Personal Voice vs Business Voice – The Fan Page Trap

By Kimberly Castleberry at Social Media Today:
Did you know that “just be yourself” doesn’t always work the way you would expect with your Facebook business page?

Facebook business pages (aka “fan pages”) have a feature known as “Voice” which allows you to switch between speaking (meaning posting) as your page and as your profile.
In social marketing, we’re taught to be ourselves and not hide behind our brand… but often that can lead to some severe confusion when technicalities of social sites come into play.

When you visit your Facebook Page, across the top of your screen will be a narrow menu that tells you which voice you are in, and asks if you would like to switch:

(Yes, this tool was previously buried in your Page’s admin dashboard, but has been moved out front and center now.

“You are posting, comment, and liking as…” either your Profile or your Page… a very important distinction!

So what happens when we accidently use our profile to post on our page?

The item is not shown to the fans! 
Let me show you how this works…
In your personal profile’s news feed… you might see a friend who is posting to a page they own but forgetting to switch over to “be” the page… it would look like this…

Seems harmless enough right?  Looks just like what you see when someone posts on a page they don’t own.

While this can be a good way to show your FRIENDS (of your Profile) that you are writing about something somewhere…  your FANS (of the Page) will have nothing appear in their news feed. 

So what do Fans See? 

Only this…. and ONLY if they visit the page directly… 

Your posts get lumped in with all the other posts by the other fans (because your profile is a fan of your page)… and NONE of this goes down your fan’s news feed!

How ya like them beans? 

So, sometimes this is useful because your friends of your profile may suddenly become aware of your page’s existence… it hurts your Page (a lot!) because your fans have no chance to engage with the content (unless they come to the wall and click through the posts by other, which most never will)… and thus no chance to build EdgeRank.

My favorite use of posting as a profile… on my own page… is to do it when I need to leave a comment on something and need to tag some of my profile’s friends. Since my page can not tag my friends, utilizing a comment and some tags via my profile can be helpful when I mention people I’m already friends with. 

The Voice tool on your Facebook Page is very powerful… but because of that it can also be “deadly” if used incorrectly!

Have you seen any page owners accidentally posting as themselves to their own page? 

Happy Facebooking!

~ Kim ~
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