It’s not uncommon to misunderstand the differences between Facebook business pages vs. personal profiles. There’s a lot of information floating around in piano and voice teacher forums, social media programs, and blog posts that confuse the usage of these two entities.

Some experts encourage using personal profiles to run your studio business on social media. That advice is, quite frankly… a bit risky. Why? Because using a personal profile to run your business is in direct violation of FB’s community standards.

Does that mean we can’t post about our business on our personal profiles?

The short answer is no.

The longer answer is that we need to be aware of how social media platforms want us to engage as human beings AND as business owners. And we need to understand the benefits of Facebook business pages vs. personal profiles.

In this blog post we’ll discuss the difference between Personal Profiles, Business Pages, and the option to create “Professional” Personal Profiles.

Wanna jump to a section? Use these links:

Personal Profiles

Business Pages

Using Personal Profiles vs. Business Pages

Professional Profile Mode

About Facebook Personal Profiles

Personal profiles are the accounts that you create when you first sign up for the platform. It’s where you can connect and share photos of your cats and updates with your social media family.

Technically Facebook only allows one personal profile per person. However, there’s been a strong trend in the past (and still today) where individuals who own businesses create TWO accounts so that they can have one that’s “friends and family only” and another that connects with colleagues and potential clients.

Here’s the thing about that tactic: creating two separate personal profiles in order to run a business “profile” is in violation of FB’s community standards in the section about Integrity and Authenticity. Furthermore, if you create a separate personal profile to run your business and you use a name that is not the name you use in real life, such as “Sara Campbell Studio” instead of just “Sara Campbell,” that’s also in violation of policy.

Personal profiles are meant to be just that: personal profiles.

Using a personal profile as the sole means to run your studio’s social media does more than violate community standards, it also does the following:

1. Alienates Friends and Family. If you’re like me, when a friend only posts about their business on their personal page, it’s a little off-putting. After all, you’re friends with them so that you can see pictures of their cats, food, and updates about their life, right? Post upon post about what they’re selling can come across as what one of my coaches would call “salesy weirdo.”
   

2. Decreases Personal Post Reach. When all someone does is “sell” from their personal profile, eventually people stop paying attention. At this point, organic reach starts to decrease and their posts get pushed down into the bottom of the newsfeed. This means less and less people on their friends list will actually see their posts.
   

3. Risks Account Suspension. Bringing it back to community standards, personal profiles that only post about business actually run the risk of being removed from the platform. It’s against FB’s terms of service to use personal profiles in this manner.

About Facebook Business Pages

Business pages have a lot more bells and whistles. And yeah, I get it… they’re a bit more complicated to run than a personal profile.

However, if you follow simple tactics to optimize your business page, they can become a wonderful tool for your studio business.

There are SO many benefits to having a professional business page. It’s something that I encourage all music teachers to do for many reasons.

Why business pages are important to use:

1. Professional Appearance. First, having a business page gives you prime internet real estate. It tells your audience “I am a professional business” and increases the trust that we need in order to successfully book clients.
   

2. Marketing Analytics. Business pages give you detailed analytics about your audience and how they engage with your page. This allows you to understand what type of content your audience wants to see and even when they want to see it.
   

3. Advertising. Another key difference with business vs. personal is that you can run paid ads. This isn’t something that every business will need, but if you are what I would call a “next level” teacher, and you want to sell online courses, build your blog email list, or otherwise, having a business page is an absolute must.
   

4. SEO Advantage. Most personal profiles are set to “private,” which means they aren’t indexed by search engines. Business pages, on the other hand, are automatically set to public, which means search engines can index the information and your page can show up in searches for things like “piano lessons near me.” There’s also a nifty way to link your Google My Business page and social media accounts the header / footer of your websites. (We’ll get to the details of that another day.)
   
5. Business Reviews. Potential clients love to know about the experiences of other customers. Business pages allow you to gather reviews from current clients, which is another great way to increase the know / like / trust factors!

A quick note about analytics:

There’s no one-size-fits-all “best” day or time to post on your business page. Every page has unique metrics depending on the audience that follows / likes that page. Over the years I have found a pretty even engagement distribution each day of the week. (People are pretty much on social media every day.) What’s more important than the day you post is the time you post. You’ll be able to figure out what time of day works best for you by looking at your analytics.

