First Insight: Facebook Page or Profile(Friends) Page ?
Last weekend I was creating my new facebook page to our brand new services and prices. Everything was done and I had sent invitations to all my facebook friends about the update. In the process I thought of contacting people with whom I mostly interact, to promote this new FBpage. However, as I wanted to see how many people would respond to my invite I had decided to skip my facebook page promotion. Two days later I had encountered a facebook friend who is an expert web designer by profession. We had some general chat for few minutes and then he asked about my business, I gave my facebook business page, asked him to like it.
Now, I think you can easily guess what would he done in response to it? But that did not happen. He either liked my page immediately or asked to like his page before he likes mine. Instead he said, “here’s mine, I encourage my clients to use a friends page instead of a fan page – can get more action’.
I was surprised to hear this word: ‘friends page’ and asked him curiously how can we get a ‘friends page’ when Facebook allows only a Facebook Page? He said, ‘you can’t, you just have to have a regular friends page‘. To ensure what he was saying, I had asked him if he was talking about the facebook profile through which we were then chatting. And yes my assumption was correct he was referring to the general facebook account/profile page as “friends page”!
Well, his whole point was, you can have a facebook page but that is just to tell or represent some of your business/services and not something you can benefit than your general facebook profile aka friends page. I think it makes sense, doesn’t it? Of course it does but that is only one theory about Facebook pages.
Second Insight: Statistical Observation
As I couldn’t totally agree with him I thought a statistical figure would give 100% proof to decide whether to choose facebook page for business or not. So I did some calculations on the worldwide Top 10 Facebook-pages’ updates.
Here are those Top 10 Facebook Pages details:
How did I calculate?
I had collected the ratios between likes and comments from all these 10 pages’ recent week updates and tested the average percentage (by converting ratios to percentage) of active users in each of these top 10 profiles. You know what? The average percentage of Active users in all these world top 10 profiles is less than 20%(Twenty- percent).
An old friend once said, in general, webinars (online live meetings) will bring instant 50% – 75% conversions to a 100% satisfied presentation or a minimum 30% guaranteed conversions.
Actually there is no match between the performances on webinars and the worldwide Top 10 Facebook pages in terms of business volume. But both of these have themed Audience, both audiences have similar kind of interest and likes to attend/listen to their products/updates, irrespective of the fact webinars are fixed to particular time.
So, if the most popular top 10 Facebook pages gets just 20 percent of responses, how much would my/your business facebook page will? So as I mentioned in the first insight, should we just use a normal facebook profile aka “friends page” rather a Facebook page?
Third Insight: Understanding the Purpose
Facebook pages are actually useful to represent a business, an organization, a celebrity or some brand unlike profiles which are just used to create individual accounts. You can share all (whatever) your business updates and programs via pages unlike on profiles where you cannot do that all/most of the times. And more importantly pages are exceptional to understand your prospects/customers’ behavior. Because pages’ offers customers to subscribe to your business page (become a “fan”).
Conclusion:
Whatever may be the theories or insights, when you quantify the percentage of your business you have invested your time/money, that will give you clear idea about your ups and downs. And with that information, you will have to find ways how to reach your customers and expand your business.
He that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils; for time is the greatest innovator. ~Francis Bacon
P.S: If you would like to know what I could do for your business, visit our facebook page and hit the like button: http://www.facebook.com/SEOBestServices 
