Did you know that Facebook allows a person's profile (usually the one related to a business) to be converted to an official page without losing any friends or contacts?

It is possible to migrate your profile in an official page, thus transforming existing friends into fans.

This update is highly recommended if you are using a "profile" instead of a "page" when the intent is to promote a business, as you would face a breach of terms and conditionsset by Facebook, resulting in a possible elimination of your profile as well as of all your contacts.

However, by following the new conditions, Facebook will offer several advantages. Let's find out together some of them.

Official pages offer unique tools, such as the statistics on the fan base or the ability to show all the posts that have ever been published.
These analytics can be useful in order to get to know your fan base:

• the contents of interest
• to what extent published posts spread
• the demographics of your fans (sorted by gender, age, city, etc..)​

You will be able to enter the basic information of your business, such as:

• business description
• phone number
• address
• opening time
• product category
• price range
• year of foundation and so on.

Thanks to an automatic plugin, you can enter the geolocation on the map of your place of business. In addition, public transport can also be incorporated to help customers reach you as well as the type of parking space available.

In order to increase the chances of interaction with users, numerous plugins or apps can be installed:

• contact form to request information
• calendar for scheduled events
• e-commerce website
• Instagram, Twitter and the main social networks integration
• subscription to your newsletter
• video (from your Youtube channel)
• and many other apps

Through a business page, campaigns/advertisings can be launched to:

• increase your own fan base
• promote a particular post or product
• advertise ongoing promotions

Each campaign can be highly profiled according to the target you want to reach and the available budget.

(A campaign can start even with a budget of $10 per day)

While a personal profile is limited to 5000 friends, a page doesn't have any number restriction.

This critical limitation in a personal profile should already be enough to make you decide to migrate to an official page, which allows an unlimited fan base (Facebook has pages with millions of Likes).

Moreover, an official page looks more professional to customers and potential customers.

This way, the brand and image reputation of your business will definitely stay intact.

With an official page, customers or visitors will finally be able to use the check-in option and let everybody know they've been in your place of business.

This interaction will give your business the opportunity to take advantage of free publicity, which will be more effective as it is performed directly from your customers.

However, the migration from profile to page has some small compromises to consider:

• All the posts and images previously published will be lost
• Access to the chat will no longer be available, therefore you cannot write to the users, but only answer
• Adding people in your network with the "add to friends" feature or like their posts or images will no longer be available.

The official Facebook page offers many advantages and possibilities, from indications about commercial plugins to increase interaction, to advertising campaigns to increase the fan base, not to mention the absence of number restriction for your fans and the possibility to use appropriate statistics to find out valuable information about your target.

If the page is well-managed, it can help your business with new tools and channels to open and optimize your own social influence and monitor brand reputation.

On the other hand, a personal profile allows you to maintain a more direct contact with your customers, thanks to the chat; but it is risky because it goes against the terms and conditions set by Facebook and again, it can potentially be eliminated at any time.

This can represent a major obstacle for those who don't want to proceed with the migration.

Our personal suggestion is to consider this "loss" as a new beginning in management and care of your image on social networks.

This is the best time for your business to establish a new line of communication.

Mr. APPs srl can help you with this migration within the Social Media Marketing service, contact us for an estimation.