Is Your Facebook Page Name Hidden On Your Personal Profile?

Are you missing out on getting your business page “Liked” on Facebook?

Setting up your description of your own occupation on your Facebook profile needs to be done with care – because you may just be losing the opportunity to have friends easily find your business page and share it, by giving it a friendly like, when you are running your own business.

Setting up your current “occupation”

If you want your business page to be easily found on Facebook by anyone including friends, your current employer needs to be the NAME of your Facebook business page and what you do needs to be what you want people to understand about your business.  Then, your employment has to be VISIBLE to everyone who looks at your profile on Facebook.  This is where creating your personal profile and selecting your security settings is important.

On my personal profile, my employer is shown as Stories My Nana Tells as part of my personal information and my occupation is shown as “Writing Stories”. My previous work history is entered as a project, because I am not particularly wanting to show the names of past employers – since I use Facebook primarily for business.

You can check it out here on my personal profile:  Lesley Dewar

Depending on your own preferences for privacy on Facebook, you can add your full employment AND education history, but the key thing to understand about having anyone find your business page is that your Education and Work  need to be set to being visible to everyone.

Setting your profile as “self employed” is self defeating.

Did you know that 102,374 people are listed on Facebook as having been “Liked” under the category of “self employed”? Self employed   and another 100,000 in similar categories of “Self”.  Depending on how your privacy settings are deployed on your Facebook page, you may be making it almost impossible for your business page to be recognised from your profile before you become a “friend” or a “friend of a friend”.  Listing yourself as “self-employed” is self-defeating – if your intention is to build your business through your Facebook page.

How else will a friend find your business page?

• they can click on a link that you post in your Facebook stream, asking them to do it
• they can scroll down your thread, looking for some clues about where to find your Facebook page
• they can go to your website (if they can find the link for your website on Facebook), look for the “Like Us On Facebook” link, click it, go to your page and THEN Like it
• they can ask you IF you have a business page

Do you see how, all of a sudden, it is clear that if your personal profile does not clearly display your Facebook business page name, you are making it very hard, even for your friends,  to like your business page?

Why do you want anyone to be able to see your business page on Facebook?

As your network grows, by

• your own page being Liked;
• by friends leaving comments on your posts and status updates;
• by friends of friends seeing your comments and photos

- you want to make it easy for anyone who would like to do so, to be able to Like your business page quickly and easily. They should only have to click on your name, to be taken to your public profile and see your business name there.  Very often someone will be happy to Like your page, when they do not want to actually add you as a personal friend.  If they want to comment on something you have posted (from your business page), they will have to Like your business page before they can respond to the comment. Even if they Like the comment itself, they cannot add a comment of their own until they have Liked your page.

That is also a good reason to post appropriate comments or links from your business page – once you have already Liked a page with your personal profile link. You can only Like a page once, so when revisiting a business page, do so from your own business name and encourage sharing posts and comments on a business to business basis.

 

If you have found this article helpful, please come and Like our Facebook page at Stories My Nana Tells and leave us a link to your page and a comment.  We will happily return the favour. (c) Lesley Dewar 2011

Lesley Dewar is a well known blogger and workshop facilitator who writes regularly on Social Media, marketing and customer service in the category of Stories My Nana Tells – Business Tips

Her free eBook can be downloaded directly at Networking To a Plan Sharing this article is permitted providing this footnote is not deleted – all rights reserved.