Facebook Profile or Business Page:
Hello Soulfull People.
Today I’m going to be talking a little bit about social media and I’m going to be sharing about an experiment that I did on my business page versus my personal profile. This is one of the biggest questions I get asked. But before I do that, can we first talk about the thick, heavy energy of the end of summer? What’s it been like for you? I just notice paying attention to energetics and managing energy instead of time that, I don’t know what the weather has been like where you listen, because I know you listened from all over the world, but here in Texas we have had over 30 consecutive days of over 100-degree heat. We’re back down to the regular 100s but we were like 106, 107, 108 a couple of weeks ago.
It’s funny, this happens every single year, and I guess I’m talking about it to help us remember or help me remember, just as an anchor, that this is just a season. This is a time when things get really thick at the end of the summer, kids are going back to school. And they have adjusted it in Texas where they’re still going back in the middle of summer. When I was little, we went back and it was very clearly fall. And so I am experiencing a little bit of seasonal confusion. My brain wants it to be crisp, fall, new ideas, finish the fourth quarter strong. But the honest to goodness truth is it is thick as molasses right now. And I am so thankful to my friends and coaches who helped me remember to just let it be.
Today we have a little bit of a businessy topic. Y’all know I love social media. I have been, as of September 3rd, which is next week from this recording or two weeks from this recording, I will have been a self-employed business owner for 16 years. Holy cow. Shortly after that, social media showed up. When I first started working for myself, social media did not exist. It might’ve existed, but I didn’t use it. I was not a big MySpace user. I had a MySpace page, but I didn’t really get it. I started with Facebook and Twitter. When I first started, we were just beginning to use email in business. But social media for me was so helpful at the time I left the real estate industry 10 years ago to come directly into coaching in the online space.
Over the years, many people have asked me that question, “How did you build your business using social media?” This is before everybody was out there teaching about it. There were a few people teaching about it. At one point in 2014, 2015, and 2016, I ran a program called Share Your Heart, Show Your Work. It is still some of my favorite content, but I did an online class. One of these days I’d like to resurrect it and update it and make it available. Right now the archives are available to all my clients in Soulfull Success but Share Your Heart, Show Your Work was my method of creating relationship and soulful based business via the use of social media.
One of the questions that I get asked all the time to this day was, “Do you use your personal profile or your professional page?” I have had a page for a very long time, but honestly, up until recently I mostly used my personal profile to share my heart and show my work. Let me put a little disclaimer in there, I’m aware that Facebook’s terms of service the last time I checked, which was a couple of years ago, so I don’t know if the language has changed, but I know that people were often very scared like, “Oh, I shouldn’t post anything on business on my personal profile because my account could get terminated.” Well, that is possible. But when I read the language, it said that a personal profile is not to be used exclusively for business. And I know that I had been both sharing my heart, and my personal life, and my food, and my dogs, and my feet on a beach, and my business stuff from my personal profile.
For many years that’s where I worked. And this year, as I approach 5,000 friend limit, I do have the feature set on my personal profile that allows people to follow me without being friends. That’s a very nice way to use my profile because I do consider my personal profile… The alliteration of these two things is going to get me, I’m going to let it be confusing. Permission to be imperfect, correct? So the personal profile I have always, it’s not locked down for me, it’s on the global-everybody-can-see-it setting. I just decided to be an open book there, and if I don’t want it to be seen or shared, I don’t put it on any media. That’s just my philosophy. As I approached this year very close to 5,000 friends, sometimes I cull people out, cull old relationships out. I like to save room to obviously be friends with human beings I’m actually friends with, and be friends and connected on social media with my clients and my audience.
Three months ago, I declared I was going to do an experiment of going exclusively to my business page. I put a cover on my personal profile that asked people to follow me on my business page. I stopped for a period of time posting anything on my personal profile.
