Facebook basics: Profiles, Pages and Groups

Credits: Source | Community Pages

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Quickies
• You have the choice to create a Business account (facebook page or ads) without having a personal profile attach to it.

• Facebook says you cannot have a personal profile and a separate business account (page) and this is a cause to get banned from Facebook.
Facebook disallows the set up of multiple accounts and multiple profiles under a same company or individual.

So the idea, intended use, appears to be to place all Profiles, Pages, Groups that belong to the same person under the same account. 
Setup your business Facebook Page under your existing profile to keep within the official Facebook’s terms.  This should also make it easier to manage multiple pages, groups under the same account. 

Once you decide to be one or the other, you can’t switch without creating a new group or page.

FACEBOOK ACCOUNT TYPES:  Original Article Source:

Business Account: A business account is meant for a company that is not a sole-proprietorship OR a sole-proprietorship whose owner does NOT want to use Facebook to interact with friends.  If you set-up a business account you will not be allowed to set-up a personal account. A business account enables you to create paid advertisements on Facebook and Fan Pages for your business.Recommend for any organization or company that is not a sole proprietorship.

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Personal Account: Personal Account enables you to maintain a Personal Profile, interact with friends, create and/or join groups, create a Fan Page for your business, become a fan of (or Like) other fan pages AND purchase advertising. 

It also allows you to make changes to a Business Account Fan Page IF you are an administrator of the page. 

Beware: Facebook technically only allows you to have one account, either a Business Account or a Personal Account. If you create a personal account, it is supposed to be in your real name (first and last names)

Graf recommend to use a Personal account  with a business page (if possible) as it offers more possibilities to the owner(s).

For big corporation a Business account make more sense.

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WHAT CAN YOU DO WITH THOSES ACCOUNTS.

Facebook Profile: (Only for personal account)

A profile is for an individual, not a group. Each person may create one profile. Once you create a profile, you can become friends with other people, post things on your wall and on friends’ walls, post information about yourself, join groups, like pages and post notes. You can set privacy levels that determine how much of your information you are willing to share with different people or groups of people. You may also send and receive private messages. A profile is limited to 5,000 friends. You can create a business page attach to your personal account, create and/or join groups, AND purchase advertising.

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Facebook Page: (For personal account and business account)

When you “like” something on Facebook, that’s a page.
Pages are perfect for public figures, businesses or non-profits that want to keep their fans updated on current news, products or other information.

Page features include:

Wall posts: Messages, links, photos and videos that a page administrator posts to your wall will show up in fans’ news feeds.

• Fan interaction: You have the choice of whether to allow fans to comment on wall posts or post their own items.
• Username: Once your page (or profile) has more than 25 fans, you can visit http://www.facebook.com/username/ and choose an easy-to-remember username for the page.
• Events: Like groups, a page administrator can create a related event. For example, the Jack Johnson page has upcoming concerts as events.
• Applications: You can add free or paid applications to a page, thereby allowing increased customization and enhanced customer engagement. Applications include e-commerce or blog integration, Twitter, Causes, and many more.
• Insights: If you click on “Insights” on the left side, you can see how many people visit or start liking a page in a chosen time period, demographic data, and a count of how many people viewed certain items on the page.
• Customization: A page may be customized using Tabs or Static FBML (depreciated for IFrames in 2011). This can allow for email collection, a custom landing page, or specialized content.
• SEO: The ability to customize your page and make it more robust than a group will allow you to enhance your search engine optimization more than you could with a group page.
• Administrator identity: Updates to the page come from the page, not from your profile. This is especially useful if there are several people who update the page, or if you’re a professional who helps administer the page but isn’t an employee of the company.
• Inviting friends: Group administrators may suggest a page to friends, but unfortunately non-administrators may no longer do so.
• Unlimited fans: A page may have an unlimited number of fans.
• Post as a profile or an Page administrator: your page can feature other pages it “likes” and more.

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Facebook Group: (Only for personal account)

A group is ideal for a group of people who want to maintain a discussion. Until recently, you could invite a friend to join a group, and they would have to decide whether to accept the invitation. If a group was created recently, the new rule is that current group members can add their friends to a group. The friend can leave the group, but until they do, they’re a member.

Advantages of groups include:

• Wall posts: Messages, links, photos and videos that a group administrator posts to the group wall will show up in group members’ news feeds. Group members can comment on these, or post their own content.
• Privacy: A group can be open, closed, or secret. The members and content of an open group are public. In a closed group, the list of members is public, but the content is private. In a secret group, the members and content are private, and the group doesn’t appear in search results for non-members. A study group might choose to be private, whereas an alumni group might choose to be open.
• Shared documents: You can share documents with a group, and allow other group members to edit them. A book club group might include a list of all the past books they’ve read, or a study group might include a group project.
• Group chat: You can limit a chat session to include only group members.
• Group email address: Members of the group can send an email to all the other members via a single email address.

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• Events: Like pages, a group administrator can create a related event.

Facebook Event: (For personal account and business account)

Although it sounds obvious to say an event is an event. An event is NOT a group or a fan page. People make the mistake to set up groups and pages for events and miss out on the functionality of setting up an event.

• Created by: A person who has a profile or the administrator or a page or a group may set up an event.
• Invitations: You can invite all members of a group or a fan page, or choose friends or lists of friends to invite.
• Event details: It includes the date, time, event information, a picture and the event location. If you enter an address, the event will include a link to a map.
• Attendees: The event page will include a list of who’s attending, who’s not attending, and who has not replied.
• Wall posts: People who are invited to an event may post or comment on the event wall.
• Messaging: The event administrator may message people who are coming to the event, those who might come, those who haven’t responded, or all of these.

Facebook Ads: (For personal account and business account)

Give you the ability to create audience targeted ads to promote your business, products, services or Page with associated budget for your campaign.