Marketing Minutes Episode 1: Facebook Pages & Profiles

For a little #FunFriday we're introducing a new segment: Marketing Minutes with Brian & Shannon.

We sit down to address common marketing misconceptions, challenges, and opportunities facing local businesses and marketers.

Enjoy soundbites like, "Your friends & family will hate you" plus a little a capella at the end representing University of Washington Foster School of Business

Enjoy!

Video Transcript

I'm Brian, founder and CEO of Locable.

I'm Shannon, wife to this one. I have five kids, we have five kids. I'm a teacher by career.

Together we're the Ostrovsky's.

Do you need a Facebook page for your business? And, then the follow-on is, what is the difference between a business page and a profile?

Shannon: Do you need both? Are they the same, are they different?

Brian: So, if you run a business and you use your personal profile as the primary mechanism to market it, your friends and family will hate you.

Shannon: Whaaat?!?

Well, maybe not but it's really bad. It also means that when you post things that are actually personal they probably won't see it because they're not going to interact with all of your content.

So a page is something you should have its branded for your business even if your business is a derivative of your own name. It's something that you can link to your website, there's literally a field that says website and so that'll help you with Google and help people find your website. Which, obviously you want them todo.

So it's a place that you have a little bit more focus for what you're doing and that's not to say that you can't share to your Facebook page and then share it to your profile you should be a little more discerning on that.

When we create content, we do a video like this and post it to YouTube, embed it on our blog so that it lives on our website and that content on the blog, not just the video but the written words, are on our website, and we share that to Facebook.

Probably one out of five I share from our page to my profile for people to see things that resonate with me personally I share to my profile. Things that are just about business I share just the page.

Shannon: Okay, so as a business you're saying you should have a page on Facebook. Y

Brian: Yes.

Shannon: That's your business page but not your profile is considered personal so your profile is your personal Facebook account for social media and a page is for a business.

Brian: Yes.

Shannon: Yes. Okay. So, let's take a little bit further than and in this day and age we all know people who are part of a network marketing company. Which, by the way, if you are someone we generally love and respect network marketing it's and we can talk about that a different day.

However, you are a local business, whether you think of yourself that way or not so we've all been there and we've all seen and we've probably all blocked someone who is in a network marketing who doesn't get a business page and they just continue to post on their personal profile.

So, a couple of questions, one is obviously that's annoying... that's not really a question that's just a statement. Is, they should have a business page?

Brian: They Should have a business page and Facebook recently, well maybe two years ago now recent-ish, allowed pages to be linked to groups. If you're going to use Facebook groups as a mechanism to interact with your downline or your customer base if it's linked to your page there's a tighter connection there from a marketing perspective.

So there's an added benefit there.

Shannon: Okay, so you should not, everyone local business, network marketing, whatever, it is that you have, you want to solicit - I guess or get the support from your friends and family - but not posting constantly business stuff on your personal profile.

Brian: Right.

Shannon: Okay, there you go. 

tl:dr

You don't need a blog, clearly, but business blogging is tremendously valuable and far easier than most people realize.

Blogging is a local business's or nonprofit's unfair advantage and demonstrates authenticity and uniqueness using real-world examples.