Small-business owners and individual practitioners often ask me about Facebook business pages. A lot of information is available touting the value of having one of these pages. The question is, whether or not your business can really benefit from developing a Facebook page.

The advantages of having a page include:

• Search engines like Facebook pages and offer the possibility of gaining search engine position if the page title is crafted effectively and content is kept current.
• Facebook pages provide an avenue for interacting with people who like what you do.
• On your profile, you are only allowed to have 5,000 friends, but you can have an unlimited number of people who are considered fans (people who “Like” your page).
• You can send notifications simultaneously to all of your fans, but not to your friends.
• Information posted to the Wall of your page can be seen in the newsfeeds of people who “Like” your page, giving you more visibility on Facebook.

Sounds good, doesn’t it? I thought so too. But after having one page for more than a year, and another for a few months, I’m not convinced that every small business owner should invest time or money in building a Facebook page. Here’s why:

• People often “Like” something, yet never return to the page. Newsfeed items only become visible to people who actually interact with your page.
• If done strategically, you can easily limit your friends to 5,000 — unless you are a major celebrity. Interacting via your profile rather than a page can be more casual, and more fun, and people are more apt to interact with you via your profile.
• Pages work really well for large companies with a well-established fan base or smaller companies that have large mailing lists that they use to frequently contact customers. These mailings can be used to drive people to a Facebook page with offers of coupons and discounts. For businesses without a mailing list or established following, it takes a lot of effort to drive people to a business page.
• It’s a lot easier to build a list of friends then fans. You can ask people to be your friend and you can suggest that they Like your page by sending an e-mail, but people are more apt to become friends then fans.
• It’s a lot easier to share information from the Net on your profile than a fan page. To share on your profile, you only have to Like an article. To share on a page, you have to copy the URL and go to your page to post (or use a service like Hootsuite).

Bottom line: it takes time and effort to build a fan base and the page will only succeed if you stimulate interactions or offer reasons for people to keep visiting your page.

Here are some questions to ask yourself before you invest in a Facebook page:

1. How do you anticipate generating interest in a Facebook page in order to entice people to Like your page?

2. Are you willing to spend time at least a few times a week posting information to your page and attempting to stimulate interaction with fans?

3. Are you comfortable with the idea of posting information even though, in the beginning, you may only have a limited number of fans or people who interact with your page frequently.

4. Although a page can become a substitute website, some sophisticated programming and copywriting is necessary to entice people to actually contact you. People rarely make a buying decision until they have at least three or more exposures to a company or product before making a buying decision. Are you willing, or able, to write and produce an effective sales presentation for your Facebook page?

5. How do you perceive to gain value from having a page? Can you realistically achieve this given the amount of time and effort you might be willing to invest in a page?

Unless you can truly see yourself maintaining a page, don’t invest a lot of time or money establishing one.