Using Facebook Business Pages vs. Personal Profiles

Now that we’ve gone over the details about personal profiles and business pages, let’s take a look at how we can use BOTH to run a successful business.

Your business page should be the main hub. This is where you post about what’s going on in your studio, how you solve the problems your clients experience, and how new clients can join.

Five simple ideas for post content on your business page:

1. Behind the scenes posts. What are you up to?
2. Student shout outs. What are your students up to?
3. Studio celebrations & stories. ‘Cause everyone loves a good story.
4. Current studio offerings / openings.
5. Teacher features. (This is especially nice for multi-teacher studios!)

(If you’re curious about exactly how to write these types of posts, the Social Media Savvy Studio course has all the details.)

In contrast, your personal profile should be a place where you focus on celebrating what you are doing inside of the studio. The main difference is that these posts won’t always be “selling” something. They’re casual, less polished, and well… more personal!

Four ways you can use your personal profile for your business:

1. Talk about what you do.
2. Share posts from your business page. (Make sure to write a description about why you’re sharing them!) I recommend only doing this every once in a while, as constantly sharing business page posts has a tendency to reduce your organic reach.
3. Link up your business page, website, and other socials in your personal profile Intro section.
4. You can also use your personal cover photo to convey info about your business as well.
5. When you DO make a post about having room in your studio, make it casual.

Another key point: I wouldn’t recommend sharing EVERY post from your business page to your personal profile. Just pick the really important ones.

Using Professional Mode on Personal Profiles

Starting in 2021, Facebook started rolling out an option for personal profiles to turn on something they call “Professional Mode.” For a while it was only available to a select number of accounts, but now it’s an option for everyone.

What exactly is Professional Mode? Here’s what Facebook says about it:

When you turn on professional mode, you can build a public presence as a creator and maintain your personal friends and family experience. Professional mode can help you build a public following and grow a global community.

In professional mode, you have access to a bundle of professional tools, enhanced safety features and, if you’re eligible, monetization products that can help you build your professional presence from your profile

From About Professional Mode for Profiles on Facebook

It’s kind of a middle-ground for a personal profile / business page, with the main difference being that professional mode is meant for personal brands, not business entities. It should also be noted that professional profiles lack some options:

While professional mode and Pages offer similar professional tools and monetization opportunities, professional mode for profiles doesn’t support management tools or integration with Meta Business Suite at this time

From About Professional Mode for Profiles on Facebook

How can you decide if professional profiles would work for you? Professional profiles are useful for:

1. Performers, solo teachers, or experts who want to build a public brand + community
2. Individuals who want to monetize their content using Facebook reels monetization options.
3. Creators who want to add a subscription option to their followers.

When you enable Professional Mode, you’re still using your personal profile that you use to connect with friends and family. People can “follow” you without requesting to be your friend. You’ll have options to choose whether you’re making “friends only” posts, or creating public facing posts to your followers. You can read more about the features here.

Professional Mode certainly isn’t for everyone. Here are a few cases where I would NOT use it:

• If you have a business that requires multiple user accounts to manage your socials, as this is only available to Facebook Pages.
• If you want to build a public brand, but manage it separately from your experience with family and friends.

In conclusion, you CAN use both business pages and personal profiles.

We just need to be savvy about how we use them. Keep the business stuff on the business page. Keep the personal stuff on the personal page. And remember: sometimes that personal still will be about business, which is awesome!

If you’d like to listen in on a detailed discussion of Facebook business pages vs. personal profiles, here’s a broadcast that will be right up your alley:

Looking for more?

Wondering what to post about your business, or need help knowing how to post those things efficiently? The Social Media Savvy Studio course is specifically made to help music teachers optimize their social profiles and create engaging content, so that you can reach more of the students that you love the most. You can learn more about it here.

And if you’re a “next level” teacher who wants to really kick things up a notch, my custom coaching packages are designed to help you do just that.

Read More About Social Media:

How to Rock Your Studio’s Social Media

How to Create a Perfect FB Cover Photo for Your Business Page

3 FB Page Mistakes I’ve Made in My Studio

Questions? Comments? Insights?

If you have questions or would like to chat about anything I’ve covered in this blog post, hit me up in the comments! I’d love to have a conversation with you.