Great news for all you folk out there that created a profile page for your business instead of a fan page. You can now migrate your profile to a page. To explain this further, if you are collecting “friends” on your business page it is the incorrect type of page. You need to get people to become a fan or “like” your page. Facebook frowns on people who set up a profile page for a business, another reason you should have a fan page is that the profile is limited to 5000 friends so once you get to 5000 you can go no further.

This new feature will allow you to migrate your profile to a fan page but be aware it will not sync up all content. Your friends will be changed to fans or “likes” and your profile picture will transfer but everything else will be lost so it’s a good idea to download your images etc before changing over.

This is excellent news and long due. For more information click http://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php?migrate

Facebook has just rolled out some new features to their pages which are interesting. 

1. Notifications by email: you can now choose to get notifications by email when someone posts or comments on your page, this I feel will make it a lot easier to monitor interaction without having to log into the page several times a day. I would have expected this feature a lot sooner but better late than never.

2.  Posting preference: You can change your preferences and choose to post under your Business Page name or your personal profile name that your business page is connected to e.g. I could choose to have all my posts to MY business page in my personal name Sandra Moody Hennessy,  or my business page name Dynamic Web Marketing.  Great if people know I own the business and manage the page, not so good if they don’t as I could be a random person posting information.  Interestingly, the only posts feeding through to my Twitter are the ones posted under my business page.

3.You can activate a new feature ”Use Facebook as page”.  If I change my settings  to “Use Facebook as Page” the layout changes to the new personal profile layout and it appears that the business page will now function just like personal profile. Getting notifications and information on new likes via the icons on the top left etc.  This is good as you will now be able to see all interaction on your page with easy. About time this was rolled out.

What worries me about this feature is that my personal profile now seems to have disappeared, even though I set up both pages within the one account (same log-in) I cannot see any of my personal page details. The home page is now the new Business page home page.  I have to go to Account and click the link to switch back to be able to access my personal page information which in my mind is extremely annoying. 

On the plus side this new feature means that you can now comment on other business pages as under your business page name OR your personal page name, so if you want your business page to be seen by more people then you will be very happy with this new addition. Something to think about though, will this mean an increase in spamming. Businesses posting any type of nonsense on your page just to get their page name seen.  We will have to wait and see.

As I travel around Ireland meeting businesses I am finding that there is still a lot of confusion about Facebook Pages, Facebook Profiles and Facebook Groups.  Many businesses set up profile pages (sometimes having been advised) without realising that its frowned upon by Facebook and there is a chance their business “profile” page will be deleted by Facebook. So here is my breakdown, you choose which is best for you:

Facebook Profile:   This is for an individual with first name and last name. Should NOT be used to promote business as its is limited to 5,000 friends and has bad visibility in search engines. Also, some content is not fully visible to users so makes it difficult for people to decide if they really want to connect with you.  You want to avoid having to post the following:

Facebook Page: Formerly known as a “Fan” page and if I am honest I still refer to them as fan pages.  Facebook pages enables public figures, organisations and businesses to create a public presence online and to network with existing and potential clients. In Facebook’s own words: “Authenticity is at the core of Facebook. Just as profiles should represent real people and real names, so too should Pages for entities. Only the official representatives of a public figure, business or organization should create a Facebook Page.”  

Facebook pages are the ideal option to promote your business, they have unlimited fans or likes (as they are now know as) and have great visbility in search engines.

Another common confusion is thinking that if you have a Facebook page you can become a fan or friend of another profile or page, this is not the case.  People with profile pages become fans/likes of your Facebook page. You can however add another Facebook page to your favourite pages box, you can do this by clicking the link under the pages profile picture/logo “Add to my page’s favourites”.

Your Facebook wall posts will be seen by fans/likes in their news feed.

Do you have profile and need a page? If you have a Facebook profile and should have a Facebook page, I recommend that before you get many more friends, you set up a page and ask people to migrate across. Better to do it now than have to move 5,000 friends in the future.

Facebook Groups: Ideal for small communities and for people to share common interests. Group pages can add new members by invite only or they can be open to the public for anyone to join. Groups allow people to come together and discuss issues or common interests, post photos  and share content. Members can interact and share content with one another so an ideal place to meet people with similar interests.