It might be tempting to promote your business on Facebook from your personal account. Before you do, stop and think carefully because it can be a bad idea. Here are 4 good reasons why you should avoid it.

1. Personal is personal, business is business

If you are considering promoting your business from your personal account, let me ask you something. How much do you want your clients to see what you post as your status? Chances are, not much.

We all have times where we like to whinge about things, swear, get excited, share content that shocks, or whatever. If your clients are connected to your personal Facebook account, it is likely that you will eventually regret it. And then you can’t delete them, because they would get offended.

2. You don’t want to bore your friends

Sure, your mates all know you run a business, but how many of them want to hear you go on about it? Not many, I bet. Bore them enough, and they will simply ignore you, or – worst case – hide you from their news feeds.

More to the point, your friends are unlikely to be your business’s target audience. You are far better off focusing your business on where it will have the most impact.

3. Dedicated pages = dedicated fans

One of the most important things about a dedicated business page on Facebook is that it is specific. Focusing specifically on what you do, how you do it, and interesting things about your business is easier to promote. It also means that when you start getting active about growing your network, it keeps you personally out of it. You will have a ‘product’ (your business’s page) that you can promote, rather than trying to promote yourself.

It’s a pretty tight Catch-22. And this alone is a great reason to keep your personal account personal, and to set your business up as itself.

4. Personal accounts don’t go viral; pages do

The viral nature of social networks is what makes them so valuable to businesses and products. With this in mind, it’s worthwhile noting that personal accounts don’t go viral. Pages do.

And if you have a dedicated page, you can make sure it starts to do the rounds by creating a growth strategy for it.

Very few network growth strategies would work effectively from a personal account. But there are some excellent ways of doing it for pages.

Keep your eyes peeled, because in our next article we bring you key strategies and tips for growing your business’s Facebook network.