Nearly everyone who spends enough time on Facebook has come across a profile that wasn’t a person at all, but rather a business. In the early days of Facebook, businesses had no other choice than to create a personal profile for their businesses if they wanted to reach the 1.3 billion (and counting) social media users. With the advent of the Facebook business page, most online marketers were encouraged to leave their business profiles behind for Facebook business page marketing. Here are the 5 major reasons why you should convert your Facebook profile into a Facebook business page.
Facebook Business Page Marketing Shows Professionalism
Many business owners believe that Facebook profiles give a personal connection to customers that would be harder to recreate on a Facebook business page. But Facebook users are actually already primed to seek out their favorite business pages on Facebook. The Facebook profile information section and different interaction between business pages make “business profiles” appear to be strange at best and an invasion of privacy at worst to many Facebook users. A business page with good content can generate as much if not more commentary than a profile. Your business runs the risk of looking less professional and authoritative with content than the competition with a profile page.
Facebook Analytics Tracking
One of the most effective aspects of Facebook as a marketing platform is the analytics report that business page owners can see each time they login. From how many people have liked your business page to the interactions each post receives, the Insights panel offered to official business pages is a crucial resource to have. Facebook also offers insights into the gender, age, location and other important details of the people who interact with your business. Since profiles are designed to bounce around pages and profiles, they do not offer insights.
Terms of Service
Operating as a business profile is no longer just unprofessional, it is in violation of the official Facebook user agreement. The Facebook Terms of Service disallow the activation of a personal account for anything other than an actual person, including businesses. Businesses who do not comply with Facebook’s Statement of Rights and Responsibilities may be permanently banned from their account if they are caught. If the Facebook profile has gained significant traction, this can be a serious digital PR issue.
Graph Search
Graph Search is one of the most crucial elements of Facebook marketing, and businesses using a profile page are out of the loop. Facebook’s latest game changer has a major impact on the way users search for new things. The major purpose of graph search is to analyze Facebook users interests and likes to display like suggestions tailored to users taste. Graph search is essentially a free referral service for business pages that helps spread the word to the friends of users who have already liked your page. Businesses who operate as profiles automatically opt out of this vital service since Facebook does not recognize them as a business.
No Promotional Rights
A business page has access to Facebook’s promoted posts system, which is a great way to target customers who are already looking for the type of content you generate. User profiles simply don’t have the power or the infrastructure to support a major advertising campaign. While users can post on other pages and may gather a large group of friends, there is no control over the metrics used to determine which friends see what a user posts. In fact, user posts are sometimes buried by Facebook metrics while business pages receive preferential treatment.
Switching your business profile into a business page may seem like a hassle but this change is mandatory as it is beneficial. A new door of marketing tools will open to you once you see Facebook business capabilities. You won’t regret it.
Click here or call 817-642-9686 to ask us how to turn your Facebook profile into a sales lead generating Facebook page!
