I have had a number of requests recently about how your Facebook fan pages integrates with your Facebook personal page. There is a lot of confusion over Facebook’s differentiation of Facebook’s Fan Page and Facebook Personal Page.
Facebook Fan Pages vs Facebook Personal Pages
Facebook Fan Pages are also called Facebook Business Pages and Facebook Like Pages. According to Facebook’s definition, Pages are for organizations, businesses, celebrities, and bands to broadcast great information in an official, public manner to people who choose to connect with them. Basically when you want to get the word out about your business you are officially supposed to use your army of Facebook Fan Pages to help build your brand.
Facebook Personal Pages are the pages for individuals profiles. You are not allowed (or supposed) to have any business name or organization run through a profile page. A number of the previous profile pages that represented organizations were suspended.
Facebook Fan Pages Integration Challenges
There are a few challenges with integrating Facebook Fan Pages with the rest of Facebook. The challenge resides in the fact that it has always seemed that Facebook Fan Pages were an afterthought to Facebook. When a 19 year old college student creates a revolutionary social network for other college students he does not anticipate what happens when that network expands past students and to adults, especially business professionals.
There is no way to know that entrepreneurs will want to connect with business partners and clients. So, they created fan pages. For a time this device worked ok, but the limitations, such as not being able to connect with your fans on a more personal level on their personal fan page and not being able to directly ask people to join their fan page without doing a pay per click model.
Facebook Fan Pages Benefits
That being said there are many benefits for having Facebook fan pages. They are a tremendous help in growing your readership for your blog, because they act as a RSS feed in conjunction with networked blogs. That way you can have people regularly read your posts and become more engaged and involved members of your blog. Those readers will then eventually become clients.
I have had Facebook fan page sign up sheets on the sidebar of this blog for the past year now, and it has been a tremendous benefit. Feel free to like this blog on Facebook!
Additionally it provides another touchpoint where prospects can reach you to discuss their challenges and begin doing business with you. It is amazing how I get 2-3 prospects/clients every month who come to me through my fan page.
All in all Facebook fan pages are great, I just want to have the ability to message individual page members about questions they have or send out basic information on social networking to a group of fans. Additionally, being able to see what they put on their wall will enable this to be more of a two way street for communication with your network.
When that happens then Facebook fan pages will be fully integrated with Facebook personal pages in my opinion.
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Hi Andy,
I appreciate such great information and tips.
I need to revisit my fanpage and make some changes.
Thanks for sharing.
Maggie,
Let me know if you need any help with your fanpage?
Andy
I think Fan Pages are essential for business. And eventually, Facebook will catch up. In the mean time, I love engaging with my favorite brands. I just read a statistic that most people engage with a brand for discounts and coupons. But above average earners engage to be updated on upcoming trends. Something to think about based on your brand.
Debbie,
That is a really good point! Depending on who we want to connect with we should be adjusting our fan pages to meet those interests. It all goes back to targeting your market.
Andy
Hi Andy,
Facebook has made so many changes recently that really do provide even more benefit to business pages such as being able to use FB as your page (meaning you can comment on other pages as your page rather than as a person). You can send a message to an individual fan of your page to answer their questions….just mouse over their pic and you can ‘send message’ from there.
You are right on about FB not wanting business to flow through personal pages. They really do want those activities to remain separate so I wouldn’t expect to see that change any time soon especially since we now have the ability to use FB as a page.
Linnea,
I will have to check out the personal messages. Very possible that I missed that.
It is always wishful thinking to think that we can do more with our fan page!
Andy
Andrew, Your article was extremely helpful. The main thing that jumped out at me was “You are not allowed (or supposed) to have any business name or organization run through a profile page.” Hmmmm, I think maybe I need to fix mine. What started out as a personal page kind of evolved into a business page and I kept getting a notice to change my page when I opened it up. I think you have given me a big clue. Do I sound clueless? LOL
All in all, Great post and thank your for the enlightenment!
Bless you!
Lynn
Lynn,
Glad this was helpful! Definitely take a look at your personal page using an organization or company name. They generally suspend those accounts. You are not clueless, and definitely not alone in doing this. Just something to be mindful of.
Andy
Hi Andy,
thank you for your review on Facebook fanpages. I am a newbie and I found your article interesting.
We can invite our friends to our page by sending them a personal message.
There is so much to learn about all the options of facebook etc.
I appreciate your contribution to my learning.
To Your Success,
Yorinda
Yorinda,
Let me know if there is anything else I can do to help you with your understanding of Facebook fan pages.
Andy
Hello Andy,
Thank you for sharing this interesting post about the Fan Pages. And that said, I would love to invite you as a guest speaker for our Mastermind group. One of our members may have already touched base with you.
Your knowledge is brilliant, and like to learn more about making your own Fan Pages.
May need to make some changes to my Fan Page now. Looking forward to your feedback on my invitation.
Truly Caring for Your Success!
Irene
Irene,
I just sent you an email about the speaking. I am definitely interested. Thanks!
