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Profiles

The personal profile is the core of facebook. Everything that is done on facebook revolves around it.  People with profiles create and join groups. People with profiles create pages and become fans of pages.  While you can administrate a page on facebook and no one can see your personal profile, you still must have a profile to create a page with full-functionality. (Note: You may create a page first and then connect it to a profile, but without a profile, you may not add applications to the page which limits its functionality.)

Pages

While personal profiles are strictly for individuals, pages are for organizations, products, services, bands celebrities and public figures to have a professional presence.  Pages must represent a real organization, business, celebrity, or band, and may only be created by an official representative of that entity.  Pages allow people to maintain a personal-professional distinction on facebook. Pages are public websites that extend content to the web at large. Pages are not limited to facebook members, as is the case with most personal profile content. Pages are indexed by search engines and rank well. Pages are great for web marketing!

Groups

Groups can be created by any facebook member and about any topic. Groups are used for sharing opinions and interests in a particular subject. Groups can be kept open to anyone, closed to a select group or secret (not findable except by invitation). If you’re a group admin, your name will appear on that group. Additionally, when you take actions on your group, such as posting on your group’s wall, these actions will appear to come from you as an individual. However, if you post or take other actions on a Page you own, it will appear to come from the Page. Group content is not indexed by search engines and are not good for web marketing. They can be good for relationship marketing if you commit to building relationships in the group and engaging in discussions.

How are you using your profile, pages and groups for business? I’d love to hear from you.