With so many overlapping features, it’s easy to get confused between Facebook profiles, pages, and groups.
While they look similar, perform some of the same functions, and work together, each has its own purpose. All three are designed for sharing different types of content and forming different kinds of relationships.
We broke them down to help you keep them straight and determine which tool is the most effective to meet your needs.
What is a Facebook Profile?
Your Facebook profile is personal. It’s meant to represent a single individual – you. This is a way for you to connect (aka friend) family and friends. You can personalize your profile with photos and experiences. This includes a adding a profile photo and cover photo. You can add details such as your hometown, birthday, relationship status, work history, and education history.
What is a Facebook Profile not? It’s not meant for commercial use. It’s not meant to represent a business. It’s not a space that’s designed for selling products and services.
When you’re trying to decide what’s appropriate to share through a profile, consider how you interact with friends and family face-to face. Are you constantly pushing your business? Probably not. You might share an important milestone or an exciting project on which you’ve been working. But you most likely aren’t going to be hitting them up for a sale every day.
Can you have more than one Facebook profile? It’s possible. Each Facebook profile is connected to a single email account. If you want to cheat the system, you could set up more than one Facebook page using a separate email address. However, this practice is seriously frowned upon by both Facebook and the Facebook community.
What is a Facebook Page?
On the flip side, a Facebook page is public. It represents an organization, business, brand or public figure.
It’s easy to confuse the two. They look similar. Pages have cover photos and profile photos just like a profile. They have timelines. You can share images and status updates on them.
However, unlike a Facebook profile, you cannot “friend” a page. You can only “like” a page. Additionally, a page cannot friend a profile. However, it can like other pages.
Why would you want a Facebook page when a profile is more personal? If you are using Facebook for a commercial use, a page gives you a lot of advantages a profile doesn’t.
The biggest advantage is insights (aka analytics). This allows you to see such details as the demographics of who has liked your page, when your page gets the most engagement, and any negative feedback your page has received.
Additionally, with a Facebook page you have access to paid ads. This allows you to reach a wider audience.
What is a Facebook Group?
A Facebook group is like a club where you can share thoughts, photos, links, and more. You can control who joins it and who sees it. Groups have three privacy options:
- Public: Anyone can join by a group member.
- Closed: Anyone can ask to join and then must be accepted.
- Secret: Anyone can join, but they must be invited by a member.
The advantage of a group is that it allows you to network and communicate with a very specific set of individuals.
Want to see an example of a Facebook page? Pop over to RWL Design’s. We’d love it if you said hello.