Andy
Hi Andy,
I appreciate this article on differentiating the fan page versus the profile page. I am very excited about the changes Facebook has made by incorporating the fan page platform for business. We are the pioneers of an unknown outcome, just as the creator of Facebook didn’t know what would happen with the network he created for college students. Who knew? Some visionaries did and they took advantage of the timing. We at this time of our lives are in the same boat! How exciting is that?
If you pay attention, business, celebrities, corporations etc. are jumping on board to the new platform. Sure there are some people who have been initial responders, but it wasn’t until the iFrame change from FBHL to iFrames that the pilot light is beginning to become a blaze! I really believe that one year from now, it is May 2011 at this time, the Fan Page or the Business Page or the Like Page will be a common household word, just as Facebook has established itself in the same way.
There will be changes, and learning, and maybe some frustrations, but wow what a huge door of opportunity for all of us!
Raena Lynn
Raena,
I like that the pioneers of unknown outcome.
That is an interesting view that next year the fan page will become common word next year. I sort of feel that it is already a common word that is part of the Facebook lexicon. However, that being said, I believe people will definitely have a better understanding of what the facebook fan page is by next year.
Andy
Andy
Someone should look at fanpages as just one more means of branding and interaction with customers/leads/prospects another tool in the tool box if you will.
Although I have done my research and don’t have one yet there seem to be a number of resources out there on creating them, I haven’t really found anything concrete yet. Some easy to use some not so much, any suggestions or recommendations?
CJ,
I agree with you that it is definitely another way of branding your business. I believe that if you check out Starbucks or Lady Gaga you will see the type of branding that you are looking to see more of for small businesses. What questions do you have on creating a fan page?
Andy
Well I know there are a variety of ways out there to create one, companies that offer some solutions, free but limited and paid which right now quite frankly the paid option isn’t even an option at the moment. But for me I have seen companies come and go, so if one is relying on that company for all there fanpage needs and out of the blue they disappear odds are so will all your content on their servers and that doesn’t seem realistic.
Plus of course there is outsourcing, or hard coding which I have seen a couple of apps within FB to take care of it, I haven done much research into the hard coding aspect but seems for obvious reasons its much more time consuming.
I know its everyone’s choice to pick what works for them and they should do their homework. Do you have a fan page? if so what options did you consider with? and then end up settling on that decision etc.. If you have any tips tricks, insights etc I am all ears.
Thanks
CJ,
I agree that you are taking a bit of a risk if the companies go away. However, since Facebook shifted to iframes we are required to find our own hosting. That means we need to rely upon these different vendors to get things done. Let me know if you need some help in choosing someone that can be good and budget conscious.
Andy
Hi Andy! Great explanation that will be very helpful for those not familiar with how Fan pages work. Your post will help lots of people! Great job.
Lori,
Glad you found this useful!
Andy
It does make sense to NOT have a business mentioned on our personal profile…hence personal versus business. Wow, thanks for sharing that part Andy. Better let my friends know about that specific deal.
And great tip for your readers in sharing that we can invite our friends to become FB fans of our FB pages. I’ve done that in the past and looking at my FB fan page now (still the old version, never updated it yet) I no longer see the option to invite my friends. Guessing it’s about that time to upgrade my fan page 🙂
Thanks again Andy for your post on FB and it’s fan pages.
-Jaclyn Castro
Jaclyn,
Yeah! It would be nice if they integrated a little smoother. That being said, at least we can invite friends, as you mentioned.
Andy
Andy, I am currently studying Facebook for journalists AND Facebook for businesses. My research has shown me that reporters have lots of uses for Facebook, especially those who have set up Business Pages.
For small businesses, however [not the large corporations with big budgets], FB business pages can be problematic. To successfully build excitement, engagement and community, organizations need to put forth a lot of effort, e.g. creative posts and contests/offerings, monitoring for customer questions, and general engagement with page visitors.
Shari,
There are pros and cons to everything. However, it is just like building up any business. It takes time and effort. Does that mean small businesses should shy away from all timely ventures? As long as they can be profitable in the long run I would say no.
Andy
Facebook is one of the most popular social network in the world. All people use it for communicationwith their friends and family.
Hi Andy,
I am starting my Facebook fan page and knew that I could turn to you to get the information that I need. You are my go to source when it comes to Facebook!
Joyce,
I appreciate your comments. Let me know how I can help you with your fan page.
Andy
Your knowledge is brilliant, and like to learn more about making your own Fan Pages. What started out as a personal page kind of evolved into a business page and I kept getting a notice to change my page when I opened it up. Thanks again Andy for your post on FB and it’s fan pages. How exciting is that?
Marisol,
Glad you enjoyed the comments about my fan page knowledge!
Andy
What started out as a personal page kind of evolved into a business page and I kept getting a notice to change my page when I opened it up. I like that the pioneers of unknown outcome. I think you have given me a big clue. You are right on about FB not wanting business to flow through personal pages.
Haley,
That does not mean you can not use a personal page, but you have to be a little more cautious when you are using Facebook personal pages for business.
Andy