Many small and medium-sized businesses still use their personal Facebook profile to promote and market their business, and it needs to stop. Many larger businesses and brands do not use their personal Facebook page to promote their brand simply because they are not built on a person. However, the same cannot be said for some entrepreneurs and those that run their own personal brands. They often find it easier, and much more convenient to use their personal profiles to expand their businesses and grow audience participation. But you may be wondering why so many choose to bypass a professional business page for their personal pages? It’s simple. It is a sneaky way to bypass Facebook algorithms, rankings and to ensure that every post reaches the intended audience. Although the initial reach may be greater through the rate of engagement and interactions, especially for those that have a relatively smaller fan base, you run the risk of being shut down by Facebook and losing everything.
There are so many reasons to differentiate your personal Facebook profile to one that is dedicated to your business, but one of the biggest is that you can be missing out on the benefits that Facebook provides to their business pages. Facebook is one of the most strict of all social media platforms. Not only this but by doing so, is in clear violation of the Facebook policy terms that very clearly state:
- You will not use your personal timeline primarily for your own commercial gain, and will use a Facebook Page for such purposes.”
- You will not create more than one personal account.
Simply from these statements, Facebook clearly states that it is against their rules for a personal profile to be used for businesses purposes. By choosing to not adhere to these rules, a personal profile can be permanently deleted. But there are more reasons to change your Facebook strategy to help your business build a professional and reliable brand on the social media platform.
Present your brand professionally
Many would agree that they do not approach meetings with their clients in the same way that they would approach a casual conversation with their friends and family. This is the same mentality that businesses should employ when they use their personal Facebook page for the purposes of business. From a consumer’s standpoint, it is important to also consider if they would hire or employ the services of a business if the business shares their personal information on a page.
Businesses will miss out on the additional functionality and features that can actually help them.
Facebook grants business pages a lot of additional and functional value that personal pages simply cannot perform. They include:
- Receive insights to your campaigns:
By having a business page, you are granted access to information on which posts are receiving the most views and engagement, how users are interacting with your page and receive exclusive data on your followers. - Access to additional content options:
Facebook allows business pages to include more information to their profiles. These include the newest call-to-action button where businesses can prompt users to email, contact, sign up or call them directly. Other features include tabs to feature promotions, provide business information, customer reviews and their location. All of this information is useful to followers of the page and will promote and grow any business. - Greater scalability:
Personal Facebook profiles have a capped limit of 5,000 friends, however, business profiles have no limit to a number of followers that they acquire. - Greater visibility:
Although the Facebook algorithm limits the number of followers that each post will reach in users newsfeeds, business Facebook profiles have the advantage of being indexed by search engines such as Google. There is also the option to boost the reach of a post through the feature of Facebook Ads or paid promotions.
For businesses to successfully adopt and achieve the best results with the social media platform of Facebook, they must use a business profile where all of their professional information and audience engagements live. However, it is simply not just about stopping at creating a page and hoping for results, there are practices that a business should adopt to develop their brand.
Best ways to effectively develop your brand on Facebook:
Choose the most relevant classification
Facebook allows its users to classify their business according to what best suits them and their needs. There are 6 classifications to choose from, each with their own relevant fields:
- Local business or place: The fields for this classification include their About Information, Opening Hours, Contact Information, Address and Location, Price Range and Parking Information.
- Company, Organisation or Institution: The fields for this classification include Founded, Mission, Awards, Products and Address, and Location.
- Brand or Product: The fields for this classification include the About Information, Founded, Awards and Products.
- Artist, Band or Public Figure: The fields for this classification include their Birthday, Affiliations, Biography, Address, Gender and Interests.
- Entertainment: The fields for this classification include the About Information and Release Date.
- Cause or Community: The fields for this classification include the Description, Cause, Type, and Cause Group.
Obtain a favorable URL
The URL of a business’s Facebook page is your web address. This is why it is important that you choose a URL that is easy for users to remember, and even easier for them to type in. The most effective URL’s are ones that are short, include the name of the company and do not contain any hard to remember numbers or characters that don’t relate to the business.
Take the time to learn and understand your admin settings
With a professional Facebook page, there are a different set of settings where users can find a navigation bar that has dedicated sections where notifications, page information, and page roles live. In this section, admins of the Facebook page can include additional admins and assign them various roles.
Provide content before promoting your business
Before a business starts promoting themselves and their brand, products or services, there should be basic information that should be published first. Some of these include:
- Posts: Facebook has a range of different options for public posts that include text posts, event pages, photos with text captions, videos with text captions and location check-ins.
- Profile Photo: This image should be the logo of the business or a professional headshot of the person that is the face of the company or brand. As this is one of the first things that users see when they visit your page, it is important that the image is of high quality, is the best representation of the brand or business identity, is easily recognizable for the user and is consistent across all social platforms.
- Cover Photo: The cover photo of a Facebook page is the large photo that makes up the top section of the page. To make the most out of this space, the image should represent the brand, attract the audience and in some cases, clear call-to-action should be included to prompt your audience to take action.
Promote your Facebook page
It is extremely important to ensure that a business begins to spread the word about the existence of the Facebook page. It does not matter if a business has the most functional and well designed Facebook page, it is deemed useless if there is no traffic on the page. Businesses should be sure to include the link to their Facebook page on all relevant platform including the website, email signature, business cards, brochures and even across other social media platforms.
Post relevant content, often
Developing a voice, tone or signature style of posting content is extremely appealing to existing and potential customers as it helps them to identify and relate to the business as a trustworthy source. This alone will increase the audience engagement and drive traffic to the businesses page.
These posts should be used to display the personality of the brand, while also providing the users with relevant content to use your page as a useful source of information. It is important to not flood the feed with posts and content that is purely promotional. This can deter the audience away from the page and have the adverse effect.
Pin posts
A pinned post on Facebook is a status update or post that has been manually selected by the admin of the page to stay at the top the pages timelines, regardless if other posts are continued to be added to the page. This is the best way to ensure that all visitors see these posts.
A business may want to consider pinning important or time-sensitive posts, such as promotions or competitions that the page might be visiting or to direct visitors to their blog.
With these guidelines, a business has the best chance to utilize their Business Facebook page to its fullest potential that will result in an increase of conversions and audience interaction.
Contributed byhttps://www.etrafficwebmarketing.com.au
