Facebook Formats Overview
Have you been wondering which format is the best to use for promoting your business news on Facebook? This article will briefly explain the difference between the main Facebook formats and what to use each of them for. You will find out how to create them, as well as, handy info to stay relevant and entertaining for your customers.
1) Profiles — A profile is a place on Facebook where you can share information about yourself, such as your hobbies, pictures, videos, current city, hometown and daily events. It is principally for personal usage.
Once you have a profile, you can create any other format by picking the suitable one from the dropdown menu, as shown in the screenshot. But which of them is the best for you?
Remember: Despite the fact that Facebook prefers communication between users and therefore, it oppresses business pages, groups and events, you should not use personal pages to promote your business. That might be confusing for your customers and it is not professional.
2) Pages — You need a profile to create a Page. Pages allow individuals or groups of them, entrepreneurs, public figures, businesses, brands or NGO’s to connect with their friends, fans and customers. When someone likes or follows a Page on Facebook, they can then see updates from that Page in their News Feed. Bear in mind what kind of page you manage.
A page that is not related to any business e.g. community page or a page that aggregates all family members can be filled up with everyday life pictures e.g. your honeymoon sunset collection, kids with chocolate (or glue) all over their body or some organizational information about the upcoming costume party in your neighborhood.
The business page should always be about your business. You can post any promotion, funny story, new opening hours, or whatever you find relevant there.
That basically means the page is a profile of the company, and it needs to remain relevant. Your posts should be entertaining, educating, engaging and last, but not least, valuable.
3) Groups — Same as for pages — you must have a profile to create a group or help manage one and you can link the group to your business page. Why would you run a group? Because people love to chat about what they find interesting with other people.
In Groups, people communicate about shared interests with other interested people. A group can be created for anything — for marketing tips for small business owners or real estate agents (those are groups I personally manage :), for husky puppy lovers, for people from a specific neighborhood (so they can all share their impressions about the new French bistro at the corner) — and customize the group’s privacy settings depending on who you want to be able to join and see the group.
The people will see the updates after joining the group in their News Feed. Groups can be public or closed — potential users need to send a request to join. Groups can also be private. You can close it with a feature that hides the group in searches.
4) Events — Any person with a profile can create an event, but only a page can create recurring events. To share your business related event, you should add your Facebook event under your business Facebook page.
Your event is strongly recommended to be visible and talked about on your Facebook page, because your audience is right THERE. From the page, you can help encourage the interested people to visit the event page. The specific information will be seen in the event itself, so only those who are interested will see it and your business page remains relevant for others.
Remember, Facebook events have an event venue and an event date, and after that event date expires, the Facebook event expires, as well.
Having said this, it is not efficient to invest too much time into building up your Facebook event. What you want to do is grow an audience under your Facebook page because you can engage with them at any time.
Remember: Never use a personal profile for business. Don’t have a business page yet? Follow my easy guide to setting up a business page. Having a business page requires it to be linked to a personal Facebook profile.
Don’t worry — the information, posts, comments, photos, updates, etc. will not appear on your business page and vice versa. No one will be able to detect what personal profile your Facebook business page is assigned to.
