By Published On: October 6, 2011

1. Privacy

Be honest.  We all have two lives these days online – one personal and one professional.  If you have a single personal profile, your public image is incredibly vulnerable to intrusion through changing privacy parameters to your old college friends tagging you in photos.  By creating a wall between your two worlds, you can have as much fun as you want on your personal page while creating a professional image on your public profile page consistent with your brand.

2. Separate Your Friends from Your Business Contacts

Is your cousin Angela from Los Angeles a prospect or existing customer?  And is your key client really someone you should have as a “friend”?  We realize that Facebook has added a new feature that allows you to group people according to their connection with you to allow some control. However, it involves going through your entire list of “friends” and categorizing them one by one and making sure your privacy settings are just right.  It is actually simpler to create a public profile and invite your business associates, customers and prospects to “like” you.

3. Access to Statistics & Demographics on Your Facebook Presence

Public pages have some great benefits that are hidden from those who only have personal pages.  On public profile pages, you have access to Facebook Insights, which is Facebook’s proprietary analytics package that allows you to peer behind the curtain.  It gives you the ability to see how many people are visiting your page, how often they visit and what posts are most attractive to them. Also, a simple “like” from a professional contact can give you access to their key demographic information that you can use in your social media marketing strategy.

4. Enhanced Features

If your business or brand has a Facebook page, you may be aware of the additional functionalities that are available.  For those who haven’t had direct contact with this yet, on public profile pages you have endless applications that allow you to customize not only the profile’s landing page, but add additional tabs below your profile picture.  These buttons can let you incorporate your Twitter feed, your product catalog and allow people to subscribe to your company’s newsletter.  The sky is the limit with this one. It is solely dependent on how much energy and time you or your favorite marketing person wants to put into it.

5. Communicate on Your Company Page Personally

People like interacting with other people.  The more human your company can appear on its public Facebook page the more likely people are to stay and interact with your brand.  If you qualify as a subject matter expert, posting directly to your company’s page transfers that expertise to them.  Initially, your personal fans might just visit to see your posts, but if there is other quality information there, you have a much better chance of converting them to a fan of your company or brand.

About the Author: cat-tonic

cat-tonic
Born of curiosity and enthusiasm, we’re a scrappy group of smart, passionate marketers who work hard and play hard. We show up every day and fight for our clients who are making the world a better place. We listen with curiosity, explore deeply, ask hard questions, and sometimes put forth ideas that might make you squirm. Because we believe the status quo is good for growing mold but not much else. The way we see it, change is the way forward and the magic happens when curiosity, math, science, instinct, and talent intersect.
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