As many people have unfortunately found out, there’s a wrong way to setup a Facebook Fan Page for your business.
Case in point:
Your business partner uses their personal Facebook Profile to setup a Fan Page for your business. They’re the Creator of that Fan Page, and can grant your Facebook Profile (you) administration rights. You have access to the page, he has access to the page, everything is fine.
Until you “break-up”…
He leaves the company, and you realize that you can’t transfer Creator rights to the page to your Profile account, nor remove him from the account. Worse – suddenly, you no longer have access to your own business’ Fan Page because he’s removed your admin access.
Even if the worst has happened, you still have a few choices – none of them good, and NONE of which I recommend:
- If you have access to his account, hijack it and change his username, email and password and delete everything out of the account. Facebook may deny you from doing this though, and your former partner may be mighty ticked when you delete their online social life, so beware.
- If you have access to his account, Delete the Fan Page and start a New Fan Page using the method outlined below (you’ll lose all your Fans with this approach and have to start from scratch – which can be hard to swallow if you have more than a few hundred Fans built up)
- If you don’t have access to his account, ask him nicely to Delete the Fan Page and start a New Fan Page using the method outlined below (same Fan-loss happens as in scenario #2 above)
There are probably some other things you can think of to do (scream at the sky, try to contact Facebook – good luck!, etc.), but none of them are an effective use of your time, generally.
The same thing can happen if you sell your business – want to give the new owner admin rights to the business’ Fan Page and remove yourself entirely? No-can-do if you’re the Creator of that page – they’re stuck with you for the time being.*
Instead of going through any of the agony described above, I suggest taking the following approach to creating your Facebook Page the Right Way.
You will need:
- Access to an email address that is NOT associated with your personal Facebook account, but somehow related to your business. For example, info@yourbusinesswebsite.com – or – yourbusinessname@gmail.com
- A photo for your new Facebook page
- A SHORT 1-2 sentence description about what your business does
- Anything else you want to flesh out your Page
Procedure:
- Log OUT of Facebook. Seriously. Do it NOW. Make sure you’re logged out completely, then go to http://facebook.com and click on the link to “Create a Page for a celebrity, band or business”.
- Fill out the left section, making sure you check the box that says “I’m the official representative….” and click the “Create Official Page” button.
- Here’s the important part – leave the radio button marked that says “I do not have a Facebook account” – Got that? No matter if you really have one or not already, just say NO. Then, using the email address associated with your business, a password you’ll remember and any date of birth, fill out the security check captcha and check the box next to “I have read and agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy”, then click the “Sign Up Now!” button.
That’s it! Now you have a Facebook page that’s NOT tied to anyone’s personal Profile. Customize away with your photo, description, etc.
One last important thing you’ll want to do is to assign yourself (your personal Profile) as an Admin of the Page and file away the email and password you used to sign up for the account for future use, when you sell your business for a billion bucks and hand over the Facebook Page to go with it. :D
Do you have a Facebook Page horror-story, or some better suggestions than the ones I came up with? Feel free to comment below!
*at least until Facebook decides to roll out a feature that allows you to transfer ownership of Facebook Fan Pages. But since people have been screaming at Facebook for over a year now asking for exactly that with no response, don’t hold your breath.
3 Comments
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Setting up your FB business page like this also allows you to make comments to the FAN page from your profile so that you can comment or post to the page as a 3rd party outsider and so people can also connect more easily with your main profile page.
Another point I wanted to make is that a facebook fan page maybe good for branding, but if you want to get any traction with your FB page you have to be very creative and make a concerted effort to get people to “Like” your page or you have to have a lot of loyal followers that you can easily connect to your personal profile.
People are not going to connect with your FB page just because you are pushing your products or services. It is purely a social network and therefore you need to be social.
I am not convinced the FB search feature is going to help you much either in growing your fan base, at least yet, unless people already know you, you already have brand awareness and unless you have already connected with the felt needs of your market in the past in a very experiencial way.