have gotten numerous friend requests from businesses using personal profiles to promote their goods or services. Unfortunately, this is the wrong way to be promoting your business on Facebook and you are at risk of being deleted. More importantly, you are hurting yourself and your business.
There are many reasons why a business page is better than a personal profile for your business.
If you have set up your business on Facebook as a profile page you are in violation of the Facebook user agreement. When you create a personal profile you agree that you will not be using your personal timeline for your own commercial gain. If you have already created your business under a personal profile, there are ways to convert your profile into a business page to avoid being deleted.
Profiles are limited to 5,000 friend, while Pages allow for unlimited likes. Privacy settings can also prevent people from finding your business on Facebook. Pages are more likely to show up in search engines. By using Pages your business will not lose out on potential customers.
A business page provides you with a plethora of tools and options to help your business. These tools not only help you gauge your effectiveness on Facebook; they help you build engagement.
With Insights you have access to data to help you understand your customer. This data can help you understand what your customers like and don’t like, when they are online, and even where they are from.
Tabs allow you to create applications for your business page. These applications can provide users with more information about your business, allow opt-ins to your newsletters, feature products or services, and even provide access to important multimedia content about your business.
Offers allow you to promote specials or deals to your Facebook audience. Whenever someone claims these offers, their friends will see it.
Professional companies use pages, they are the right tool for the job. If you are using profiles to promote your business, you are hurting your credibility.
Privacy is a big issue. If you are using a profile for your business and send out “friend requests”, you are gaining access to personal information about your customers they may not want you to have. Having access to this information could cause problems for your business later on.
You can easily add a Facebook Like box to your website for your company page. Profiles do not allow for this feature.
Are you still using a profile for your business? Now is the time to convert your profile to a Page. If you need help contact us to help you.