5 Reasons to Use a Facebook Profile (Not a Page) to Build Platform

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Today’s guest post is by freelancer Lisa Hall-Wilson (@LisaHallWilson).


My host here today, Jane, was among the first to announce she was only going to use her personal Profile on Facebook rather than starting an official Page. That trend is growing, and there are a number of reasons why that might be a good idea for you too.

First, let’s make sure we’re all using the same terms. A Page and a Profile are distinct things in the Facebook environment, and there’s an easy way to tell the difference between them.

A Page is available to businesses, brands and products, causes, public figures, and so on. It offers special features and capabilities, such as marketing insights into your followers and custom apps to capture e-mail addresses via contests, and more. To receive Facebook updates from a Page, people must actively “Like” it.

A Profile is for individual users, which allow people to “friend” you. (You are limited to 5,000 friends.) What’s less well known is that a Profile can also be opened to up to Followers. Because you aren’t meant to sell anything from a Profile, there aren’t any marketing capabilities, features, or insights into who is following you. When people encounter your Profile, they are asked to “Friend” or “Follow.”

page vs profile

What Readers Want

Readers are looking for three main things from authors on Facebook.

  1. Behind-the-scenes glimpses into the writer’s life and writing process
  2. Inside scoops on new releases, sales and upcoming events
  3. Access

What Authors Want

Writers and authors are using Facebook for driving traffic to their blogs and websites, name or brand recognition, social proof and authority, e-mail acquisition, and growing a tribe (readership).

People are not going to Facebook to buy or find books.

Plus Facebook’s search feature isn’t set up to do this well. I don’t know of any big author selling books directly from Facebook (using Facebook commerce) because they’d rather people bought books from Amazon (or another online retailer) for the sales rankings and reviews. For the big-name author who needs to hire a social media administrator, and is looking for the marketing capabilities such as analytics, advertising, and capturing e-mails through third party apps, a Page is the better choice. But for everyone else who isn’t there yet, a Profile is often the better option. It’s simpler and easier to get your content in front of people, takes less time to manage, and will build a tribe or platform faster, especially if you don’t plan to run ads.

Here are 5 reasons to use a Profile over a Page to build platform.

1. It’s more personable.

Some readers will find your personal Profile and prefer to connect with you there, rather than your Page. And that can become awkward and difficult to explain your “friend” policy. You’re not a faceless corporation or multi-national company. Readers want to connect with you, the author, personally. Profiles give the appearance of being more approachable than a Page because a Page comes with a perception of built-in distance. If readers want to get to know you and your writing, a Profile can be a more organic place to accomplish that, especially with both the “Friend” and “Follow” option.

2. Your posts are more visible.

Some authors find that content posted on a Profile gets seen by more people than a Page, especially a Page with a low fan count or Edge Rank. There are more than 50 million Pages on Facebook, and competition in the News Feed is staggering. The average person on Facebook has just over 200 friends, so those odds are a lot better. With a Page, you must wait for people to find you and like you. You won’t be able to comment on Profiles with your Page. You can’t join groups as your Page or comment on group posts. When you like another Page from your Page, that like isn’t included in the fan count and the Page owner won’t be notified of your like. Very quickly it can feel impossible to get your content in front of people without running ads.

3. It’s simpler.

Running a Page and a Profile is very time consuming to do well. If you’re duplicating the posts on your Page and Profile, why run both? If you’re speaking to the same group of friends and family on your Page and your Profile, why do both? Some people get mixed up and accidentally post to their Page instead of their Profile or vice versa. It can get confusing.

4. You can have unlimited followers while keeping aspects of your Profile private.

While there’s a 5,000-friend limit on Profiles, there’s no limit to Followers (previously known as subscribers). Many professional athletes and other media personalities—journalists for instance—are using this option instead of maintaining a Page. It allows you to designate every update, photo, and profile element as viewable by specific circles of friends, or by the public (for your fans/followers).

5. You can publicize and embed your public Profile content on a website or blog.

You can now embed posts from your Profile (public posts only), as well as a Page. The official Facebook for WordPress plugin also does this very well with a lot of bells and whistles. These work just like the embedded video from Youtube. This allows those readers who lurk to interact with your content in perhaps a more familiar or trusted format, and gives your Facebook content a bump if it’s seen by more people.

Do you have a Facebook Page and/or a Profile? Which do you prefer?

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Natalie Aguirre

Thanks for sharing about this. I’ve often wondered what the point of the author page is. And it doesn’t seem like people would go back to it. I’m glad to know it’s easier and better to just stick with the profile and build up a friend base.

Lisa Hall-Wilson

Glad you found the tips useful!

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[…] Today’s guest post is by freelancer Lisa Hall-Wilson (@LisaHallWilson). My host here today, Jane, was among the first to announce she was only going to use her personal Profile on Facebook rather than starting an official Page.  […]

Janet O'Kane

This is staggeringly useful and has come at just the right time. Thank you!

Lisa Hall-Wilson

Hope it helps! Facebook can seem really complicated. Sometimes it’s good to simplify a little.

Rachel Aukes

I used to have a page and deleted it in favor of having a profile (now that Facebook allows followers). I like the personal feel of it. Besides, having fresh content for both a page and a profile was exhausting.

Lisa Hall-Wilson

I agree. 😀 I still have a Page, but it points people to my Profile where I’m active.

