On Tuesday, September 22, I presented a seminar at the Brooklyn Business Library to a room full of small-business owners and soon-to-be entrepreneurs. The topic: “Social Networking and Your Business.”
During the workshop, I discussed the importance of defining your customer’s online persona, introduced some great places to do research, and explained the differences between Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook.
The feedback from the room was fabulous. But a question that was asked during the seminar prompted me to take the time to write this, as I think it’s something that targets an issue of ongoing confusion and deserves further clarification.
The question: what’s the difference between Facebook profiles and Facebook Pages?
A Facebook profile was originally designed for an individual to connect and talk to their friends. Nowadays, people have been using their profiles on a professional level to connect with business colleagues, treating their Facebook profile as a way of reaching clients or prospects.
Facebook Pages are what I like to refer to as “mini-sites” or communities. By creating a Facebook page for your business, you can connect with clients and prospects, but the tools were designed with mass communication in mind, making them better-suited for professional purposes than profiles.
Here is an example that I hope will clarify why you should use pages over profiles for your business:
- If you use your profile when you want to contact friends, you will need to either post a message on your wall or send friends an e-mail. The way e-mail works among friends is like sending a mass mail with everyone in the CC field.
- When you use pages you can send an update to your fans. This works like broadcast e-mail systems do–like putting everyone in the BCC field. Additionally, by using a fan update you can even target your fans by dividing your list into groups by gender, age or geography.
- The greatest benefit: you have happy fans because there is nothing that annoys people more than constant e-mails of a thread they did not want to follow.
As you can see, if you’re an author, consultant or small business, pages are the best way to connect with your customers on Facebook.
Tags: facebook, marketing online, New Media, social media marketing
