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In March, Facebook changed how business pages can interact with other Facebook users. Most notably, a new feature called “Use Facebook as a Page” allows business to “like” and comment on other users.
Over the next couple of weeks, I will cover some of these changes and discuss how they impact the advisors using Facebook business pages to market their businesses.
What is “Use Facebook as a Page”?: With this new feature, you can now post, comment and interact on some areas of Facebook as your business, rather than as an individual. Prior to this change, the only time you could post information on Facebook as your business was on your business page. Interacting with other pages was done solely through a personal profile. With this change, your business can now post to, comment on or interact (e.g. “like”) with other pages.
The pros: Interacting with other pages as your business enables you to gain further exposure of your own business page. For example, the Financial Planning Association (FPA) Facebook page recently posted an article on “A New American Dream.” By logging in as your business, you could comment or “like” the post. That action would be viewable to the more than 2,600 people who follow the FPA’s page. Not only would your interaction be viewable to their followers, but your business name would hyperlink to your Facebook business page, providing an easy way for people to find and “like” your page.
This is an example of how you can strategically comment or “like” posts on other pages and significantly increase the exposure of both your business and your business page.
The cons: Unfortunately, Facebook only allows businesses to interact with other pages and not with personal profiles. Your business cannot comment or “like” posts by your clients, prospects or centers-of-influence. Nor can your business page send “friend requests” as a way to increase the number of people following your page. Because of this, you must still rely on people to find your page and voluntarily opt in to “like” your page.
