Facebook: Profiles, Groups & Pages
Getting started as a business on Facebook can be confusing!
For an individual to get started on Facebook is really pretty straightforward, but businesses are often left scratching their heads at what solutions are available to them.
Facebook has three basic functional units: Profiles (for individuals), Groups (for community and interest groups) and Pages (for businesses and intellectual property)
Facebook Profiles
For a “personal”, non-business entity Profiles are the simple easy answer. They are the default method of operation on Facebook and it is just short of impossible to do anything without a profile. Many things that you can create or do (such as these Pages and Groups) are tied to and linked to your profile as well. (You can create a Page without a Profile but be prepared to jump through many hoops.) While it may be tempting to do business from here that is a huge no-no in Facebook’s eyes (and a violation of the Terms of Service (TOS)).
Creating a profile for a business, creating more than one profile for an individual, posting any direct advertising on a profile page, running a contest from a profile, as well as anything that can be even SLIGHTLY considered spammish such as adding too many friends in one day or replying in the same way too too many invites at once… are all grounds for your profile to be banned (which then takes associated Groups/Page access with it).
This does not mean however that Profiles are not an ideal way to network, make friends and connect with other like minded individuals and further business relationships. Because a Page or Group can not have a “friend”, a profile is your only ticket to getting access to another individuals profile wall and thus current status updates. For an example of these you can find my & Nile’s profiles here, however keep reading to understand why we both make more use of our pages than our profiles for early networking.
Facebook Groups
Groups used to be the primary point for interaction among like minded communities on Facebook. They also used to be the most likely opportunity to build some buzz around your area of expertise. While groups based just on a brand did not often fair too well without preexisting name recognition, groups built around areas of interest such as “social media” could often allow a small business to develop a loyal community that they could serve with value and carefully use as a market.
All of that said, you note the “used to” expressions here I’m sure. That’s because Groups have been on (non-official) non-development status for a long time now. They have received no love and do not have access to many of the resources, utilities, features (including no access to Facebook Applications) that they should have. Messages posted on a Group wall do NOT post in the members News Feeds and because of this members will usually join Groups and never return.
So why do I mention them? Because they are the only way on Facebook to form an interest community that you then have access to directly EMAIL (okay, Facebook Inbox email) the individuals “blast style” all at once time. While there is no scheduling of email messages, the ability to send emails directly to the Facebook Inbox of members can be a critical part of some marketing campaigns. However, it must be noted that all marketing done in Groups has traditionally been soft sell, attraction-marketing style because the TOS is incredibly vague as to whether doing business from a Group is permissible. Big businesses shied away from Groups for this reason, and Facebook sought to appease the needs of these businesses by creating….
Facebook Pages
The late-coming to the Facebook Game, Facebook “Fan Pages” were designed with businesses in mind. Their policies are permissive on advertising, marketing, member engagement (except contests which is a sticky problem) and more. Fan Pages are the sexy, younger, high-maintenance sibling with all the neat toys!
This is where a business can get in and develop both their brand and an interactive fan base. The best pages are those that foster brand involvement are are open for members to post on and interact with the business, however businesses can chose to keep all of the postings on the wall as strictly their own too.
Facebook Applications help take a rather sterile looking Facebook platform and bring it to life with color, HTML (technically FBML), javascript, video and social media integration (such as RSS Feeds). Since Nile (her page) and I (my page) both appear to currently have our FBML Welcome/Landing tabs under development again (to comply with some upcoming changes), I’d like to point you to have a look at Mari Smith’s fan page. Now if you are not already a fan of Mari, when you clicked that link you were redirected to Mari’s Welcome/Landing tab and you can see the high rate of customization as well as the call to action to “Like” the page. In case you were already a fan but wanted to look again at what I’m talking about, here is the direct link. Applications like “Static FBML”, “NetworkedBlogs” and “RSSGraffiti” let you bring pages to life.
There are some downsides though and that is that Pages can not have “friends” and so can not access a individual’s profile directly (although their status updates do appear in the fan’s News Feed), can not post replies off of their own wall (on another Page for example) as the business (only as their own personal profile), and can only send “Updates” to the members which do not go to the members actual Inbox. Also because of the inability to (ever) change a page’s name, it is highly suggested to have a personally branded page even if you chose to make a second business branded one. Think with the end in mind and realize that if your business name ever changes you can not rename the page.
Regardless of the limitations, Pages are essential to building businesses today on Facebook. They are the cornerstone of presenting your business in a professional light, have good SEO, are inviting to the public and their ability to be customized is helpful.
Hopefully this helps you understand the opportunities and tools available to a business on Facebook. While initially it can all feel confusing, once you get used to it there is some method to the madness! Likely over time, as Pages continue to be actively developed on, the few downsides that they presently present will be eliminated. Questions? Thoughts? I look forward to seeing them here and also getting to know you on my page. Drop by and tell me a about you and feel free to share a link to your own Page!
Kimberly
Very much enjoyed the discussion of Facebook Pages: I don't have a business, but I was wondering what the Pages are for in the first place, and you explained really nicely how one could get started with them. I would never think of how essential apps are intuitively.
Bookmarked; will share with those who might want this advice.
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The difference is that if you are a business that has reaches a lot of people, you can have more than 5K in followers. Fan pages, you can have more than 5K followers, so you can potentially drive more people to your business. Those who use Facebook will see those messages in their own streams and can respond. It also allows people to leave feedback for the business. I allow other bloggers to promote their articles if what they say is relevant to the material on my own site. Kim, the author of this article recently started taking advantage of that…. which her followers will also see her message and can decide if they want to follow my page directly, rather than wait for it to come through her feed when she puts up a message.