Christy

How do you point people to your profile from your page? I like the sound of this but I just put my page up and got a bunch of “likes” so I don’t want to delete it right away. But I’m already overwhelmed by trying to keep up with both the page and the profile! Thanks!

Jane Friedman

The simplest and most direct way is make a post (as your page) with a link to your profile, and pin it to the top of the page. You can also put the link in your page’s website URL spot, or in your intro/bio.

Lisa Hall-Wilson

Thanks for hosting me, Jane.

Jane Friedman

Thanks for an excellent post!

Pamela Hodges

Lisa, I don’t see the follow button on your web-site. How do you add one?

Lisa Hall-Wilson

If you go to the settings on your Profile, under the Followers section, FB now provides a code you can embed on your website/blog to add the Follow button. There are a number of plugins that will do this for you as well.

Pamela Hodges

Thank you Lisa. I have a facebook follow button on my blog.
I meant the follow button on your facebook profile.
On the above image on this post, you show an add friend and a follow button on your profile.
That is the follow button I meant.

Lisa Hall-Wilson

Oh. Sorry. Click the gear icon at the top of the FB screen -> account settings -> click Followers in the margin -> click the box. There will be a few options to go with that you should read through and edit.

Marcy Kennedy

Excellent post. I prefer using my author page because it helps me feel like a professional and reminds me that this is my job. I know that’s all in my head because clearly you can be professional on a profile as well. Yet I like that division between my personal profile (which still has many writers and people who might read my work on it) and my author page.

Lisa Hall-Wilson

For sure, it’s not a bad idea to want a Page, as long as you recognize that without an established readership or running ads, the growth may be very slow.

Kristy K. James

I do the same, Marcy. Partly for that reason and partly because I want to be a little freer to be myself with friends and family on my regular page. Keeping in touch was the original reason I got on FB. Still, I often copy and paste the same things to each, and make a point of interacting with all of the readers who have liked my page. I also make a point to share personal things about myself…and so far it’s working. Maybe it is slower, like Lisa pointed out, but slow growth is better than no growth. 🙂

Carla

I definitely prefer to use my author page instead of the personal profile. The latter is personal and I use it only for personal stuff, keeping my privacy strict. The former is professional. I want to give people the impression to be professional and the result is that people address me there with more respect and acknowledge my being an author. I’m using my author page constantly and I’m constantly growing my fan base. One feature which is very useful is to program your posts, another one is to have other people of my team post stuff for me.
I use my personal profile instead for keeping in touch with my friends and my family, and interacting inside groups. Of course I accept requests of friendship from my readers, if it’s the case (not all of them are interested in my personal business), and they appreciate that as they perceive my acceptance as a plus, since all my posts on my personal page are not public.

Lisa L Wiedmeier

This is great! I’ve already got an established page, but instead of making it an author page, I made the mistake of creating a page for the book series. I’d thought of changing the page name to my author name, but didn’t want to cause problems. So this little bit of information is wonderful news! Now I don’t have to create a new author page, I can just either allow my fans to connect with me on my personal page. I watch what I post anyway, so this is an extra special way my fans get to connect and I don’t have to reinvent the wheel!

S B Hadley Wilson

I know if you have more than a certain number of fans you can’t easily change your profile name on FB, but you can at least try to change it from your book series to your name. My used to be “S B Hadley Wilson (Writer)” but it’s now “S B Hadley Wilson.” I contacted FB twice to change my name. The first time, they sent me an email requesting documentation of my “business name” so I tried submitting a bank statement (although it wasn’t on their approved list) and they rejected me. The second time, I didn’t submit anything when the emailed me (I figured I’d let it slide) but then a couple days later they changed dropped the “(Writer).” It’s worth a shot.

Lisa L Wiedmeier

Yeah, once you get over the 200+ fan mark it’s a challenge to change it. I’ve got over 1900, which isn’t a huge number, but it’s a fair number just the same. Once the series is over I plan on requesting a change (one more book to go), but until then I’m gonna leave it as is and run with it. I think I’ll announce the change or something before doing it as my fan base keeps growing.

S B Hadley Wilson

It isn’t uncommon for people to have author fan pages and book pages. So, you could have both! (Or all three: personal profile, author fan page, book fan page.)

Lisa L Wiedmeier

lol! And then I’ll want to poke my eyes out from creating so much work for myself! I know what will happen…I’ll forget which profile I’m posting for and post the wrong thing! Been there and done that before.

Nancy Zrymiak

I have both, an author and a personal page and agree with most of your points, especially #3 – it’s a definite glitch having to switch back and forth. But there are people I don’t know following me on my author site and I wouldn’t want them to see my private posts and photographs that have nothing to do with my writing. So, even though it would be easier to have only one – I stick to both because of privacy/safety concerns.

Jane Friedman

Just to be sure—because I know this is a point that is confusing for just about all of us—the only case in which followers would see your “friend” (or “private”) info/content is if you marked it public, or if Facebook screwed up somehow and a technical glitch made it publicly available. I think the latter is what concerns most people, and not many people trust Facebook.

As someone who uses her profile as a public as well as a private venue, I don’t post anything, for anyone (whether friend or follower), that I’d never want distributed more widely. Facebook screw-ups can affect you regardless of how you use it, and sometimes, the people you shouldn’t trust to keep information private are your friends. (Sorry to say that.)

Bottom line, though, I think this is a rather personal issue and deals with some deep psychology & personal boundaries that go beyond the capabilities and trustworthiness of the technology.

Nancy Zrymiak

Good points, thanks for that!