Companies using a personal Facebook profile to promote their businesses on Facebook run the risk of being banned by Facebook.
Personal profiles are very different from Facebook business pages (or fan pages) and are used in different ways.
Here is why you should not use a personal Facebook profile for business:
Facebook delete personal profiles used by businesses
Facebook did not intend for you to use a Personal Profile as a business page and could stop your profile altogether. This means loosing all those ‘friends’ that you have.
Limited friends
The number of ‘likes’ on your Facebook Business Page is unlimited. A good reason to use Facebook pages for your business, rather than a profile. Facebook used to limit the amount of friends a person could have (5000) but this limit seems to have been silently lifted. It is unclear how many friends you are now limited to.
Facebook business pages are search engine friendly
A Facebook page gets indexed by search engines, where as a personal profile page does not. This means that potential clients searching for you may find you via your Facebook Page. It can be part of your Search Engine strategy.
Promoting your Facebook business page
Facebook does not allow you to use a personal Facebook profile to promote your business or run competitions. You can get shut down completely if you do this on a personal profile page.
Insights and analytics
A Facebook page displays analytical data about the users of your page like gender and country, so you can use this for targeting different customers. Insights also tell you how people interacted with your content and which content was most viewed. So you can see what people like and do more of it!
Advertise your Facebook business page
You can also advertise your Facebook page using Facebook adverts. Using adverts from time to time can push your posts into the feed of your pages fans, which is useful if you have not been posting for a while.
Changing a personal profile to a Facebook business page
It is possible to change your personal profile into a business page.
Your profile picture will be moved over and your friends will be converted to ‘likes’ on your new business page.
Your old personal profile will no longer exist. It will become a business account. You will still log in to the business account with the email address and password you always used. You can administer your pages with your business account.
