Your answer is more important than you realize.

If you started your Facebook account to connect with family and friends and somehow found yourself promoting your work instead, you’re not alone. I’ve met many authors who continue to use their Facebook personal profile rather than a public figure or business page to promote their work.

Facebook is constantly changing how we use the platform in ways that negatively affects businesses, but the page has some very distinct advantages over the personal profile. Let’s look at why you must convert your personal profile to a business page.

1. The first and most important reason – It’s against Facebook terms of usage to operate your personal profile to represent something other than yourself (i.e. your book, your business). You could permanently lose access to your account (without notice!), if you don’t convert it to a page (Source: Facebook).
2. You can only have 5,000 personal friends but you can have unlimited followers on a business page. That’s a no brainer.
3. Facebook recommends “friends you know” which limits your potential connections to your network but recommends pages with over 10K followers to any one of its 2.7 billion users who hold interests related to your page.
4. Paid promotions – It’s no secret that Facebook wants to make money.  Some authors/businesses can avoid paid advertisements and still maintain a decent organic reach. There are always times when a paid promotion can and will greatly benefit an author like, holiday sales promotions, book signings, and new book launches.
5. The Facebook event tool is probably the most underrated page feature. Facebook recommends “events near you” to all its followers daily. If you’re holding a reading at your local bookshop, you or the store can set up a Facebook event (for free) to share with your followers, their followers, and anyone who reads. And then on top of that, Facebook will recommend it to anyone in your geographic area interested in books. Even as I write this, I got a Facebook popup notification to let me know about an event happening tonight.
6. Facebook is like the Yellow Pages, but better. People Google anything they want to learn more about. The next time you do, look at the results to see where Facebook ranks in the Google search. Your page gives you the opportunity to provide detailed information to prospective readers with just a click. Which brings me to my final point…
7. SEO. Everything you do on the Internet impacts your Search Engine Optimization, but not everything carries the same weight. Google considers Facebook results to be more reliable so those results will rank higher. An active Facebook page will help even when you’re not updating your website because new content contributes to your SEO.

What are you waiting for?

Violating Facebook policy is no joking matter and reason enough to convert your personal profile to a business page if you’re conducting business on Facebook. Maybe that’s the most significant obstacle for most published authors – understanding the moment you published that book; you became a small business. Let’s talk about that in next week’s post.

If you have any questions, or would like to discuss this further, feel free to comment below. You can reach me by email at me@LynnMcG.com.

As always, I am blessed to be a blessing.