Grant Korgan is a speaker, author and athlete living in Reno, Nevada. He has more than 2,000 friends on Facebook. He also has a page for his business, “Korg Movement,” that has 800 fans. When people go looking for anything Grant-related on Facebook, they find his personal profile, not his business page and therefore end up interacting with Grant on his personal profile the most.
Why should you convert your profile into a page?
To have greater page awareness:
Facebook pages receive greater SEO from Google than Facebook profiles do. The primary reason for this is because Facebook considers pages more like websites than it does profiles. A Facebook page is supposed to be an advertisement for one’s business or organization. People can become fans of the page, but not friends (like they can with a profile). Pages are not allowed to interact with people’s profiles, send them private messages or comment on their timeline or photos.
To Comply with Facebook Terms & Conditions:
People often try to promote their business on their personal page because they have such a captive audience. Plus, Facebook favors friend content over fan content in the newsfeed, meaning, it’s more likely to show you what your friends are doing than what the pages you’re a fan of are doing. For example, Jenny, the owner of “Jenny’s Muffins” posts a coupon for 50 % off muffins on her personal profile so all her friends can see it. Unfortunately, this is a violation of Facebook terms & conditions. If you’re going to promote a business, it must be done on a Facebook page.
To generate a larger audience:
Also, public figures often generate thousands of friends on Facebook. At some point, Facebook will cut you off and not allow you to add any more friends. Pages on the other hand, are unlimited in the number of people who can become a fan. Grant decided to convert his personal profile into a public figure page on Facebook in order to grow the central location of “Korg Movement.” Because he had such a captive audience on his personal profile he decided to convert those friends into fans for both his business and his life. He also wanted one central Facebook locale to draw from for updates to feed into his website.
How do you convert your profile into a page?
First, go here and read the documentation before proceeding. The content from your personal profile will not carry over to the new business page so this is something to seriously consider before making any decisions. Also, pages have more limited abilities than profiles do (for example, pages can’t tag personal profiles in photos or in posts) so you won’t have the same functionality as you did before.
After you’ve made the decision, go here to start converting. Facebook will prompt you and ask what type of business page you are, select “Public Figure,” choose a category and click “get started.”
A warning will first pop up noting that you will lose all of your content. Make sure you click “download my profile data.” This will allow you to download all of your existing images to your computer so you don’t lose them forever. This process cannot be reversed so make sure you tread with caution.
When you’ve downloaded your profile data and are ready to make the move, enter you password and click “confirm.” Your photos and other personal info from your profile can be uploaded to your business page after the move.
The benefits
Now, all your friends have become fans of your business page. You can advertise your page, invite your email contacts to become fans of your page, and view your page analytics. As a page, you can also add page admins so that multiple users can have the authority to post on your page on your behalf.
Read more: Why Do You Have a Facebook Profile if You Don’t Want to Communicate?