In an earlier post, Reader Question: The Benefits of Facebook Pages, I mentioned that I would soon be posting a series about creating and using Pages. Well, ignoring the "soon" part of that statement, this is what I'm going to be writing about every day this week. Today's post is simply going to discuss some of the general concepts regarding Pages for those readers who are unfamiliar with them.

Note: If you have any specific questions about Pages, feel free to send them to me and, if possible, I'll address them during this series.

What are Pages?

Facebook Pages are similar to individual profiles, except they're for "branded entities," which include businesses, individual products (e.g. Coke has its own Page), nonprofits, public figures, music groups, sports teams, TV shows, websites, etc. They are created and administered by people authorized by the entity to do so, unlike Groups, which can be created by anybody on any topic.

For example, I have a page for this blog: Tech for Luddites.

If someone else tried to create a Page about it, I would be able to have Facebook remove it because I am the publisher of the blog. However, anyone could create a Facebook Group of the exact same name where people share their own tech problems and respond to requests for assistance. They could even link to my blog, but they could not pretend to represent it.

So the main purpose of Pages is to give businesses, etc. a Facebook presence where they can create a community of people interested in what they're doing, while controlling their brand and messaging.

Note: You may see Pages also referred to as Public Profiles. This was the term Facebook was promoting when they launched their redesign a few months ago to try to convey the message that Pages work a lot more like Profiles now than they did before. However, I guess the term was confusing or, at least, not catching on, because they seem to be using Pages more often now. For example, the list of filters on the left-hand side of your home page used to have a link for Public Profiles; now it says Pages.

What are fans?

Unlike individual profiles, Pages do not have friends. Instead, they have fans. These are people who sign up on the Page to receive updates from the Page in their news feeds or Inbox. There's no limit to the number of fans a Page can have.

Note: Anyone can see your Page content, but only fans can interact with it—for example, add comments to your posts or participate in discussions.

Requests to become a fan of a Page are automatically accepted and the person's name and profile picture will immediately show up in the list of fans (a subset are displayed on the Page's Wall and Info tabs—these randomly change every time you reload the page). However, the administrator of the Page cannot access any information about the fan that he couldn't see based on his individual connection to that person. For example, I have fans on my Tech for Luddites page who are also my Facebook friends. If I click on their fan picture, I'll see their full profiles, just like I would if I clicked on their name in my personal news feed. However, I also have fans that are not friends of mine. If I click on THEIR pictures, I'll be taken to a page that displays only the amount of information that person has authorized to share with non-friends in their privacy settings.

Likewise, fans will not be able to see that you are the page admin or be able to access your personal profile.

When you become a fan of a Page, a link will show up on your own Info tab (subject to a bug that has affected some users that I wrote about earlier). You can also see a list of all the Pages you're a fan of by going to www.facebook.com/pages and clicking the My Pages link at the top left.

How do people find Pages to become fans of?

There are many ways someone can find your Page. I'll be discussing some of these in more detail in later posts, but here are a few examples:

• An existing fan can invite her friends to become a fan as well
• Friends can see what Pages their friends are fans of
• Pages may appear in a list of "Favorite Pages" on another Page that someone is a fan of
• People can search for a specific Page or use a generic keyword (e.g. "Manchester United" or "gardening") and related Pages will appear in the search results
• People can browse through all Pages by category at www.facebook.com/pages
  

Can I control who can see my Page?

Facebook assumes that Pages belong to public entities, which is probably a reasonable assumption. So there are limited options when it comes to restricting who can see your Page. You can only restrict it by the person's age or country where the person is located.

You can also set your Page to be published or unpublished, in which case no one but page administrators can see it. This is good for when you're just setting up the Page, so you can test things out, but at any other time it kind of defeats the purpose.

Note that your Page can also be found by anyone on the Internet, but they will not have access to all your content or be able to become a fan unless they're actually logged into Facebook.

So those are some of the basic concepts about Facebook Pages. Tomorrow, I'll be discussing a very important question you need to answer BEFORE you set up your page.

In the meantime, Facebook has several Pages of its own, including one for, er, Facebook Pages. You might want to check it out for more information and tips on how to get the most out of them.

Posted in Facebook, How To, Social Media