STOP Using Your Personal Profile to Market Your Business On Social Media (it’s not personal)
JABBERHEAD
You know you need to market your business on social media. You’ll be missing out on lucrative word of mouth traffic if you don’t. You may be asking, can’t I just use a personal profile to market my business on social media, such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or LinkedIn?
We’ll say it one time and one time only. The answer is clear and simple:
Never use a personal profile account to market your business on social media.
Why do we feel so strongly? We have many reasons to support this statement and why it’s worth the work to set up a business page correctly. Here are just a few.
You have no access to social media insights data with a personal page. Social media sites can provide incredibly valuable data about your business page visitors and how they behave in response to your posts. What do they like? What do they share? Which age groups are they in? All of this data is available with a business page. You can’t overstate the value of that data. How will you develop business marketing strategies if you can’t measure your engagement with current and potential customers?
Personal profiles are limited. For example, Facebook won’t allow you to exceed 5,000 “friends” with a personal profile. Then it hits you - you hit that limit - and you can't take those “friends” with you if you decide to (too late) set up a new business page. With LinkedIn, if you attempt to set up a company as a personal profile, your profile will be removed by LinkedIn, which means you lose all your connections. In both cases, you’ll have to start all over - now you’re behind, instead of in front of people with your brand!
Customers will Unfollow You. Personal profile followers get tired of seeing your business posts. They will, initially, be friends and accept the connection (if they already know about you!), but they really don’t want to see your business posts coming through regularly. When they unfollow, you will only be reaching a tiny fraction of people who already know about you, and almost none of the people who don’t.
Connection to Facebook Places. With a business page, you can set up your business as a place, with days and hours of operation. Your customers can also check in, which then tells their Facebook friends they’re at your location - this is natural organic promotion! Personal Facebook profiles can’t be set up as Places.
Personal social media pages have no access to Offers and other Advertising tools. Offers are an excellent way to promote a deal or a discount, and when people claim them, their friends see them do it, which means more promotion for you! You may think you won’t put your money behind social media ads, but even a minimal budget can result in excellent, highly targeted results and attract new fans and customers. Remember, you can create ads that are specifically targeted to people with interests relative to your business, but not with a personal profile. Be open to the idea of social media advertising, even if it’s farther down the line.
Personal profiles look unprofessional. It screams you don’t know what you’re doing. Not the image you want to be sending your existing or potential customers. With a personal profile, your business looks like it has a birthday and a gender. With Facebook, for example, a proper business page has a “founded” date, and other information to interest your audience: a descriptive “About” section, a mission statement, products, services offered, and days and hours of operation. Need we say more?
In short, there are limitless opportunities for specific and targeted branding with a properly developed business page. You have the potential to grow your audience (i.e., new potential customers!) by leaps and bounds. Aim for 500,000 followers, not 5,000!
If you’re unsure where to begin, or overwhelmed by the idea of delving into new and unfamiliar social media territory, give www.Jabberhead.net a shout! It’s what we do all day long, and we LOVE helping businesses get it right the first time around!