Take two at replying! Sorry for the delay, intensedebate thought my comment was tasty enough to eat!
Pages are designed for anyone with a business, brand, branded image, product or service. I think that the business/product/service makes sense intuitively to most people. However its the branded image (aka "celebrity" even if not of a serious scale) that these are also designed for. Pages allow us to isolate what is protected (slightly) from open search engines/eyes through use of a profile and what is open, searchable, google'able by the public via pages. (I'd rather not comment too much on the privacy and information leaking on facebook from profiles at the moment though.) So, a celebrity/author/expert can maintain a profile where they can speak (somewhat) freely among friends and family – and a page where they can share with fans and google alike.
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Well done Kimberley – and I hear you are on your way to WordCamp. That has got to be exciting. I've followed Kimberley for quite sometime now since we met on Twitter last summer. Mostly I stay under the radar because I'm a developer more than a blogger. Exciting stuff is happening on FB pages and following F8 the new #SDK unleashes some powerful new tools like "Single sign on" for apps and our latest server side testing for media delivery right onto your page. It's tricky to be sure but worth the effort to study. We've got great clients and tons of pages and apps running now and you can drive the rich content from your own host right into Facebook. Drop me a line when you get back from the seminar Kim, I'd like to chat with you more. If the url comes up from the box I typed it in below, it's a new app which does what I just described. If you don't want to authorize the app you can hit my welcome tab "12flat" at the top of the page and view the content, chat boxes and friend selector right on the page. Thanks Girl for your great coverage here.
Hey Stuart! Were your ears itching? We were talking about some of the need for blog to Facebook integration this weekend (at wordcamp) and I was thinking about what you've been working on!
The biggest thing we were hearing from primary bloggers (rather than primary facebookers) is that there is no way to re-capture comments and get them back onto the blog. Facebook generates a lot of comments but they are pretty well stuck in facebook. Facebook connect implementations are both buggy and prone to interfere with all of the other commenting applications we like to run such as commentluv, keywordluv, etc.
Someone has devised a way to track down (twitter) retweets of content made and get them (essentially reposted) back to the blog re: http://chatcatcher.com/ yet nothing has worked long term for Facebook (what was working was recently broke I'm told).
I've seen some of the wild stuff you do and although I don't have my head entirely around it you were definitely who came to mind when we were listing ideas of who might be working on solutions. I'll give you a shout out on Facebook!
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Nice job in your description of each option on Facebook.
While not directly business related (yet), I do admin 4 different Facebook pages, and as you mentioned about Groups, have avoided those since they seem like they will ultimately be dismissed.
Not directly related to this topic, but one thing I find a little irritating is the inconsistent support for Pages and Groups in different Facebook mobile properties. For example, m.facebook.com won't show pages, but I believe groups (or at least events for groups) show up. In the Facebook iPod/iPhone app, Pages are nicely supported, however, groups can't be found. On the Facebook for Android app, forget either. Haven't checked my wife's Blackberry, but I'm not expecting much difference.
Maybe mobile access isn't that big of a concern for businesses making a move to Facebook, but I bet it will be in the next year or so, and I hope FB does a better job of supporting it.
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I completely agree with you about the mobile variances. Its like they sent different apps off to different outsourcing teams and allowed them to only finish 80% of the work – and that's a different 80% on different platforms.
I was just running into the Android issue with Pages this weekend although I can use my browser to get there. Also since Hootsuite (which I use and recommend extensively) connects to pages I wonder if their mobile app does as well for an on the go updating solution…. *roams off to check*… hmmm, back and it looks like a no-go on that solution either. Hootsuite application on android is solid but its lacking support for non-twitter networks that the desktop version has.
Mobile support is going to be huge this year your definitely spot-on with that! Of course, there are a lot of page management tools that businesses would like to see … such as some variety of email and SMS notification when someone comments on our page. Having to manually babysit them, when we do not have to do so for profiles, remains one of the sticking grounds.
Thanks Kris!
Kimberly
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Kimberly~
Thank you for sharing! I learn from you everytime I read a post! Am I understanding you correctly or did I make this up? I have a facebook page (formerly called a fan page) http://www.facebook.com/lindagrace8 with content that gives one of the 4E's. Then I have a business page http://www.facebook.dj/save
Linda you've been a wonderful student! Leading with the 4E's is absolutely critical and you know I get on a soap box about them pretty regularly, LOL!
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Kimberly,
You clearly delineated the differences between the different functions of each of these pages on Facebook. This makes it easier for someone to make a decision regarding which profiles to use and why.
Have an awesome day,
Val 🙂
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Thanks Val! That was definitely my intent. I know they can be confusing because the functions seem to overlap so many ways – and in some places obvious features are "missing". Hopefully this helps shine a little light on where to start and why!
Kimberly
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I totally agree with you. The recent trend has been using social networking sites like facebook and twitter to a maximum extent to improve your business. It's really an easy way to attract more visitors and popularize your site.
Thank you for clearing up different types of facebook units, it is definitely helpful for some of us.
Creating a fan page is easy enough for most people, the real challenges are mainly:
1) How to actually attract the people to "Fan" you cause a fan page without people is nothing.
2) Continuously generate enough interest to retain and collect new fans.
It is definitely challenging and Facebook marketing is something that I am looking forward to in the future
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