Different Facebook profiles that may confuse you

Friend Profile

This is the core functionality of Facebook. Facebook as a social network has millions of members that have their individual friend profile. On becoming a member on Facebook, you will automatically have your own profile page. On this page the member can upload photos, interact with other members and use all the functionality available on Facebook. This type of profile is for personal use rather than for commercial use. A Facebook profile should always represent a real person. In fact, you can have one friend profile but multiple fan pages (which is another type of profile). Moreover, by using a friend profile outside the scope of its intended use, such as to represent a business, you will be limiting yourself to some core functionality offered specifically with fan pages.

Fan Pages

Fan Pages is another type of profile on Facebook which are similar in functionality and layout to a friend profile. Fan pages are available for businesses, brands, public figures and other entities to allow them to have a professional presence on Facebook. In this manner, businesses can update and deliver messages from an official presence. When using or updating the fan page, posting on its timeline will be done using the page name. The entity of the page will be the 'author' posting the update and not your friend profile. This functionality is only possible for the administrators assigned to that page. Fan pages are visible to everyone and there is no need to accept a member request to 'Like' the page. Users will automatically become a fan of the page by clicking on the 'Like' button. To highlight the difference from each other, on a friend profile you send a friend request and with fan pages you 'Like' the page to become a fan. Another great advantage of creating a fan page is that there is no limit on the amount of Likes the page can have. Fan pages also have analytics through Facebook Insights which can help you monitor the performance and views of your posts.

Facebook Groups

Groups are great for individuals to join and together discuss a topic. A group of people may communicate, share their interests, or discuss a specific topic. Groups can be made public, private between members or allowed to join by request. Groups are normally not the way to go as an official Facebook presence for entities such as business. The ideal profile in this case would be fan pages.

To avoid disappointment, it would be better to start with the appropriate profile from the beginning. However, if you have to create a friend profile for your business there is a special Facebook tool to convert into a fan page. Still, this may not be your ideal scenario as some elements are still kept during conversion process and a lot of personal data such as photos are lost. In some cases, this may be a great option though. Unfortunately, conversion from groups to fan pages is not possible anymore.

To recap your friend profile can be used to keep in touch with relatives, friends, people, Facebook features and even get in touch for business reasons. Facebook fan pages will be used to represent an official page for a business or any other entity.

Conrad Bugeja is a Search Engine Optimisation Consultant and Pay-Per-Click Consultant at Alert eBusiness Internet Marketing Division - www.alertemarketing.com