Facebook Profiles vs. Pages.  The debate rages on.

Facebook developed Pages as a way for businesses to promote themselves and to make a distinction between people and businesses.  But many people continue to use their profile for business use.

Mike Klingler, creator of the Renegade Professional internet marketing training site,  started a Facebook discussion about Profile Pages vs. Fan Pages for business use.

The discussion is heating up, with people on both sides feeling strongly about their choices.

Which do you prefer?  Do you mind blending your business life with your personal, or do you prefer to keep them separate.

Below is my response to this discussion.  You won’t find it posted because Facebook is being a little glitchy and I can’t get it to post.

Hi Mike,

I’m trying this one more time today.

I agree that we need to walk our talk so that our private lives and our business lives are in sync in terms of our values.  I can’t imagine finding contentment if I thought a certain value applied to one part of my life and not the other.  I’d be wacky in no time if I lived like that.

So I’m completely on board with a holistic approach to one’s biz life.

Still, there are some very real reasons why people want to separate the 2 parts of their lives in terms of FB.

I only friend people I know but I allow anyone to fan me.  If I used my profile for biz, then I would have lots of friends who were actually strangers.  Further, by doing this biz I have chosen to have my name spread across the internet, while my friends and family have not.  If I make my profile page very public, these are my concerns:

1.The privacy of my loved ones.  If my friends and family post about their lives and I have strangers who can access my wall, their lives are suddenly public.  Yes, I know that FB is not private, but not everyone grasps that.  I am friended with lots of kids and I don’t want their info exposed to people I don’t know.

2.  Spamming my friends and family.  My loved ones have not requested biz info from me.  Even if my content if superb, it’s spammy to talk about work in a home setting (it’s a little like pulling out the compensation plan during Thanksgiving dinner).  My profile friends want to hear about my private life, not the latest email marketing technique.

To me, this is the implementation of Attraction Marketing.  As long as my loved ones have not asked for my biz info, I won’t flash it in front of them.  When they see my magnificent success and how I glow with happiness in my biz, I’m sure they’ll come knocking at my door! 

3.  Sometimes I just want to be private.  Of course I share a lot about my private life in my biz and I’m quite proud of my personal accomplishments.  But there are times I just want to make a post that doesn’t go in my biz life (maybe this is the introvert in me talking).  Maybe I want to kvetch about the weather with a friend who understands or maybe I have a kooky interest that I want to share with just my friends.  This separation seems healthy to me.

Note:  even as I write this I know it is only half true–if I really wanted to share intimately with my friends, I wouldn’t choose FB to do it.  In reality, FB is false intimacy.  But I’m sure you can get the idea.

Yes, I know that I can fuss with the privacy settings on FB and address many of these concerns.  But privacy setting are not foolproof and they are an extra step.

The point is that I think one can be in alignment with our values and still want our profile separate from our biz page.

So Mike, you suggested that there should be no problem with mingling biz and private, and I suggest that there is no problem with separating them either.

@Eric, and @ Brian,

Eric, I love your story.  I can really see the value in sharing yourself and like I said, I have never been one person in public and a different person in private.  I agree that we are who we are, in biz and in our lives.

But for me, I still relate to Brian’s experience that there are some parts of ourselves that we share best with our most intimate family and friends.  There are private moments when I want or need my family support and for a myriad of reasons, don’t want strangers to be part of that moment.

Eric–your example of asking a question and getting answers from a really wide group of friends–both close and distant is great.  But your question wasn’t particularly personal–it was interesting (in fact, it was a brilliant question to engage people!).  The same question could be used on a page or a profile.  And I think it was its uniqueness that attracted people to answer.  Would you have gotten 23 comments if you had just said that you had oatmeal for breakfast?  And would you have gotten the same branding?

It’s interesting that you feel like your page builds your brand and identity because I have the opposite experience.  When I see a feed with all sorts of musing and revelations from people I barely know, it doesn’t engage me in them.  I need a relationship with them first before I care about their private life or their philosophies.

Maybe part of our thoughts about profile vs. page comes from our own experiences with how we bond with people.  For me, I can’t imagine bonding over FB.  For you, FB can start the relationship.  For me, FB comes AFTER I know them.

Thanks, Mike, for this discussion.  I’ve been trying to help people with just these issues and it is really great to have a discussion to explore them in.

Julia

When you’re a beginner at Renegade Professional, it is so easy to be overwhelmed.  Dozens and dozens of videos on all types of subjects can distract you.

If you manage to make it through Renegade Professional, then there are all the other distractions on the webs–the newest launch from the latest internet guru, the latest changes from Amazon and Google, the emerging social media tools.  It’s a jungle to get lost in.

And if you manage to stay out of that, the final and most devasting distraction can hit–the voices in your own head.  The constant dialog telling you why you can’t do this, why you’re making mistakes, why it will never work, why you’re wasting your time.

The distractions are endless.

Stay Focused

Mike Klingler has great advice for Renegade Professional beginners.

Stay focused.

And if you need help, get a coach to help you.

It’s a big job handling everything it takes to get an internet business started.  The technical learning curve alone can be overwhelming, but the emotional battles can take you out.

Find a coach to help you wade through it all.

Social Networking is the new thing.  Everyone has a is Facebooking, Twittering, and Linking-In.

What is social networking?

Here is quick video which explains it:

Social networking hold particular power for building your business when it is used to build a pool of people who share an interest in your product or service.  It’s a bit like a giant, e-expo with everyone who loves what you have.

The best explanation I have heard in using social networking, specifically Twitter, to build your business is Mike Klingler’s “How I Built my First Email List“.

Mike’s course is a 3 part course.  It explains why you want to build an email list, and what potential this holds for your business.

In the third video, Mike hits his stride and gives some amazing insights about how social networking holds huge potential for your business.  He explains tips and tricks to create a personable yet business-like presence on the net.  And most revealing, he shows how social networking can move beyond “what you had for dinner” to building a group of people interested in getting updates about your business.

If you have wondered about social networking and how it can help your business, this is the best explanation I have found.  With this video, you will be twittering and facebooking and watching your list of followers and friends grow.