What everybody ought to know about using a personal page for promoting their business on Facebook
Are you still using your personal Facebook page to promote your business? If you are, stop right now!
Facebook may remove it
I see so many of these, so I just have to share some words of warning about using your personal page for business use. Facebook frowns upon using a personal profile for business use, and I know a few people who have had their pages removed for this. They had built up a significant following but had their business name on the page rather than just their own name, which got flagged up to the powers that be at Facebook’s ivory towers. I only know of one lady who had a polite warning and told me to change it, but I know of two others whose pages just disappeared! All their Facebook contacts were gone, and there was nothing they could do about it.
Keep your personal and business life separate
Aside from this, you really want to try to keep your personal and business persona separate. You may have just started up a small business, which you promoted to your inner circle of family and friends, but as your business grows, you will want to widen this audience. Do you really want strangers to see photos of you on a night out? Does this give a professional image to your business? And even if you don’t have the tendency to go out on a Saturday night and roll around the floor drunk, are you comfortable with potential clients seeing your innermost personal conversations with friends and family? And again, even if you don’t post much personal information on your page, you have no control over what your darling friends may post on your wall that has the danger of causing embarrassment.
You will lose potential followers
Another significant problem with using a personal page is that people who don’t know you can’t ‘follow’ or ‘like’ you as a business. They have to add you as a friend, which then, in turn, allows you to see all of their personal information on their Facebook page. People who don’t know you are unlikely to be comfortable doing this, and you will miss out on an opportunity to connect with people outside of your circle of friends.
If you are using a personal page to market your business on Facebook, go change it now and invite your friends across to like it. Even easier than that, Facebook has made it easier to migrate your personal page to a business page if you wish and they have an easy to follow guide here.
I had a business profile, and also a page, but I was one of the lucky ones who got a notification advising me to change my name! I have a lot of contacts, messages, bookings etc. relating to my business that I can not afford to lose on there!
Glad you were one of the lucky ones
Facebook personal is more trusted by customer..
But Great brand with facebook business is powerful
I think we will have to disagree on that one. Just today I had someone point me to their personal profile in which I had to friend them to find out about their business. For the reasons explained in the article, I declined. I did not know them or trust them through their personal page so will not now be a potential customer for them. If they had directed to me to a business page, it would have been different.