Here’s what I learned. So number one, I kind of failed at my experiment. What I could have done if I really wanted to see how it would work was, I could have set a timeframe for how long I would do that and track the actual results. But I’m a little bit more mushy when it comes to my experiments. I allow myself to make modifications, and so I did have a large number of people that hadn’t followed me on my page. My personal profile had like 4700, 4800 friends, but my business page only had 2300 and I don’t know what the numbers are. I’m not a big numbers tracker. I know, shoot me now. I used to be known for saying numbers are sexy. There’s a time and a place for them.
I did go through the process of asking people to follow me on my business page, et cetera, and I started posting there, and I started doing Lives there. Many of you already know, that Live is one of my favorite mediums. I started out on Periscope and then we went to Facebook Live and I just love connecting with you and sharing ideas and content through Facebook Lives. It was fascinating to see the massive drop in numbers from doing lives on my business page. And what really got me, and the rule that I always tell my clients if they have a business that is like mine where you’re personal and you’re professional, you’re a service-based business, and you are a personal brand, is to go where your people are.
If your people, and that it’s not just page and profile, that is, are your people on Instagram? Then go to Instagram. Are your people on LinkedIn? There’s a lot of people that are on LinkedIn and not on Facebook. Show up where your people are hanging out. I tried to bite my bottom lip and just deal with it. But honestly one of the reasons I like doing Lives is the live interaction. I like the connection. Otherwise, I would just record a video and put it up. And so I don’t know, I maybe went a month where I was exclusively on my business page. And I decided to open back up my personal profile. And I tend to hop on Lives there, and then if I want to record that or download it or share it to my business page, I can do that.
I wanted to go where my people are. I don’t want my people to have to look for me. I am not saying that this is what you should do. I’m just saying I ended up choosing a combination of my intuition and my experiment. Now, I did not stop posting on my business page. The other thing when I had made this decision was I was considering the possibility… So I started working with what I call my brain producer, Stacey. She’s my marketing person. I don’t have to fit into her marketing, she takes my brain and produces it. I started my contract working with her and executing our social media plan. I’ve been doing this for years, and for the first time ever I have a little bit of a laid-out plan. I had considered at the time that I might be leveraging Facebook ads, so I will tell you right now, you cannot do ads from your personal profile.
I did a giant Facebook ads experiment last year at this time. Ads were running, spending a lot of money, got some amazing clients through that ad campaign, got a lot of short term clients that weren’t quite a fit, certainly increased my exposure and my list, and probably could still be counting the results of that campaign even though we officially ended. And I just decided for me to let that wave ride, and to go back to a little bit more organic content creation, consistency, and relationship building. It just feels better to me. Now that doesn’t mean I’ll never do ads again.
But for right now I’m trusting my gut, I’m trusting my budget, I’m enjoying working with Stacey. And what I’ve noticed is that, just when I think, “Oh, I need to do a business post.”, Stacy and her team will share something on behalf of me that I have said. So that’s what I love is that even my sister was like, “Oh my gosh, your Twitter and your social media…” I got a call yesterday from somebody who was like, “Your social media is on point.” I just felt really proud that I was able, and honored, and grateful that I was able to find somebody that literally takes the words that I have said out of my mouth and writes them down and creates posts with them. That’s an interesting business thing. I know many of my clients have a really hard time letting somebody write copy for them or letting somebody help them with their marketing. And for many years I did too. I did everything in my business and leveraged out nothing. I was like, “No, my voice is so unique nobody can capture it.” But it’s been really helpful to have somebody capture my voice from things that I have said and then repurpose it.
It’s kind of nice, I can be in personal mode, sharing something silly, sharing a part of my life, sharing nothing that has to do with work. And on my social media channels, there is a professional post that goes out. That’s a new experience for me. And in the past, I had created some fatigue for myself. So for example, this week on Wednesday afternoon I had some time and space, and my husband had some time and space, and we decided to have a play day after I finished my coaching calls. And we were going to go swimming at the pool, and there was this big hullabaloo about our neighborhood pool being closed down, so we went to the splash pad. And then Bill set up the pool in my backyard. And we kind of had this goofy day and I wasn’t thinking about work. I had actually done some personal posts. My husband did a personal post about our silly adult day at the splash pad and the pool set up in the backyard. My silly play posts had nothing to do with business.
