I have had the fun experience over the last couple of months of creating materials to help people get the most out of Facebook for their business or organisation. I decided to create this quick and simple guide to Facebook based on what I’ve learnt so far.

What you need to know about Facebook:

Individuals have profiles and organisations have pages

Many people I have met have created a personal profile (that has friends) instead of a page (that has fans) for their business or organisation. Some have done this and then also created a page, using the business personal profile to manage it. This isn’t technically allowed on Facebook and actually isn’t the best way to set up a page for your organisation anyway – pages have more features such as the ability to run competitions, run a shop etc.

Your personal Facebook profile has nothing to do with the pages you create and manage

To create a page in Facebook you need a personal Facebook account. You log in with this account and then create a page.  No one but you can see who manages your pages. So your login is simply the ‘key’ you need to get in to open and run your Facebook page – the two things remain very much separate. So there is no need to create a personal Facebook account for your business. See your Facebook page as your office and your Facebook account as simply your key to opening your office.

But I’ve created a personal account for my business and have built up a following!

Don’t worry, you can convert your Facebook profile (that has friends) into a Facebook page. Facebook automatically converts all your friends into ‘fans’ (ie. people who have liked your page). I have outlined in this document some step by step instructions for converting your profile into a page:

What’s this new Timeline thing and what are the benefits of it for my Facebook page?

Facebook timeline for personal profiles was launched under much controversy last October. Finally they have rolled out the same look for pages on Facebook so if you have a page for your business, organisation, church, charity or for you as an individual public figure you can now enable this new look.

Earlier this week, I published a guide at Reach Further (where I work) to getting the new look Timeline for Facebook pages (which was announced on Wednesday 29th February), here it is reproduced below:

If you get stuck or confused with any of these new features, do feel free to email me and I will try and help.

Remember, whenever software changes are introduced there are a lot of glitches, chances are, if something’s not doing what it should it’s probably the software and not you! If you find something’s not working, leave it for a few hours and come back to it rather than getting yourself all worked up!