Ages ago, when Facebook first came on the scene, we opened a personal account and invited our friends. You know, people we actually knew in real life. 

Many moons later, Facebook went through hundreds of algorithm changes and now there are several types of accounts we can open, all with their own rules.

For entrepreneurs, we can have a business page to announce to the public what we do, how we do it, and who we do it for. This free marketing tool being too good to be true, is now a Pay-To-Play platform, with organic (non-paid) results coming in at a whopping 2% (or less) of our followers being shown our posts. You want eyes on that? Buy an ad. 

If you’ve known me for longer than 2 minutes, you’re familiar with my intense hatred of what Facebook has become. I go on sporadically and only for specific reasons. So what’s an entrepreneur to do? 

We can bust the rules and use our personal profile to deliver our business content. We’re not “allowed” to do that, of course, because that takes food off Mark Z’s table. And although plenty of folks do go ahead and market their business through their personal profile, this strategy has 2 negative impacts: 

  1. It encourages us to “friend” people we don’t actually know but who could be somehow instrumental in helping us market our business. Now instead of 400 friends we have 4,000 friends, but only a tiny percentage of whom we can actually pick out of a lineup. As a result, we get to see the personal lives of strangers and they get to see ours (or as much as we care to share);
     
  2. It also annoys the heck out of your real personal connections that do not appreciate or want your business content. And we don’t want that either. Relatives, school chums, church community, they may not be in the market at all for your business and may unfriend you if they feel they’re treated to a relentless barrage of commercials. 

So now what? 

There is a work-around, but it does take time. Go into your friends list in Facebook and one by one, identify who is really a business lead or contact, and place them in a new list, called “biz connections” etc. This nicely segregates people so that you can decide who to post your business content to. 

When creating a post, Facebook asks who you want to show the post to – and for your business content, simply choose  your new business list. For everything else, you can choose to show everyone or one of your other lists, etc.  

Yes, go ahead and show your business connections a photo of your kids/grandkids and your new cauliflower whatever recipe from time to time. After all, you want to show them your true “full” self, and not be a walking billboard. People do business with people, and you want to give your potential customers a chance to feel comfortable about the real you, wearing sweats and hugging your pet, etc. Your biz list does not need to see 1,000 photos of your vacation or you and your significant other smooching while polishing off your 2nd bottle of wine. Actually no one needs to see that, but that’s the topic for another blog…