What’s the difference between Facebook Account and Pages?
I’ve lost count of how many Landau Design customers have asked me this question in the past month. Facebook has done a fabulous job of confusing everybody, and nobody has a clear idea of the distinction between the parts of Facebook. I will attempt to explain the differences.
There are 4 ways to create a Facebook presence:
- Personal Account
- Business Account
- Fan Page
- Group
In a nutshell, Facebook Personal accounts are for individuals, while Business Accounts, Fan Pages and Groups are for businesses or interest groups.
Facebook Personal Account
- Personal Profile: When you create a Facebook personal account, this is your individual account. You put your photo, your life history, all the things that are about you. It is against the Facebook terms of service to create a personal account with a business name. If you have done this, change the name on your account to a name. If they catch you with a business name instead of a personal name, they will shut the account down.
- Friend Requests: With a Facebook Account, you can connect to people by becoming friends. They send a friend request, you accept, or vice versa.
- Privacy Settings: With a Facebook account you can set privacy settings so only your friends on Facebook can see your information. You can also set it so some or all of your information is seen by non-friends. It’s your choice. The one thing that you cannot set to private is your profile photo. Also, the fact that you have a Facebook account will be available to anybody who searches for you.
- Newsfeed: Your newsfeed page shows posts from everybody that you are friends with as well as pages you have liked. It will also show posts from groups if you have it set to show. By default groups do not show up on your newsfeed. Your newsfeed or ordered with newest posts first.
- Wall: Your all shows all the posts you have made, whether as a status update, on a page or some other person’s wall. It will show posts to groups if the group is public. If the group is private, no mention of your posts show up on your wall.
- Admins: There are no admins on your personal Facebook account. Somebody else has to have your login to edit your account.
- Customization: While you can put up photos or videos, you cannot add functionality to your personal account.
Facebook Business Account
You can actually create a Facebook account for a business. But the Facebook terms of service are clear: “A business account is meant for a company that is not a sole-proprietorship OR a sole-proprietorship whose owner does NOT want to use Facebook to interact with friends. If you set-up a business account you will not be allowed to set-up a personal account.”
So if you set up a Business Account, you may be prevented from ever having a personal account. The business account offers similar features to a Personal account. If you are sole proprietorship, or small company, for greatest flexibility it is best to set up a personal account, then use Fan pages or Groups to promote your business. If you are a corporation, then creating a business account for your company makes sense.
Facebook Fan Page
These are the pages people create to establish a Facebook presence for people, businesses, products, etc.
- Attached to a Facebook Account: You must already have a Facebook account in order to create a fan page. That means every fan page is attached to a specific person’s personal or business Facebook account. This is non-transferable, so if you own a company, be sure your fan page is attached to a Facebook account that is the President or other employee who isn’t likely to leave the company. One Facebook account can create multiple fan pages.
- Fans, not friends: When people click the “like” button on your page, they become a Fan of your page. They are not your friend (no offense!). Once they like your page, posts you make will show up on their newsfeed. Although they can choose to hide your posts on their newsfeed (you have no control over that).
- Privacy Settings: Unlike an account, you do not have options to show portions of your information. You either make the entire page private (admin only) or entire page public. The default is public.
- Newsfeed: The newsfeed shows the most recent posts that have been made on your page. If nothing has been posted recently, this page may be blank. The order of items on the newsfeed are those that have had the most activity, which usually means not chronological order.
- Wall: The wall shows the history of all activity on your page. It’s similar to a wall on a Facebook account.
- Admins: Unlike an account, a Facebook Fan Page can have administrators who are different than the person who created the account. In this way you can allow employees of your company to manage the page, but they will not own the page itself.
- Customization: One of the best features of a Facebook page is the ability to customize it with various tabs. Once you have 25 or more people like your page, you can also create a personal Facebook URL. For example, the Landau Design Facebook URL is http://www.facebook.com/LandauDesign.
Facebook Groups
- Attached to a Facebook account: All groups are created by somebody that has an account on Facebook. One difference from a fan page though is ownership of a group can be transferred to another person’s account.
- Members, not fans: Similar to friend requests, individuals who come upon your group can submit member requests which you can choose to grant or ignore. Group members can also send out group invitations to people they know.
- Privacy Settings: Groups can be open (anybody can join in), closed (only members can join in) or private (nobody can see anything until they are a member).
- Newsfeed or Wall: Groups only have one place that posts show up. They do not have a distinction between a newsfeed or wall, it’s one and the same. Posts are organized by those that have the most comments, instead of chronologically.
- Admins: You can have multiple admins for groups.
- Customization: There is no ability to add features to a group, but groups come with features that fan pages do not have. They have group chat as well as a group email where you can send an email to all members of the group using one email address. Groups also provide the opportunity to share documents within a group.
For a complete list of the differences between these items, visit this note created by Facebook: Difference between, Profile, Page and Group in FaceBook
Looking for help with your Facebook page? Let Landau Design review your Facebook page to show you how to make it work to grow your business.