But what was nice was my team was having my business stuff go out on Instagram and my business page. And in the past, I’d have been playing, which God knows I need to do a little bit more of, and I would be going, “Oh, but I need to work. Oh, but I need to work.” And I would resent either my business or social media.
What is working is finding this hybrid way of both, 100% organic inspired in the moment post, both life and business, and then also having the marketing help to create posts on my social media channels. And then sometimes I take those and I bring them over to my personal profile.
What I’ve noticed at this point, three months after I started playing with this experiment, and in the middle of those three months not being as intentional as I was at the beginning or now, is that my personal profile has actually gotten more personal. What I’d like to do going forward is keep either cross-posting, and I don’t just mean automatic cross-posting, I can be really bad about that. But cross-posting is when you take one post and you share it to, let’s say you take an Instagram post and you automatically share it to Facebook. I have leveraged that technology in the past. But the problem with it is that the language in the post isn’t always congruent with the platform that you’re using. So for example, when you’re writing a social media post business-wise on Instagram, you might say, “Link in bio.” Well, that doesn’t translate to your Facebook page. And so I have been a little bit more conscious about re-editing copy for the appropriate platform, whether it’s a personal post or a professional post.
What I’d like to do now going forward is to take some more of my business post and bring them back to my personal profile. Oh, that confuses my brain. The other thing I noticed too is when I looked at my numbers today, I’m actually like 30 people away from 5,000 so I’d like to create some space especially for clients to be connected, to be able to message them.
There are a few other things about working with the business page that I noticed. When I post from my phone, and you want to post on your business page, you have to go to the Facebook Business Page App. It’s interesting because I can toggle back and forth between, I can see through the pictures, so I have my professional picture, and I had to put a personal picture on my personal profile so I could tell which account I was posted to, because my business page is also called Allison Crow, and so it can get very confusing. I’m clearly just blending the two of these, I’m just using both of them. I don’t know if that breaks the rules or not the rules. I’m doing what works for me and playing with both.
But on the backend of the business, so I can be in my Facebook group as my business self or my professional self. But I did notice that responding and engaging with clients, with audience members on my business page is slightly different than the notifications I get on personal Facebook. And so this goes not only for my device, but also my computer when I sit down at my desktop. And it’s fascinating because, on regular Facebook app on my phone, I will get notifications from both my profile and my page, but the pages are delayed. Like sometimes it will take me two to three days to see that somebody has posted something on my professional page.
And so I guess technically what you’re supposed to do is go into the back end of your page., The way the Business Page Manager is set up – the interface is just not efficient to me. There are your notifications, your messages, and your comments, and it’s in three different columns. And I have really gotten used to regular Facebook notifications that put things in an order of when they happened. I personally prefer the order of when they happen. I’ve had to be extra diligent because it is very important to me to interact with my audience on my professional page. I’ve had to be really diligent to check and double-check. So if I’m on my phone I make it a point once or twice a day to also go on my computer and double-check my business page from the business manager. So confusing. I know.
Ultimately the results of my experiment are, I am using these two options as a hybrid. I’m doing a lot of crossover. There is some original content on my profile that is not on my page, that is not on my Instagram. There is some original content that is on my Instagram, especially in Stories, that is not on my business page or personal profile. And there is some original content on my business page. I think ultimately, I still have the intention to grow my business page, and as I max out my personal profile, that will be the next phase.
I don’t want to grow either my Instagram, my business page or my personal profile with numbers just to hit the numbers. I want them to be meaningful connections and meaningful audience. I’m not all about fast growth, I’m all about meaningful growth. This is the concept we talk about in Soulfull Success often, is that in my business I am more of a gardener and not a machine.
There is a lot of incentive out there and advertising that really promotes the machine style of business. It certainly can work.
