This past April, Facebook finally managed to lift its restrictions on banner images for business pages. Many businesses had been ignoring the rules, or they simply never read the license agreement and didn’t know about them.
From now on your Cover Photo can Include:
- Call to actions such as “get it now” or “tell your friends”
- Price or purchase information such as “40% off” or “Download it here”
- Contact information such as your website address, email or telephone number
- References to Facebook features or actions such as “Like” and “Share” or any arrow pointing to the features
But Facebook still wants you to have a personal page and separate it from your business page. You are not allowed to use your personal page for business – many people still ignore this or aren’t aware of of this rule, but it can get you banned from Facebook. I’ve talked before about how you can only have 5000 friends on a personal page and unlimited fans on a business page, but this limitation is often larger than the following most people have anyways. On a personal page, you must accept someone as your friend; on a business page, anyone can be your fan. Facebook specifically states that your personal page is just that – personal, and it is not to be used for business.
The problem is that even if you have the same number of people following you on both your business page and your personal page, posts made on your personal page get more exposure on the news feed than posts from your business page. Due to Facebook’s “edgerank” algorithm, only a small percentage of your business followers ever see your posts unless you pay Facebook to “promote” the post. On the other hand, your friends are likely to see most of the posts you make on your personal page.
Here is what you can (and should) do on your personal page:
1. Allow people to “follow” you on your personal page, even if they are not your friends.
2. If you are posting something that is truly personal, change the post status from “public” to a list that you’ve built to only show the post the “close-friends” for example.
3. Post business related items on your business page, but then make public posts on your personal page that says something like, “I just posted this on my business page, but thought my friends and followers might be interested as well.” Then include a link to that post rather than re-posting the same information on your personal page.
4. Edit your “About” information to link to your business page. This will allow friends and followers to get to your business page.
5. When you get a friend request from someone you don’t know, rather than ignoring them, send them a message thanking them for the friend request, and encourage them to follow your posts on your business page.
Are you confused and still don’t understand the differences between a business page and a personal page? Do you need help setting up a business page? Would you like to have your blog posts automatically feed into your business posts? Would you like to add some custom tabs to your business page to include things like your YouTube channel, forms from your website, your Pinterest account, or other informational pages? WebStores Ltd. can help you do this – give us a call.
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