When Facebook started out, it was the premier platform to share photos and personal experiences with friends. It still is with great success, but in line with keeping up with the times, Facebook is more than just a place to meet friends. Where it was uncommon to find businesses using Facebook, it is now more important than ever for a brand to have a business page, especially a small business.
The myth for a while was that to effectively brand your business on Facebook, you had to use a personal profile. An official business page provides many more benefits than a profile page, and takes advantage of Facebook’s key benefits: scale, and ease with which members share content with each other.
However, before you set up a Facebook business page, you should ask yourself whether having such a page serves your customer’s interests. If such a page helps you serve your target audience better, you have the green light to create one.
As one who has seen the need for a Facebook business page, the following are its key benefits over a personal profile page for a small business.
1. Unlimited friends
Personal profiles cap friend numbers at 5,000, while business pages allow you to have unlimited friends. If you seriously want to grow your business, you wouldn’t want any cap number set on your success, would you?
2. Great analytics
With a business page, you have access to far better analytic services than an average personal profile would. Facebook Insights provides a good look into how your posts are received by friends, how far they reach within a specified time, what customers like and don’t like, where they are located, which times they are most active, and so on.
For a smart marketer, this information is very valuable to help them craft their posts, content, and overall marketing strategies.
3. Show up on search engines
Business pages are indexed, which means that some of the content contained is available through search engines. Which business wouldn’t want to appear high on a search engine result? While you may want your website to achieve this in the long run, why not take advantage of Facebook’s help in doing so.
4. Keep personal information private
By creating an official business page, you are dissociating the personal from the professional. No longer do you have to worry about your personal information being accessible to everyone. Besides, it is annoying when a customer can’t access the business’ contact information because you used a personal profile and set the privacy settings to block this information.
5. People take you seriously
Running your business through a personal profile makes you look amateur and unprepared. You don’t have a lot of chances to make a great impression. Make the customer’s first take at your business one they’ll like with a professionally crafted business page.
6. Targeted advertising
One very unique benefit of using Facebook is its much targeted advertising strategies. Facebook is very good at keeping traffic within its ranks, so you have the opportunity to create ads that target customers with the same interests as yours. While it will cost you to set up such advertising, it is well worth it in the long run. The benefits of reaching potential customers and selling your products far outweigh the financial investment you’ll make.
7. Avenue for engagement
Where you perform your business page fans a favor and like their pages back officially, you have an opportunity to comment on their feeds. By doing so, your brand exposure increases and you also have a chance to engage with customers one-on-one. The conversations allow you to gain valuable insight into ways to improve your brand for the customers’ satisfaction.
8. Facebook Tabs
Facebook Tabs is a feature that allows you to use apps to better explain what the company is all about. With tabs, you have more avenues to tell your business story and convince customers to buy your products. However, if you are using a personal profile, you are limited to your posts to sell your brand.
More to the point, Facebook Tabs allows you to run contests, something that’s not possible with a personal profile and that goes against Facebook’s terms of use. Should I say more?
If you have done your market research and see that Facebook is where you can reach your target audience effectively, then the next step is to create an official business page.
Your business is not too small to have a business page. [tweet this]
With such a page, you have the benefits of targeted advertising, Facebook Tabs and its ability to deliver more information, better analytics, an opportunity to get ranked on search engines, better privacy controls, and ultimately, a better chance to impress customers with a professional profile of your business.