And after experimenting all these years, I know what I love. I know what fills my soul. I know that these systems and structures and tools are to support my soul, not to rule my soul.
And so I am going to continue growing my Instagram organically. I’m going to continue growing my Facebook page organically. And I’m going to allow myself to be playful and consistent in the both/and.. and, I also play on Twitter and I create a lot of content on Twitter, but just be forewarned, I also follow politics and news there. I am a bleeding heart liberal.
I’m going to continue crossing over with the intention of bringing a little bit more biz moxie back to my personal profile and bringing a little bit more individual personal post to my business page. For now, most of the time if I go Live I’m just going to do it on my personal profile because more people see me. And occasionally I will experiment with my business page, depending on the content. And if there is ever anything I know that I want to boost, or create an ad, or get seen more, you bet I’m going to do that on my professional page.
Now all this being said, I’m thinking of a couple of other examples of clients and friends and colleagues. I know that my colleague Kay Blond, she’s been on the podcast before, and Kay and I buddy coach every other Friday morning. We just had our session this morning. She’s been four years away from corporate, and her business is now four years old online. And she started completely and only with her business page, and because she was so consistent and only there, it really drew out her people. I remember when she did it, I was so in scarcity about leaving my personal profile. And honestly, if my personal profile went away today, I’d be totally bummed. But I would figure out a way to make my business profile work.
So if you are new or newer or not using that business page, I do want to encourage you to start actively using it, either both/and or give yourself an experiment. Now, part of my experiment was very intentionally asking people, doing a call to action more than once, “Come over here, come over here, come over here, come over here if you want my business content.” I do find it fascinating that on my personal profile, my business content doesn’t get a lot of the responses. I find it fascinating also the people on my personal profile that sometimes comment about things, and I realize they are watching and they are seeing things, but they may not hit any kind of comment or like button. I’m just going to continue playing in both until the next shift or incarnation of my business.
That being said, if you are a listener, I would like to invite you to come over and follow me on my business page for sure. And if you want to follow on my personal profile that is fantastic. Shout out, say hi, let me know you’re there. And if you are a client, obviously I would love to be connected to you on my personal profile. And you can also connect with me on Instagram. I had a neat prospective client call yesterday, and as I listened to her share how her primary value was connection and relationship, I remember the little girl, Allison, that has always valued that. And even though I’m an introvert and even though I like being behind my computer, one of my favorite things that social media has given me is connection.
The final thing I’ll talk about, kind of sandwiching here, you know this heat, the slow, heavy end of summer and the beginning of fall, I have noticed my own personal social media fatigue. Which is kind of new for me. I know a lot of people have felt that way all along, but I’ve always been energized by social media. And recently I’ve been a little tired. And as I checked in with my soul, and my intuition and my intellect, what I got was to be more intentional about my time and to be really wise about noticing when I’m, I call it sliming on the internet, when I’m just on social out of habit instead of being intentional. Intentional with my connection, intentional with my sharing, intentional with acknowledging other people, intentional. When I am intentional with all of my social media channels, it’s much more satisfying than when I am just doing a random scroll.
I just wanted to share those results with you of my, kind of, social scientific, not quite scientific experiment. And I wanted to encourage you to keep sharing your heart and showing your work on social media, especially if you are a service provider. If you’re a product provider, that is a whole different story. Another episode, another time, and probably another expert. But for me, I am an expert in sharing my heart and showing my work and selling my services through connection and content.
I hope you find that valuable. I’d love to hear what you think, what works for you. I would love to know if this inspired you to begin posting on your business page. I want to encourage you to go LIVE and get face to face and voice to voice with your audience. And with that you guys, I am out and I will see you soulfull friends next week.
Thanks for spreading the word about The Better Life Better Work Show. And of course, I love your Social Media Mentions and Shares with #BetterLifeBetterWorkShow
Letโs connect online @allison_crow on Instagram and Allison Crow on Facebook.
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