Webifiable

Facebook can be confusing to people trying to set a business up on it for the first time. While creating an account for an individual is fairly straight-forward, what in the world do you do if you’re a business?

As of this writing, Facebook has four distinct organizational units. They are:

1. Accounts
2. Pages
3. Places
4. Groups

Just for fun, we’ll use the analogy of bags. Like different kinds of bags have different purposes, each of those items have a different purpose. Like a laptop bag is for laptops, and an iPad bag is specifically for an iPad, each organizational unit in Facebook has a purpose. Let’s look at the purpose of each.

Accounts

An account is for an individual. Facebook says one account per person, and no more. So if you follow those guidelines (and I recommend you do), then you should only have one Facebook account. If you want people to be able to find you (and if you’re in this for your business, you do), then you can enter any and all of your email addresses into your account settings.

If you want a Facebook presence for your business, you first need an account for you as a person. This will not have your business name as the name, it will have your actual name (John Doe, or whatever) as the name.

Now, Facebook will allow you to make a stripped down account that doesn’t have all the normal features, and is just used to run a Page (which we’ll talk about in a second). However, I believe if you just want one of those accounts, you’re not in the right mindset in the first place to really make use of Facebook for your business.

Pages

A Page is for one of the following:

• Local business or place (you can specify what kind of small business you are here)
• A company, organization or institution (this is for schools, government and non-profits)
• Brand or product
• Artist, band or public figure (for celebrities and quasi-celebrities)
• Entertainment (a television show or movie)
• Cause or community

If you’re trying to build a presence for any of those, you need a Page, not just an account. In face, Facebook is actually shutting down some accounts that were set up. If they see that you really should have used a Page, then they may shut your account down.

If you are a business, a Page is what you need to set up for your business.

Places

A Place is also an actual location. On Facebook, someone can check into a Place, letting people know where they are.

Here’s where it gets somewhat confusing. Places are a relatively new feature on Facebook, so they’re going back and forth on exactly how they want them to work. For awhile,  if you were a Page owner and Facebook’s automatic algorithms thought your Page was the same thing as a Place, they would let you claim that Place and merge it with your Page. Then they decided to turn that off for awhile, but still let you claim a Place.

What exactly will Facebook let you do with this in the future? Nobody knows for sure. But it’s fairly clear that if there is a Facebook Place for your business, you should claim it as quickly as possible.

Groups

Groups are a totally different animal. They’ve been around for awhile, and are a way for any sort of community or even a small number of people to talk privately on Facebook. They share a lot of the sharing capabilities that a Page and Place do, but in more of an forum-type environment. A Group can be…

• Secret, so that nobody knows about it unless they’re invited.
• Closed, so that people can see it, but have to be approved to be in it.
• Open, so that anyone can see it, and anyone can join.

Mass messaging is available in Groups, but not in Pages. But Pages can have applications, and Places can’t. If you’re running a community instead of a business, you’ll have to decide if you want to create a Group, a Page, or both. But if you’re creating a Facebook presence for a business, Facebook makes it fairly clear that you should create a Page.

Hopefully this clears up some of the organizational structure of Facebook for you. Clearly, if you’re running a business, you need an account for yourself as an individual, and a Page for your business itself.