Lately I have been seeing a disturbing trend among small businesses, usually businesses run by Etsy shop owners, that has been bothering me a lot. Instead of having a Facebook page for their business, they have created a Facebook profile. This wouldn’t bother me except for two things.
First, it is highly irritating to be looking through a list of friends on a game and see “Sticks and Tricks Billiards Supply” where a person’s name should be. I mean, really, I don’t want to be friends with a business, and you can’t be friends with a business. You can like a business, you can patronize a business, but you can’t be friends with a business.
Second, and more importantly, these people are violating Facebook’s TOS. Just as it is against Facebook’s TOS for a person to have more than one profile, it is also against Facebook’s TOS to have a Facebook profile for your business. Facebook’s profiles are meant for people not businesses or organizations.
So why do people still create profiles instead of pages? One reason I have seen listed in Etsy’s forums is that people are intimidated by pages. Really, now that pages and profiles are both on the Timeline format, pages aren’t as difficult to maintain – it’s just like posting to your profile with a status update. Plus, you have the option to actually use Facebook as your page if you want to. Granted, I’ve done this before and you have to set yourself to using Facebook as a page each time you log in, but you can use Facebook as your page instead of your profile if you wish. The only thing I have noted that is of interest when using Facebook as your page is that you cannot play games as your page and you cannot chat as your page – I don’t even have my friend’s list showing when I am using Facebook as Gothic Peach.
So if you have a Facebook profile for your business and one for yourself, use the account you have for yourself to create a page for your business, let your friends on your business profile know where to “like” your business, and let them know that the profile for the business will be deactivated in a week or so. Another alternative is to follow Kim’s advice and merge your business profile into a business page so that you will not have to worry about getting into trouble with Facebook when they figure out that you have two accounts and that one is not for a person but for a business.