Yes! There is a difference between a Facebook profile and a Facebook Fan Page.
Facebook profiles are for people.
Fan Pages are for businesses.
I cringe every time I see someone set up a profile in their business name. Here’s why:
People vs. business
Profiles are intended for people, not businesses. It’s actually against the Facebook terms to use a profile for a business. If the Facebook gods find your profile set up like this, it’s possible they may delete the entire profile. So much for all your hard work getting friends!
SEO
Your Facebook Fan Page can be a part of your Search Engine Optimization strategy. Why is that, you ask? It’s because Fan pages are indexed by search engines. Profiles are not.
If you’re like most business owners, you want as many people as possible to find you online. If you set up a profile in your business name, you’re not maximizing your exposure. Sure, your Facebook friends will be able to see your page, but new people won’t find you all that easily.
Fans vs. Friends
Fan Pages can have an unlimited number of fans. Profiles can only have 5,000 friends. If you’re trying to build your business, why limit yourself? It only makes sense to choose the option that allows you to have more people get on your bandwagon.
One profile – many Fan Pages
You can have multiple fan pages, but only one personal profile. This is important for people who want to promote different businesses or groups. I have my personal profile and fan pages for PetsitUSA, The Pet Food List, and Austin Pet First Aid, which are businesses I own. I also have one for Wishbones for Pets – a pet sitter charity I operate with the founder Janet Depathy, of Under My Wings.
Keep in mind that you can still connect with people on a business level through your personal profile. I use my profile to keep in touch with family and friends, but I also connect with quite a few people due to business reasons. Since people like to know the person behind the business, this is a good way to interact with them. It’s also one way for me to create my personal brand. Note: Before using your profile in this way, get clear on the type of content you want to post on your profile. (More on that in an upcoming blog post.)
Set up a Facebook Fan Page or go to Facebook.com to set up your Profile.
Update (March 31, 2011): Facebook recently made it possible to convert a personal profile to a business page. See this post for more info: How to Convert a Facebook Profile to a Business Page.
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Hi Therese,
How do you determine (or does FB determine for you) which 5 photos will shop up along the top of your Profile Page?
Thanks so much!!!
Lisa
You have to tag them appropriately. If you want to set up a consulting call, let me know. I’d be happy to help with this & other FB questions.
So happy to have come across this thread and thanks for being so generous with your expertise. I recently changed my business name from San Mateo Rolfing to simply my name, Kathy McConnell. I set up a page for my business under my name and later discovered that facebook had automatically set up a page called San Mateo Rolfing. Now I want to blend the two so that I don’t have to do double work. Is there any way to combine two business pages?
Are you talking about the one with the suit box image in the upper left corner of the page? If so, you can’t do anything with those. They automatically generate content based on the page’s topic.
so if i’m setting up a business, say a new homebuilder’s business, would i set up the actual homebuilding company’s page under ‘company, organization or institution’ and then set up multiple communities (different communities at various locations which are entities themselves) under ‘local business or place’ for each separate community? do you think it unwise to do the latter if a community eventually sells out and you either quite using that page or close it?
I’d set up a page for each location if you have enough manpower to manage each page. That way you’re setting up a place where people can interact about that exact location rather than the entire brand.
Therese,
Your blogs AWESOME! BTW: how would i know if i’m looking at a fan page vs. a personal page?
If it’s a page you’re going to see a like button at the top of the page (if you haven’t already clicked it). If you’ve already clicked the like button you’re going to see a Create a Page button in the upper right corner.
If you visit a profile you’ll see buttons at the top to Add Friend, Subscribe, or Message. If you’re already friends you’ll still see the same buttons but the friend button will just say Friends.
I have a facebook group page for my business, Emerging Art Scene, with 1300+ friends. A college group set up a fan page for Emerging Art Scene with about 130 friends. I need to delete one of the groups, and need to decide which, before I start inviting more.
Also, I have a larger following (3600) on my personal profile, and 900 friend requests, 700 subscribers. I have used the personal profile to brand myself in my field, however, I don’t want to convert it to a business page. I read that I would lose past photos and posts, and limit my feeds and ability to comment on others walls. People seem to like to see the person behind the business.
My business page wont let me like other fb pages why?
Are you using Facebook as your page? If not, login to your account, go to your page, and click the link that says “Use Facebook as (your page name)”
Hi,
I followed Therese’s advice for my husband’s business page but his page still cannot like other fb pages. I hope someone in this community can help because no one we’ve talked to could figure this out.
Thanks!
Lora,
It may be that the business page your husband is trying to “like” are not in fact actual pages, but rather personal accounts posing as a business. I’ve come across this several times. There are a few ways to find out if this is the case. You can log into your personal account and look up the “business”, and view their timeline. If it says “Add Friend” or “Friends” than it is a personal profile. Also, when searching for people and places with the search box at the top of facebook, it will separate possible matches into People, Places, and Pages. You can check there to see if the page you’re trying to like is in fact a page or person.
Facebook currently does not allow pages to like personal profiles. Because of people using their profiles as business I’m unable to connect with them as a business from my page. Unfortunately people don’t realize the limitations and problems with using a profile verses a page. This post was really good at outlining the difference and benefits.
I hope this answers your question
Hi, I’ve setup 4 pages (from my personal profile). How do I change the email notifications to an email address from that specific company, instead of them all coming to my personal email?
You can’t, but you can turn off the notifications and use http://www.hyperalerts.no/ to notify you at whatever email you choose. You’ll have to set up a separate account for each email you want to receive notifications. I like it much better than the FB notifications though because you can get the alerts within minutes, or a digest every hour, day, week or month.
