What is the difference between a Facebook Profile, Facebook Page and a Facebook Group?
This subject can become quite complex if you want to break it
down into What, When and How but let’s explore the fundamentals so you an start with the “WHICH” first and foremost
So let’s start with the one we all know and probably are most familiar with. Your Facebook Profile. This is personal in nature and depending on your level of personal preference you either have a warts and all type of page, where you are not worried about who sees what or you are a locked down tin foil hat type and don’t share anything but the funny and or slightly controversial posts others share and you want to pass on down the line.
Whatever way you play it on the personal profile it is just that; Personal and you can set your security to suit yourself. The one thing that definitely cannot happen is a business or organisation cannot have a personal profile.
That takes us to a Facebook Page. Facebook Pages are the profile page solution for businesses and public figures or celebrities. The ma
in purpose is to connect with the audience/ community of followers. People can only follow / like a page and there is no membership / join feature.
Pages have page owner/s or an Admin, and you can post as the “Page” which is very helpful when you have an admin posting that as this means people cannot automatically see the personal profile of the person writing the post as it is not meant to link them personally to the Business.
This ensures a person to have a Business Page
and keep separate from their personal profile and those who like a Page, cannot just see your personal profile unless your settings allow it. This is particularly useful if you have a number of admins or people curating your page for you or your organisation.
Given that there is no “Join” function on a Page, people must follow you by using the “Like” feature. This then connects them to your page and they can see the content the page posts in the newsfeed of their Facebook
profile.
Facebook’s newsfeed algorithm will then ensure that relevant articles that you post are presented to those who like and follow your business page. The Facebook Algorithm is a subject for another blog, however it is a complex set of rules, conditions and settings that culminate in a curation of information delivered to your news feed and that of your followers. The secret here is to be creative and consiste
nt in the delivery and creation of your content.
The best part about Facebook Business Pages is that they have no limits when it comes to who can see them and how many people can connect to them. There are a many pages that have millions of likes / followers and this is something we all aspire to.
Pages can allow followers who like the page to post on it directly; however this is a setting you can turn on or off so if you are not open to having others post on your page ( It can get messy) then I would suggest leaving it off.
So what about Facebook Groups?
Facebook Groups are intended to be a community centered on a common interest or theme and the sole purpose is to offer a way for people to interact with each other.
A great example of these are your community buy sell swap groups. This doesn’t mean that they will not suit your business. Here are some examples of when it would and wouldn’t suit.
Would Suit
You own a business that sells products and you want to provide a VIP group your customers to engage with your business.
Wouldn’t Suit
You are a handyman/tradesman or service industry business that just needs to be able to connect with customers by information only. They don’t necessarily want or need their customers to interact with one another so a group would not be necessary here.
Now, there are different types of groups and we can go through that in a future article but just know that you can have different settings that allow people to join and have to answer questions in order to be allowed in and approved by an admin etc or you can open it to anyone to join. We can definitely expand on that in another article as this changes from time to time.
As with Pages your Groups have an Admin or Admins and a top tip from Geekgirl is to ensure you have more than one Admin and even consider a backup one. I was a member of a community group once and a particular disgruntled committee member hijacked the group that had been set up over a number of years and had photos, posts, articles and lots of history. That person controlled it and ultimately could have trashed it if they wanted to so ensure you cover all bases.
So to summarise you can’t have a Facebook profile for a business but you can and most definitely should have a Business Page and in some cases you can and may want to have a Group for your business. This will depend on how you want to interact with your desired clientele.
At Geekgirl.biz I aim to help demystify the parts of the modern tech that sometimes get a little overwhelming but when broken down into small chunks aren’t so scary after all.
Keep an eye out for future articles where we will explain how the different algorithms work on different social media as well as a deeper dive into features of your business page and groups to enhance your experience.
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