A couple days ago I had a client here in Nashville forward me a link to a blog post about Facebook's terms of use policy. The post, in essence, says that Facebook doesn't intend for personal profiles to be used for commercial purposes and that they can (and very well may) shut down your account if you violate this policy. The blogger went on to recommend everyone create Facebook Fan pages instead. The rationale here is that your "fans" permit you to promote to them, while your "friends" on your personal profile do not.
First let's take a look at what Facebook says about this.
In Section 3 of the Facebook terms of use/statement of rights and responsibilities it says:
1. You will not send or otherwise post unauthorized commercial communications (such as spam) on Facebook.
In an updated (but apparently not official) Facebook statement of rights and responsibilities Facebook has included the following statement in Section 4:
2. You will not use your personal profile for your own commercial gain (such as selling your status update to an advertiser).
Let's Make Sense of All of This
First things first, the item from Section 3 of the policy is the official policy as of today. The addition may be coming, but neither of these changes where I land on this. Ultimately it all of this comes down to whether you want to take the broad interpretation or the narrow interpretation of the policy. The broad view is that you can talk about work but you can't sell. The narrow view is that you can't talk about work or sell. I fall into the broad interpretation category (as you might guess) because the specific examples Facebook gives are both sales oriented examples. It's one thing to talk about life as an employee but something else entirely to say, "Email me now for a 31% discount on the latest Whizbang Life-Helper 5000. Get them before they're gone!"
Here's What I Love About the Policy
The most encouraging thing about Facebook's terms is that it prevents people from doing the things that don't work in social media anyway. The culture of social networking is informal and soft sales at best. Anyone who comes off as only participating because they're trying to sell you something isn't just going to have Facebook policy to contend with, they have to deal with the fact that they're annoying the heck out of people by violating the entire culture of the medium.
Facebook, like any other social network, works best with conversation that adds value to the people you want to reach. When you take the predatory salesman approach, you're going to be shunned for being a spammy jerk. The Facebook policy is the least of your concerns. You're out there bothering potential business and hurting yourself and your brand in the process.
Facebook Fan Pages Create False Sense of Security
Fan pages won't fix spammy jerks on Facebook. If anything they may enable people to continue using Facebook the wrong way. Using Facebook for business isn't directly about selling. It's about earning attention and listening to feedback that will help your business. The LACE method for social media measurement falls nicely into this. For instance, Facebook let's you capture leads, but not because you were annoying, but because you shared a link that met a need but coincides with what you do professionally. Or maybe you talked about something you do professionally that got them interested and now they want to know more.
If you want to win with Facebook in your business, it's most important that you learn how to think the right way and talk the right way. A strict adherence to the policy won't prevent you from completely missing out on everything you hope Facebook will do for you. Sure, you can violate Facebook policy and lose the business opportunities you most want. You can also adhere to Facebook's policy and miss out too.