Don't get pinched by the Facebook police

Facebook has three kinds of pages: Profile (for personal use), Pages (for businesses, organizations, and public figures), and Groups (for people who share a special interest or affiliation, such as a team, family reunion, book club, or neighborhood). These differences matter in how the pages are set up and, more than ever with new Facebook rules, in what you can post on each.

If you post business content on your personal Profile,
Facebook will suspend your account, permanently.
 
To set up a group or business page, you first must have a personal Facebook account. Your personal Profile is for friends and family (the original Facebook paradigm) and you invite and approve who sees your profile, News Feed, and individual posts.
 
A group’s privacy settings determine who can see the group name, join the group, and see posts.
 
A business page is open to the public; people can choose to follow your business page, but anyone can view it. (Whether they can comment on the page depends on what settings you select.)
 
You may have heard in the news that Facebook has had some, uh, difficulties with security, fake profiles, and fake political posts. Facebook is implementing new policies intended to limit the visibility of political and business posts on personal News Feeds.
 
This is mostly good. It means Facebook is getting serious about protecting data security and preventing spam.
 
The bad news is you have to be vigilant about where you post business content. It also means that you have to work harder to get organic growth for your Page: you need to engage followers in conversation, have them Share (not just Like) your Page, and, yes, pay for advertising. (Let’s face it, Facebook’s revenues come from ads, not from your sharing cute puppy videos with friends.)
 
If you use your personal Profile to promote your business, Facebook can delete your account. This means you cannot use your personal Profile to promote your business events, sales, blog posts, promotions.
 
Read about it yourself in Facebook’s terms and conditions:
It's against the Facebook Terms to use your profile to represent something other than yourself (example: your business), and you could permanently lose access to your account if you don't convert it to a Page.
 
Facebook Terms: https://www.facebook.com/help/201994686510247
 
So, heads up: keep your personal News Feed personal (but not intimate, please) and keep your business on your business page.
 
Don’t have a business page? Set one up. (I can help.)

P.S.
If your Facebook page went away today, would you be able to reach your customers? Sign them up for your mailing list so you can reach out to them with a newsletter or other email marketing campaign. (I can help with this, too.)