If you have a Facebook account in your business’s name, you may lose it soon. Let me explain.
There is a difference between a Facebook Profile and a Facebook Page.
A Facebook Profile is only for humans, one Profile per person. For example, I can only have one Facebook Profile and it has to be in my name.
A Facebook Page, on the other hand, is for any topic, group, business, celebrity or cause. Anyone with a Facebook Profile can create as many Pages as they’d like. For example, I can create Pages like fb.com/socialkauai and fb.com/stayinkauai, as long as I’m logged in as my Profile when I create them.
Many organizations mistakenly created Profiles in their business names. For example, Monitor Closely Franchise. See the “Add Friend” button on the top right? That means it’s a Profile. If it was a Page, it would have a Like button, instead.
There are many reasons it’s a bad thing to have a Profile for your business.
- Nonhuman profiles are against Facebook’s Terms of Service, so Facebook is systematically deleting them. They give no warning, so you’ll lose your friends list and your entire post history.
- A Profile can have a maximum of 5,000 Friends. A Page can have unlimited Fans.
- Search engines can spider Pages easily. With Profiles some content is only available to friends. So a Page is much better for SEO.
- Facebook provides extensive analytics (called Insights) to see how your Fans are interacting with your Page. You don’t get this with Profiles.
- When someone clicks Like on your Page, your updates show up in their timeline immediately. For a Profile, they must click Add Friend, then wait for you to approve them.
The good news is Facebook has created a way to convert a Profile to a Page. You can find the instructions here, or we can do it for you.