If you've spent any amount of time on Facebook, you will have seen businesses that also operate a personal account under a business name- they have signed up to use Facebook like any other user. It's is a personal choice to do this, but here are a few reasons why you shouldn't try and operate a business on social media using only a personal account with your business name- you should always keep you the same content you have on a business page, don't over invest (put all your time and money) in Facebook, and be careful of your activity.
1. Growing Privacy Concerns
In recent years there have been many scandals about social media and user data (personal information); consequently people are growing ever more concerned about their privacy; more careful about accepting friend requests and wary about fake profiles.
Even if they trust your Facebook name and understand that it's a real business, they may not accept a friend request from a business profile because of the access that will give to their personal posts & photos. We in Vanuatu are so connected and trusting that it is very common to accept friend requests from people you don't know. We are open about sharing our stories and our lives with everyone, but this is not how the rest of the world operates. Gone are the days when most people have 5,000 friends on Facebook. People are more likely to do regular sweeps/cleanups of their Friend lists and keep only they people they are in touch with. In point of fact, the number of Facebook user has dropped extremely in the last two years.
Unless someone really knows you personally and trusts you on a personal level, will they really want to give you access to posts that will contain photos of their friends, their family and their children? They may do so after they get to know you and your business, but it's not a great way to find, connect and communicate to new customers.
2. Facebook is against this activity and might shut you down.
Facebook might be free to sign up to, but it's important to note that in fact it is a business all in it's own and it has it's own policies and guidelines that continue to change. You are not free to use it as you want and you are not free to say what you want.
As Facebook continues to tighten up on privacy, and Facebook misuse to protect their users they also crack down on businesses using Facebook as individual users. As people are leaving Facebook by the thousands, Facebook is working on ways to protect and keep the users that they do have, they will now advertise how many fake accounts they close down each month.
Imagine that you've spent years developing a Facebook personal account for your business, with years of photos and uploads, then you wake up one morning and it's inaccessible, blocked for breach of Facebook guidelines...I know of people who this has happened to and it wasn't fun.
Facebook actually has teams of people examining accounts and if they think that that user name does not sound like a real person, they will automatically suspend the account and you will need to prove you are indeed a person with that name. Example- you are using Facebook as a person named Julie's Housecleaning Service- how can you prove that this is your name? You can't, so your account will be gone forever.
3. You won't grow your customer base
Facebook might show friend suggestions to their users, but only if you have friends in common. It's therefore quite difficult to expand your businesses' reach and find new customers- you would be limited talking to the friends you already have. ON the other hand, Facebook does show business page suggestions to everyone, and offer a number of tools for businesses to find new customers and grow their audiences.
4. No business tools or insights
One of the best things about operating a Facebook Business Page is the insights you can get to help you expand your reach, your audience and improve the quality of your posts. What's not to love about this?
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