Difference Between FaceBook Pages and Profiles

Pages and Profiles are two separate things, with two separate purposes on FaceBook. But if you don’t know the lingo, they can sound like the same thing.

A PROFILE is what you start with. It has some rules, and it does some thing, for a specific purpose.

It is designed to let you communicate within a group of people – and to allow people to connect with people. Therefore, a Profile is for a PERSON. It is NOT for an entity like a business, town, or organization.

Profiles allow you to let people know what you are doing, tell people about yourself, and control who can see it, and who cannot – Profiles are only partially indexed by search engines. They have a limit of 5000 connections.

People can connect to you by requesting a Friend connection.

A PAGE, is something that is OWNED by a PERSON – so in order to have a page, you first have to have a profile. Because a page is essentially owned by a profile.

Pages are designed for ENTITIES. If you want to promote your business on FaceBook, create a profile (that’s personal), and then create a page (for the business).

Many of the functions are the same. People SUBSCRIBE, instead of connecting through a Friend request. A Page has no limits to the number of people who can subscribe.

When you are connected as a Friend to someone, you see all their posts. When you are subscribed to a Page, that page does NOT receive your personal information. Communication is one-way on a Page, Two-way on a Profile. A very important difference.

Pages are fully indexed by search engines, and have options for discussion groups. Unfortunately, the discussion groups do not send notifications on discussions, so they are rarely used by page subscribers.

A Page is a good way to keep customers informed though.

You can feed a Page into Twitter. You can feed Twitter into a Profile. So you can post to your business page, and it will show up automatically on your Profile wall if you have connected both feeds.

FaceBook also offers other options, such as Groups (really just another form of Page, which you can join, but you won’t get discussion notices from that either so they are rather ineffective), and Causes (again, a variation on Pages, and completely ineffective because everybody joins, but then does nothing to actually make a difference to the cause).

The first step is getting your Pages and Profiles straight. Once you understand the purpose for each, and how they can be used to advantage, FaceBook can become a better tool for you.

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