Your Business Needs a Facebook Fan Page – Not A Profile

Why does a business need to be on a Facebook fan page? Facebook has two options: you can have a Profile which represents individuals or you can operate under organizations and businesses and have Pages. You have to have a Facebook Profile to have a Facebook Fan Page for Business.


1. FACEBOOK'S TERMS OF SERVICE


Profiles represent individuals and must be held under an individual name, while Pages allow an organization, business, celebrity, or band to maintain a professional presence on Facebook.


If Facebook discovers you are violating their terms by having an organisation’s page up on Facebook as a Profile they can delete your account and you would lose all your friends, postings etc.


2. PRIVACY FOR YOUR FANS


With a business profile, some people will choose not to add you as a friend since they would be giving you access to their profile page with areas that are private to them. Most people will not go this route with connection.


But if you have a Page for your business, allowing fans to ‘like’ you, then they are not giving you access to the activity on their profile page.

3. PAGES OFFER ANALYTICS


Unlike Profiles, Pages offer analytics, allowing you to see how many likes and comments you received each day, as well as demographic breakdowns.


This data will allow you to better understand your fan base and therefore post wall posts which will get the best reaction.


4. UNLIMITED FANS


Profiles have a limit of 5,000 friends. Pages have no upper limit.


5. SEO CREDIT


With Pages you can embed a Like button on any webpage you maintain. When you post an article on your company blog. The Facebook Like buitton can b e embedded.


Likes are now being taken into account by search engines in a way that links are, so by having fans like your Page and your content, you are allowing SEO credit to be passed onto your website from Facebook. This will improve your rankings in the search engines.


6. MULTIPLE ADMINISTRATORS


By setting up a Page you can have multiple administrators maintain the Page.


Pages are not separate Facebook accounts and do not have separate logins, but those with personal Facebook pages can administer them from their own account.


Those who choose to connect to your Page won’t be able to see that you are the Page administrator or have any access to your personal account.


7. FACEBOOK IS A HUGE SEARCH ENGINE!


• There are 600 million users on Facebook (nearly twice the population of the US);


• 50% of users login every day;


• The average user spends 55 minutes on Facebook every day;


• 70% of Facebook users are located outside the US; and


• Facebook is available in 70 different languages.


It is therefore highly unlikely that none of your target demographic or customers are using Facebook. So by clinging to the excuse that your “customers aren’t on Facebook” and not having a company page, you are missing out on an opportunity to reach both your


8. ENGAGE & POST


Facebook offers an way to engage with your fans on a platform of their choosing.


It allows you to communicate on a less formal level. You can discuss news items relevant to your industry or upcoming events. It will answering direct queries or highlight particular products or services.


Facebook is a completely different platform to Twitte.You do not want to set up your tweets to auto publish to Facebook. A high frequency of tweets is important to get yourself seen in the Twitter news feed. However on Facebook you should keep the posts to once or twice a day, enough to allow yourself show up in your fans’ news feed but without annoying them.


9. SEE WHAT KIND OF FANS YOU HAVE


Facebook allows you insight into your fans in a way a website just isn’t able to. Through Facebook pages you can see your fans broken down by gender, age, location and languages.


You can track your fans interactions with your page to see likes, comments and daily active users. This helps you analyze your posts to taylor future posts that are more effective and create interaction with your visitors.


10. TARGET MARKETING


You can target certain markets by running advertisements. These are more searchable than on other platforms. Facebook advertisements allow you to target specific people based on gender, age, location, education and interests.


Advertisements can be used for anything from simply announcing your page and inviting people to like you, to drawing attention to a special offer or inviting people to an upcoming event.


11. SEARCH RANKING


One of the most important reasons to be on a facebook fan page for your business is the impact on SEO (search engine optimization).


As Facebook pages are public they are indexed by the search engines. Search engines have now advised that they are treating ‘social signals’ such as comments, fan numbers, likes etc. as indicators of importance. The more active you are on these social platforms, the better your chance of ranking above your competitors in the search results, meaning more web traffic and more potential customers.


Conclusion: Get you business on Facebook!