I have never really used my personal Facebook profile for marketing. I’ve always been an adamant believer that you should use a business profile, but it did get me thinking about any benefits to using a personal versus business Facebook page and would that be beneficial for marketing.

Sometimes, if I’m working on a really cool project or something, I will share it on my personal page. However, for me, my personal stuff is personal, and my business page is business.

Posting on your personal page actually gets seen by more people. It’s a fact. More of your friends are going to see the things that you post. There are still times when I post things and not every single one of my friends would see it, but personal posts do get more engagement than business posts.

I have done a bit of research to try and find out the differences, and what I would recommend that people do in terms of marketing.

I’m going to give you some of my top tips on why using a business page is probably more effective than using your personal page.

Scheduling

Tip number one. With a business page, you can schedule.

On your personal page you can’t do any scheduling, but for busy business people, who have got things to do and a business run, scheduling on social media is a really helpful tool. I’ve talked about this in previous Facebook lives that I’ve done. If you can schedule posts, say once a week, you can plan out your content, then you can sit back and you can forget about your social media for a week. Other than commenting and engaging with people, your posts are sorted.

You can’t schedule posts to a personal page. Now this is fine if you don’t believe in scheduling. If you don’t want to schedule stuff and you’re quite happy to sit down every day and churn out posts, that will work for you.

Advertising

Tip number two is advertising.

On a personal page you are not able to do any advertising to promote your business, whereas on a business page, you can.

I’ve had some really successful campaigns for clients where we’ve done Facebook advertising.  Whether that’s getting more likes, encouraging people to view certain posts on your page, driving traffic to your website, increasing sales, generating leads. Doing all this through your business page is possible, but it’s not possible on your personal Facebook page.

So, it depends on if you want to do any advertising for your business or not, but that’s something to consider.

There’s also the thing about, if you have a business page then you can create this little bit of code called a Pixel. A Facebook Pixel that you can plant in your website and then your Facebook page and your website talk to each other. Facebook knows who has been looking at your website, and you can send messages to them as well. You can do something which is called re-targeting and send specific adverts to those people too.

Again, you can do that on a business page, but you can’t do it on a personal profile page.

Analytics

The third tip is Analytics.

On your business page one of the best things you can do is look at your insights.

If you’ve never scrolled and looked through that extra menu where it says ‘Insights’, and you run a business and have a Facebook page, I would urge you to go and look at your insights because it’s a hive of information and it tells you all sorts.

You can see who’s been on your page, when they’ve been on your page, you can see how many new likes you’ve got, you can see where your followers live, you can see what posts are performing well.  That’s a really good one to know what does work and what doesn’t work.

Have a look at this extra analytical data. Again, you can’t do that on a personal page.

There are many more benefits of using the business page over a personal page.

However, there is a school of thought that you could use a bit of both. Now, personally for me, I wouldn’t want to start using my personal page because I’ve got all my past school mates on there, I’ve got all my university friends, I’ve got random people I know from the town, I’ve got all my family on there. You know, those are the type of people who engage with my personal page.

If I were to start writing loads of business posts on there, it’s going to get seen by my Mam who is going to comment on it, but really are they going to buy my services? They will probably tell people about stuff I do, but they are not really my target customer.

I would say if you’ve got a personal page with loads of friends on it, either delete all your mates and be strategic about how you friend new people. Befriend business colleagues, people that you would want to do business with because, like I said at the beginning, there is a school of thought where you do get more engagement on personal posts.

If you make lots of friends who are business colleagues, potential customers, that kind of thing and you post a few general posts, chatty engaging posts, then you are probably likely to get good engagement as well.

The other thing to think about is the kind of things you post on there as well. You don’t really want to be posting if you’ve been on a hen-do or stag-do with all your drunk pictures. You’ve got to think about having your personal page, but with a business hat on. Is it appropriate for business?

Now if you think your friends list is all business colleagues, and that you’re going to post work related things, then potentially having a personal page that is work focused and a business page, could work, and doing a bit of both on each. It could be a good thing.

Don’t think “I’m not going to have a business page” because you lose all those useful attributes like scheduling, the advertising, the insights and so much more. But if you really want to increase engagement, you could post on your personal page as well.

I would also say, try and keep some branding on your personal page. So, you know you have your cover photo on your personal page. Make it an image from a networking event or something work related, so then people can identify that it’s you. A lot of people know me and my business by Acorn Marketing, but then if they get a friend request from Lisa Jackson, they might not know who I am until they click on my page and see “Ah, it’s Acorn Marketing”. So, try and keep some branding in there.

Be selective with your friends if you are going to be using your personal page for business. Be very aware of what you post and don’t be overly salesy. I would still have a business page so you get the insights, analytics and the benefits of having a business page, and try different posts on both.

Personally, using a personal page for business is not for me, but I know my good friend Chris is trying out, there is no harm in giving it a whirl.

If you are really focused on your marketing, it is best to use a business profile, but there are a few little advantages of doubling up and having your personal profile for work as well.

I hope that’s been helpful and makes you consider the pros and cons of personal versus business Facebook pages for marketing.

Do read through my blog on a variety of other marketing advice and social media tips to help your business.