Why a Facebook Business Page?

What are you using right now?image of a facebook like button

Is it a Facebook business page?

Is it a Facebook personal profile?

Are you not 100% sure?

Who cares? Does Facebook?

I am amazed and frustrated at just how many businesses are still using, and setting-up, a Facebook personal profile to market their business on the Social Media platform. So who cares what you are using? Does Facebook care?

Quite simply yes they do care and that is why they have recently started to take a tougher stance on those using a personal profile to market their business. They have now become far more aggressive in removing offenders and as a result there are literally hundreds of thousands of businesses who are now having their profiles deleted, so why take the risk?

Well if the thought of having all your years of hard work going to waste isn`t enough of a wake-up call then here are my 10 top reasons why you should change straight away before losing everything!

Before I go into too much detail all is not lost as those lovely people at Facebook will help you migrate your personal profile to a business page.

10 Benefits of using a Facebook Business Page

  1.  We all want to be on page 1 of Google don`t we? – So what if I tell you that Facebook business pages are indexed by the search engine giant and personal profiles are not? Yes you can direct traffic to your website by using your personal profile but with Google`s recent updates to its algorithms it is putting more emphasis on your social media profiles, so having a social footprint or presence that Google can index is essential.
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  2. How many Facebook fans do you want? – As a business I guess we all want as many followers or fans as we can don`t we? With a Facebook fan page it is unlimited to how many fans you can have, when it comes to your personal profile the limit is 5,000. That may be okay for you now but what happens in a year, two years or three years time? Do you really want the heartache then of migrating all those advocates of your business to a new location?[dt_gap height=”20″ /]image of a green thumbs up and a red thumbs down which relates to the benefits of using a Facebook business page
  3. What if you could find exactly who your target audience is and exactly when they are on Facebook? – Well with Facebook Insights you have all of this information at your disposal, yes you`ve guessed it…all of this information is available on a Facebook business page but is not available on personal profiles. Can you afford not to have this type of information for your business?[dt_gap height=”20″ /]
  4. Keep it business related – To a certain degree you can keep it all business related and keep your personal stuff for your family and friends. Do you really want your relatives seeing all your business stuff? Do you really want your clients seeing your latest meal at Frankie & Bennies (other restaurants are available!) or those embarrassing pictures of you down the pub with a toilet seat around your head?[dt_gap height=”20″ /]
  5. Brand Awareness – You want as much exposure for your business and brand as you can. Your Facebook business page can be tagged both by your fans and other business pages whereas your personal profile can only be tagged by your friends. Your business page can also now be tagged within Facebook Groups too. You want your brand showing up on as many Timelines as you can so you want to be tagged as many times and in as many places as you can and not just restricted to your `Friends`.[dt_gap height=”20″ /]
  6. Professional image – What message does it portray to potential and existing clients if you direct them from your website or other promotional material to a personal profile? Using a personal profile for your business looks amateurish. First impressions in business as in life are crucial, make sure you create that good first impression.[dt_gap height=”20″ /]
  7. Checking-In – Fans are able to Check-In to your Facebook business page which basically becomes an advert for your brand, they cannot do this with a personal profile. The idea of Social Media is to get people to interact with your brand, by allowing them to Check-In to your location it is once again helping to create that social footprint around your business and what better advertising when a Facebook user see that a friend of theirs has checked in at your business?[dt_gap height=”20″ /]image of a Facebook thumbs up from Martin Reynolds social media consultant`s blog post
  8. Schedule your Posts – An excellent feature that Facebook offers is the ability to schedule your posts. Imagine this…you have a busy week planned but you have an hour or two on the Monday, why not schedule all of your week`s posts (using Facebook Insights to find the optimum time and day that your followers are using Facebook of course!) on the Monday? Job done, now you have the rest of the week to get on with running your business![dt_gap height=”20″ /]
  9. Facebook Advertising opportunities – Yes I know what you`re thinking! I said exactly the same thing…”the day I have to pay to use Facebook I`m gone!” But think about this for a moment…Facebook advertising is very targeted and you can narrow your campaign down to the audience`s age range, sex, location, interests and set your own budget. Now what if you wanted to put an advert in a local newspaper but told them that you wanted to advertise only to readers aged between 18-35, are female, live within 25 miles of London and are interested in cooking! What do you think they would say to you? And guess what? You can only advertise through your business page.[dt_gap height=”20″ /]
  10. Avoid losing everything – Of course the main benefit of using a business page over a personal profile is that you do not risk being shut down and losing your following for your business. Would you really want to start the process of building a good, quality following all over again?[dt_gap height=”20″ /]

There are many good reasons for using a Facebook business page but these are, in my opinion, the most beneficial.

Please let me know if you know of any benefits in using a personal profile for your business brand, I`d be interested to hear them.

Until next time…

Martin

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