Its been rumored that facebook is planning to force “Business” profile pages to be changed into Fan Pages… Can anyone confirm if this is true and if there is a time frame.
Hi Robert, I’ve heard from a few different people lately that Facebook is cracking down on profiles that are used for businesses. I’m not hearing that they are converting them to pages though. What I am hearing is that more and more profiles used for businesses are simply being deleted.
It’s important to remember that the Facebook TOS has always stated that profiles are for people only. So, if you’re using a profile for a business, you’re really living Facebook life on the edge. They may never delete your page, but if they do, it could really be detrimental to your business.
After I received about 250 likes, I stopped receiving notices from Facebook regarding someone ‘Like”ing my page. What’s up with that?
And, can i setup sub-pages of my main facebook page for other divisions of my company? instead of management several facebook fan pages?
thanks for the help
I’m not sure why FB would have stopped sending you the notices. Take a look at your notification settings and make sure they’re the way you want them. If they are, change them, click save, and then change them back. Sometimes resetting things like that can fix whatever glitch may be causing the problem. Another option though is to use HyperAlerts. http://www.hyperalerts.no/ I don’t even bother with the FB alerts because HyperAlerts is so superior. You’ll have options that FB doesn’t have.
Just like Alex above Facebook won’t let my fan page like other fan pages. I have clicked to use my fan page button but the “like” button won’t even show up on the fan page i want to like in order to click on it. I’m I doing something wrong?
Be sure you’re trying to like a page rather than a profile. Even if you’re using facebook as your page you will be able to view profiles. It could be that the pages you’re trying to like are actually profiles. Normally the like button doesn’t show up if you have not already liked a page.
I’m having a similar issue as Joe with my husband’s business page. He tries to “like” my fb business page and other non-profile pages but no “like” button appears. My husband has yet to have the ability to like any businesses.
Somewhere along the way I set up a personal Facebook account with my home email address and a second account with my business email address. I have people and info in both that I don’t want to lose. I believe I should get rid of one but I don’t use it for personal communication. I really only want Facebook for business and if my friends and relatives come along that’s ok.
What are your recommendations for consolidating and how do I do it without losing those friends and family that are already connected to my personal account or vice versa?
hi,
i just converted my personal facebook page into a business page, but now i do not have a personal page. my business is my name daniel levin and when i try to set up a personal page, it needs a cell phone number where they can text message a code to, when i give my cell, they tell me it is already in use forkj another page, my business page. is there any way to set up a business page and a personal page. can you help me please?????
I just recently took over the job of posting to FB for my company. It looks like we have a profile page AND a fan page. Based on the above comments, it seems I need to be using our Fan Page strictly for our business. Does that mean I can delete our personal Profile Page? It looks as though the previous person has been posting to both pages, and I want to make sure it’s ok to delete the Personal Page and still retain the Fan Page. Thanks!
Hi Deb, good question. If the profile is in your business name it definitely does need to be deleted. HOWEVER…and this is CRUCIAL. BEFORE deleting your profile, you will need to make someone an admin, that would be someone with a legitimate personal profile. By legitimate, I mean a person who has a personal profile in their own name. And be sure that person is set as a manager. If you delete the business profile without setting someone as a manager, you will most likely lose the page.
hi guys,
I have one query on this topic. We all know if we have profile page then we can create so many fan page. but is it possible in reverse? I wants to solve this as early as possible. can anyone help me on this? Thanks in advance
If I understand you right, you want to have a page with a personal profile attached, correct? If that’s the case, set up a personal profile in your name (NOT the business name). Then like the page. After that, login to your page and set the personal profile as an admin for the page. Then, whenever you login to your personal profile, you will be able to work on the page as well.
Hope that helps.
Hello, Our business only wants to manage a business/fan page for two divisions. However a profile was set up for each division but we want to keep the business page. How can we keep the business page and delete the profile page?
Go to your business page and set someone up with admin rights. This will be a person who has a personal profile in their name (not a business name). That will enable the admin to login to their own personal profile, and then manage the page from there. It’s a good idea to have at least 2 admins for each page. That way, in case one person’s profile is deleted, hacked, or inaccessible for whatever reason, someone else will still have access to the page. After you have at least one person set as an admin for the pages, you can delete the profile. Make sense?
Won’t that just switch the admin from the one profile page to another? We don’t want the pages to be connected. We just want the face of the Business page without all of the personal perspectives/comments on the profile pages. For example we have a Big Rig Truck Division. We have “Big Rig 1″ as our profile page and “Big Rig” as our Business page. We don’t want to deal with all the personal and political comments on the “Big Rig 1″ profile page. Thanks for the earlier answer.
Is it possible to have a Business page without a profile page?
It is possible, but I try to encourage everyone to have at least 2 admins.
Thanks! I will attempt your suggestion before I start from scratch. Don’t want to loose all of our likes.
Therese, I’m confused. I have a new business with a spiffy new website. We’ve added the social media buttons to the home page. So, I see a button for Facebook, et al., and also a “like” button. I see that when I click on the FB button, it opens a link to the website that appears on my personal FB page.
But what does the “like” button on my website do? I can see a count of how many have liked the website. Does this info appear on the likers’ FB page?
Finally, I also have a business FB page for my business (separate from my personal profile FB page.) If folks like my FB business page, what does that do? Does that info appear on their FB pages as well?
Confused by social media,
MBRobb
Hi there! Do you use Twitter? I’d like to follow you if that would be okay. I’m undoubtedly enjoying your blog and look
forward to new updates.
How would you handle this situation…FB profile was started with a company page. then another business page was started as a new account..so they have 2 company pages and 1 profile. The profile with business page has more followers but the newer page is ranked in search listings. My thoughts are to close the new one since it has fewer followers..any feedback
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