What So of Page/Profile Do You create for a business?

[joecool]

Hi All,

I am sorry for this really basic question, but I am having diffculty getting conclusive answers when I do a google search.

I have a website/social network that I have created that I want to promote via facebook.

Not knowing any better I set up a normal profile with the websites name; however, after further study I think I should have either created a business page or perhaps a fan page.

My questions are:

- what is the correct type of account to market a website through?

- Can I convert my normal profile to one of these accounts?

I would be really grateful for someone to point me in the right direction and even provide me with a link to the url where I would start.

I think it is: [facebook.com...]

But then I get confused. Am I supposed to be creating a fan page instead?

[Emmett]

I would go with the fan page/official page option on the link you included (brands/product/organization to get the website option). I own a couple of fan pages and help administer a couple of others. I still promote my business through my personal page but the "official/fan page" can make you look more, well, official.

You also get the added feature of adding a fan box to your website to encourage users of your site to follow the fan page for updates.

The downside of a fan page is you can't get direct emails from other Facebook users and if you send out a mass email from your fan page it goes to the "other" folder instead of the main inbox. I very rarely look at the "other" folder and suspect that most other users don't pay attention to it either.

The downside of using a regular Facebook account for business is that you are limited to approximately 5,000 friends while a fan page is unlimited. I believe it's against TOS to use a personal Facebook account as a business name but I do see a lot who seem to do it.

If you run a fan page it's a good idea to keep interesting posts going to encourage interaction from the user base. You can also run contests to give away free service or prizes to whoever gets the most fans added to your page.

You can't convert from a personal Facebook account to a fan page but you can send invites to all your friends and post frequent updates telling your followers of the move to the official page.

Hope this helps!

[joecool]

Hi Emmett,

That more than helps, that is brilliant information. After I posted the post I did about an hour more of research it pretty much came up with the same conclusions you did.

[Marta]

Hello Emmett,

You gave such a great answer to Joecool that I was hoping you might be able to help me with my Facebook dilemma :)

I started with a personal facebook account which I never use. Then I started a business account which I plan to promote. The Profile of the business account is me... something I do not want. I would prefer to just get rid of my personal Facebook account all together and just have the business account but everybody tells me I can't do that. Is this true? And, I definately don't want the business Profile to talk about me.

I am very sorry if this problem has already been answered but I could not find it. Can you help me?

[Emmett]

Marta, do you mean that you have a Facebook fan page for your business or just a 2nd Facebook account with your business info in it?

[Marta]

I have a second Facebook account. I am embarrassed to say that I do not even know what a fan page is.

[Emmett]

Marta, if you go to the link in joecool's post you can setup a fan page for your business. I would suggest setting it up while logged in under your personal account so you don't have to log in to a separate account to post/update the fan page. It takes a little bit of learning but once you get the idea they are pretty easy to maintain. When you have the page setup there will be a link added to your "account" menu to manage pages. You can setup as many as you like and once you have enough fans you can even give it a unique facebook url. You also get statistics to see how well your fans interact with your posts to help you figure out what works best. Hope this helps.

[Marta]

Thank you so much. I will give it a try.