Participating in Facebook ... for your business
November 2010
Two of the primary ways to participate on Facebook is with
- Your personal profile (private)
- A business page (public)
Each is used quite differently. You must start with your personal
profile.
Personal Profiles (Private)
These are private by default as only the people you add as friends
can view your personal profile. The profiles are designed to be used
by individuals. You use this personal account to log in to Facebook
and you should work on building your personal profile before you
start your other efforts on Facebook. This also gives you an
opportunity to play and learn what works for you without
jeopardizing your company brand. These are some of the things you
need to do to get your personal profile started:
- Add a picture that helps people recognise you.
- Enter some of your personal info, education, work history
etc
- Add a few friends (personal, work, past lives)
- Post status updates and add a few extra pictures.
- Try to get a mix of personal and professional information
which will help people get to know you better. But only share as
much information as you feel comfortable with.
- Go easy on your friends – save Farmville, poking and zombie
requests for close personal friends or no-one!
Please do not create a personal profile for your company. These look
weird and artificial when Facebook is designed to be personal. The
next section covers your company presence.
Pages (Public) - The public face of you or your company on Facebook.
Facebook “pages” are publicly viewable, which makes them much
better for a business presence. Anyone can become a fan of your
company without any additional interaction or approvals. People are
effectively using pages for
- Companies
- Products
- Bands
- Shows
- special interest groups
and more.
The information on Facebook pages is geared toward
companies rather than individuals. For example, profile pages have
education/work information and interests, public pages have
location, hours of operation, company overview, mission, date
founded etc.
Facebook has more information about
creating a page for your company or product in its help section.
Last time I looked the link was
http://www.facebook.com/help/?page=175
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