The Difference Between a Personal Profile and a Fan Page
Facebook can be a confusing beast to tackle.
What is a Personal Profile?
What is a Fan Page?
What’s the difference?
If you are new to using Facebook and are interested in using it for professional networking or marketing, then it can be confusing to understand some of the general, basic differences about what exactly it is you are supposed to be setting up. This post will cover some of the basics aspects and differences between a personal profile and a Fan Page.
When you first sign up for a Facebook account, you are signing up for a personal profile. Here are some key points about personal profiles:
- Set up in your own legal name.
- People request to be your “friend” which must be approved by you.
- You are only allowed to have ONE Facebook account.
- Accepting someone as your Facebook Friend gives them access to your personal profile and any information you make available to your friends.
- You can send and receive messages directly in your Facebook mailbox from friends.
- Can be public or private. Using the privacy settings you can set it so that the search engines do not index your profile. You can also set it so that people cannot request to be your friend or find you in Facebook search. This would be an option to consider if you did not want to use Facebook to personally connect with people you know and only wanted to set up a Business Fan Page.
A Facebook Fan Page is a separate page that you can set up for any reason. Businesses, big brands, individuals such as artists and actors are using Fan Pages as a way to reach out and connect with a targeted group of people interested in your page. When you set up a Fan Page from your personal Facebook account, you are automatically the primary Administrator (“Admin”) for that page. You can add additional people to also be Admins for your page. You can appoint one of your Facebook Friends as an Admin or you can add a Fan as an Admin.
Here are some key points about Fan Pages:
- Fan Pages are indexed by the Search Engines. Often a keyword rich Fan Page title can bring your Fan Page up on the first page of search results simply because Facebook as a site already ranks so high in the search engines.
- You can have as many Fan Pages as you want. And you can be an Admin (for your pages or other people’s fan pages) for as many Fan Pages as you want.
- People can freely join your Fan Page and do not have to be approved by you to join.
- Fan Pages are set up in your Business Name or with some other keyword rich title. Fan Page titles cannot be changed once the page has been published.
- You can only send “Updates” to Fans which do not go directly into personal Facebook Inboxes and truth be told, they are rarely read by Facebook users.
- Fans do not have access to your personal profile or your personal information (unless they are also your approved Facebook Friend or if you have your privacy settings set to allow Everyone to access your profile but just the act of being a fan on a Fan Page does not allow access to your name or your profile.) Fans are not able to see who the Admins are for a Fan Page.
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Category: Facebook Tips
Hi Kimberly,
This is great info. I am hopelessly confused how to manage personal and fan pages. For e.g. I have just ‘liked’ your blog but my personal avatar (my cat) has appeared not my ‘page’ one. Similarly my blog updates both pages but I’m sure I’ve set it up to only update the fan page …
regards
Rob
Hi Rob,
Thanks for stopping by. You are not alone! The difference between managing a Facebook page and a personal profile is definitely a confusing topic for the majority of people. Facebook has made everything more confusing with the new Like for Fan Pages and the Like social plugin they recently released. The “like” you clicked here, added you to my Facebook Page for this blog. If you clicked the “Like” button at the end of this post then that would have sent it to your personal profile. As of yet, there isn’t a way to Like something and have it go to your Facebook Page.
Not sure what or how you’ve set up to have your blog update your page and/or profile, you should be able to remove it from your personal profile if you want to with whichever application you’re using to import the feed. Feel free to shoot me an email at kimberly (at) magicfanpages (dot) com with more details and I can help answer any additional questions you might have.
Confusion abounds. I am considering setting up a Business Fan Page. I am stumped immediately. Create a page for a: Local Business, second choice Brand, Product, or Organization. I am a Real Estate Agent. Which one do I choose?
Hi Linda,
It used to matter a bit more what you chose in terms of how it might come up in a search, but I don’t really think it matters as much now. Personally, for a real estate agent, I’d skip the Local Business category and just use Brand, Product, Org and then select Professional service. If you chose Local business, then the template they give you is for inputting information as though you are a brick and mortar business. I much prefer the Info tab options that come from just choosing Brand, Product or Org.
Hi
Here is my endless loop problem. I have created a fan page and named it /Internet Marketing Resources. I dont think it got published but I have no way to find out. I have received a lot of info on how to check, none of which helps.
The problem exist when I try to get fans but have no place to send them. Yet because I do not have enough fans, FB will not allow it to be published.
I find many other folks during Google searches that have this same problem. If you can solve my problem, I will give you credit in a very basic report/article I plan to write from a very non-tecnical approach.
I would need to know the exact name of the page, exactly how it’s spelled and looks on the page. Ideally, I would need access to your account or at the very least be made an Admin of the page to help figure out what’s going on. Please email the exact name of the page to me at info(dot)jkvirtualoffice(at)gmail(dot)com.
There is no minimum amount of “fans” that you have to have in order for the page to be published. There is a setting though in the Edit Page settings that you may have to select for it to published. By default, fan pages are public unless you go in and set them otherwise.
Try this. Log in and go to your fan page. Click “Refresh” in your browser. Copy the link that is now in your browser. Log out of Facebook. Paste that link in a new browser window. If the page comes up, then it is published and public. If you get an error or it goes to the log in page for Facebook, then there’s a problem either with the page not being published or it’s not really a fan page and is set up as something different.
Thanks for your very clear and concise response. I copied the url of my fan page, logged out of FB and pasted the url in the new browser window and my fan page came up exactly as it was before copying. The problem is that I have a different name than what shows in the browser. When I created and supposedly published it, the name was Internet Marketing Resources. I supposedly pulished it under this name.I believe my address is http://www.facebook.com/Internet Marketing Resources.I have no problem making you an administrator.
Bob- That link- http://www.facebook.com/InternetMarketingResources doesn’t seem to go to a valid page. If you would like to add me as an Admin, then I can take a look at it. You should be able to do it via Edit Page: Manage Admins by typing in my name (Kimberly LeRiche) or you can send me a request via email at info.jkvirtualoffice (at) gmail (dot) com.
Do the private settings have to be the same for the fan page as the primary page? I’d like my fan page to be open to the public but not my personal page.
Your privacy settings for your personal profile are different and separate from your fan page settings. Fan pages are meant to be public and you have the option (just as of yesterday) to let people know you are the page owner but you don’t have to. You can choose to keep it entirely private that you are an administrator for a page. So, yes, it is possible to have your fan page public and your personal profile as private as you want it to be.