Facebook has become a way of life for our society. The capability to connect with friends and family worldwide in a matter of seconds is momentous. Facebook has also changed the business world. Companies now have the potential to connect with millions of Facebook users on a daily basis without having to dish out millions in advertising dollars.
Once that potential is realized, many small businesses go to sign up for Facebook account and innocently create a personal profile. I want to let you know of an incredible tool that Facebook has built for your business. It is called the Facebook Page.
There are two types of accounts that can be created on Facebook.
- Personal Profile-this is for individuals
- Page-this is for businesses, institutions, organizations, brands, products, artists, bands, public figures, etc.
We highly recommend businesses to create a Page rather than a Personal Profile.
Facebook has carefully established boundaries that help keep it from being conquered by spam like Myspace. Yes, these boundaries make it a bit more difficult for Pages to initially connect with people, but they are there for good reason. On the bright side, when Facebook created these boundaries, they also equipped Pages with tools that are not available on Personal Profiles. These powerful tools help you measure your effectiveness on Facebook. Now you can make educated decisions concerning your efforts on Facebook rather than shooting in the dark. Here are just 5 reasons we believe in the Facebook Page.
1) Professional Appearance
Business Pages are designed for….(get this)…..BUSINESSES! Artist Pages are set up expressly for artists. Product Pages are created for products. And Personal Profiles are set up for singular persons. In my humble opinion, when a business sets up a Personal Profile it looks very unprofessional. It tells me they don’t know what they are doing or they don’t care about their online presence. A Personal Profile contains information like your birthday, family info, employers, favorites, interests and activities. These categories are unsuitable for businesses or organizations. Pages have information categories designed specifically for your clients to easily connect with you. Facebook automatically equips you with a professional appearance when you create a Page.
2) Simple Website
Don’t have a website? Facebook gives you the ability to create a simple one and it’s FREE. Notice our URL. Once you have a certain amount of ‘Likes’ on your Page, you can choose an easy to remember web address to send your clients to. Your clients can simply type in your Facebook web address and they are on your page. They don’t have to have Facebook accounts to view your Page. You also have the ability to add custom pages to your Facebook Page. Here is a glimpse of two custom pages we have added to the MyModernWeb Facebook Page.
And to top that off, your Facebook Page is indexed by search engines like Google, Yahoo andBing like a regular website.
3) Check Ins
Word of mouth advertising is the best and easiest form of advertising out there. Facebook Check-Ins have revolutionized word of mouth advertising. Your customers can create new business for you simply by checking in at your place of business. Their entire friends list can see their Check In. This could cause their friends to remember that they need or want something that you offer or bring awareness that you are there. There are many times that my friends have checked in to a place that I didn’t even know existed. And now I do! Look at what ‘Likes’ and ‘Check-Ins’ did for Orange Leaf Frozen Yogurt in Joplin.
4) Unlimited Likes
Facebook Pages do not have cap on how many people can like them. Personal Profiles can only have 5,000 friends. What if you built your fan base on a Personal Profile and you reached the max? Your done. All that work and you can’t build it anymore.
5) Insights
And now we come to my favorite reason why businesses should have a Facebook Page. The Insights!!! This tool is free with any Page. The Insights give you a detailed view of your influence on Facebook. You can see demographic information about your fans such as gender, age, country, city and even language. This helps you know who your audience is. The Insights give you information about how your customers are interacting with your page. For instance, it shows you how many people liked your posts, how many people commented on your posts, what posts received the most attention, what pages are being viewed, where your visitors are coming from and so much more. My personal favorite Insight is the Impressions. Under each status update on your Page, Facebook reveals how many times your status has made an impression. Let me give you an example of the power of this tool. When I send out my monthly reports to my Online Marketing Department clients, I include a statement that measures their Impressions. This is from a report last month.
“Your daily posts on your page have anywhere from 93 to 781 impressions. That means that a single post has been seen at least 93 times and some of them were seen as much as 781 times. You had a total of 34,205 Post Views last month!”
34.205 Post Views, WHAT!?! That kind of information is exciting and would have been impossible to figure were it not for the Facebook Insights.
All of these tools (and more) are only available to Facebook Pages. If I were a business, I would create a Page from the get go. If you have already created a Personal Profile for your business, don’t worry. Go right now and create a Page. Work for the next month to move the friends over to your Page. Tell them the personal profile is going to be shut down and if they want to stay updated on your news, they need to ‘Like’ your Page. Work your Facebook Page a few minutes a day and it will work for you. Watch what other businesses or organizations are doing and follow suit. Get creative. Facebook could change the course of your business forever!