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Many people assume that Facebook profiles (used on a personal/individual level) and Facebook pages (designed for businesses) are the same thing. After all, they both pretty much look and function the same, right? Nope! Here are six important ways that they’re different, so you can set up your company’s Facebook page strategy for success – and get the most out of your “likers” (not “friends”).

1Follower Limits On your personal Facebook profile, your connections are called “friends.” On a business Facebook page, however, people “like” your

company. But here’s the biggest difference: Personal profiles are restricted to 5,000 friends, while Facebook pages can generate an unlimited amount of “likes.” As you grow your business’s following and social footprint, you probably don’t want any kind of cap on how many people can like your page.

Tip 1: Businesses are not permitted to have a personal Facebook profile, according to Facebook’s terms of service.

Tip 2: Personal profiles can be easily converted to pages, without compromising current friends and subscribers, content and history. Learn more.

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FaceBOOk Pages Vs. PrOFiles: What small Businesses Need to know

2 Page Limits Once tagged to a specific individual, email address and contact information, an

individual is limited to one personal profile. But businesses can have multiple Facebook pages all using similar organization information. a retail business with multiple locations, for example, can have a separate Facebook page for each location and have them all associated with the same company and managed by the same Facebook admin. This can potentially allow for greater overall brand connection by establishing strong relationships and conversations with targeted audiences.

3 Show Up in Search Engine Results Just like the content on a public website or blog, the content on Facebook pages are

indexed by search engines. This increases the chance that someone searching on google, for example, may find your Facebook page in the results if your page has keywords and phrases that are relevant to their search. Most information on personal Facebook profiles, on the other hand, is not indexed due to privacy restrictions. as a business, this is a great opportunity for you to maximize your Facebook presence by optimizing page titles and posted content for search.

Tip 3: Expand your following by sharing the great content you’re putting on your business page with the friends you’re already connected to on your personal profile. Check out this how-to video!

Whole Foods has individual Facebook Pages based on location.

The Whole Foods Portland Facebook Page shows up in the search results for specific keywords.

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FaceBOOk Pages Vs. PrOFiles: What small Businesses Need to know

5 Page Insights Facebook offers a free tool called Page Insights for page administrators, and it’s not available to individual profiles. insights provides data

to measure the success of your content. Business owners can drill down and analyze trends in categories like demographics, audience growth and interaction, or engagement. The end goal of the insights analytics package is to help page administrators/business owners find what content is working and what’s not.

6 Paid Advertising in addition to reaching out to potential fans through posted content, owners of Facebook pages can leverage paid advertising to get more followers. This strategy allows you to target your ad to a specific audience based on location,

gender, age, etc. You can start with a small/limited campaign and, if your ad gains traction, adjust your advertising budget at any time.

For an individual, Facebook is best for renewing old connections, maintaining current connections and establishing new ones. For a business, however, Facebook’s greatest advantage is the ability to build a community, create interactions and ultimately channel those actions into customers. Because of these two different needs, Facebook developed two different platforms.

So what are you waiting for? Log back in and start reeling in those new “likers”; after all, they are unlimited!

4 Show Up in Facebook Newsfeeds Within Facebook, EdgeRank (Facebook’s internal

algorithm) determines where and what posts from both pages and profiles show up within a person’s newsfeed. Facebook created this formula to determine what posts it thinks you might be interested in. some of the key factors in the edgerank algorithm are affinity (how connected you are to a person’s profile or a page), interaction level and how long the post has been on Facebook. so the more of these three pieces of the puzzle you can hit with your audience, the more likely that your content will show up in their newsfeeds. This internal algorithm is the motivation for businesses to not only post great content, but to create and post information that will require interaction, stimulate conversation and trigger emotion.

The more people share and comment on a piece of content, the more likely you’ll get greater Facebook exposure.