Getting a straight answer on this seems to be a problem … I have been searching and trying to determine for a corporate client the best way to open a page for his business. The terms are not absolutely clear in some areas – but then again that can be the norm for Facebook and its rules/terms – very open to interpretation.
When you add to this uncertainty by seeing other businesses doing what you want (I have had about 10 businesses trying to ‘friend me’ in the past week – which by the way is a clear violation of their terms) it becomes hard to decide how to set something like this up – and properly.
We finally made the decision to open the page under my client’s name. His business is a corporation and not owned by any one person and he wanted to keep his name separate from the page at all costs. The business he has also has two sides; one more cost efficient than the other which caters to a higher end type of client. His goal was to keep people from his different market groups from asking/learning about the other side of his business. Understandable but hard to make happen and stay in line with Facebook’s terms of service.
In checking out the present setup of this client – what they did before hiring me – I was poking around to see what they had in place. When I went to the tab – Create your Profile – as they had opened a page only and not setup the profile at all – I got my answer. Reading this warning message, it seems very definitive on where Facebook stands when it comes to creating a user profile in your business name >>> Don’t do it.
Their message:
Facebook profiles are meant to represent a single individual. Organizations of any type are not permitted to maintain an account under the name of their organization. We have created Facebook Pages to allow organizations to have a presence on Facebook. These Pages are distinct presences, separate from user profiles, and optimized for an organization’s needs to communicate, distribute information/content, engage their fans, and capture new audiences virally through their fan’s recommendations to their friends. Facebook Pages are designed to be a media rich, valuable presence for any artist, business or brand.
If you create a profile for your business, your account may be disabled for violating our Terms of Use. If you have questions about how to best leverage your Facebook Page, please check out our Insider’s Guide or FAQ.
Now, even after reading this I would still love to know “How does Coke or Pepsi or Home Depot have their page setup?” Who is the user profile behind those business pages on Facebook? If I knew that, I might stop questioning things. But from here on in – I will heed this warning message and always ensure that clients understand this rule.
Having dealt with 2 clients who ‘lost” their Facebook pages – one forever and one for only a month – I plan to stick to their terms.
Learn more tricks like this about setting up your own social media channels so you can network online knowing you have the best possible profiles to help market you and your business online by attending Kathy’s newest course at VAnetworking starting June 22nd, 2011. Still a couple of seats left!
Setting up your Virtual Assistant Presence on the Top 3 Social Media Platforms
LEARN MORE by CLICKING HERE
Thank you Kathy for clarifying this grey area. Unfortunately not all prospective users read the fine print.
You’re welcome Terence. Few people do read fine print and warnings, but it does payoff to do so. This course will make certain everyone knows what you should and should’ve do.
Thank you for clarifying this. This is definitely something that I have been wondering too, as many businesses I know are doing the same thing, starting a profile page for their business.
I am wondering though, what about places like churches?
Katherine,
I know that the Facebook system will allow you to open a business page for the church with a profile however I would still be very wary because in doing so it create this business profile. If you start to ‘use’ the profile that’s where the trouble can follow.
I suspect that changes will be coming now that so many organizations and business want to use facebook as well.
The main reason for this, as far as I can tell, is targeted advertising. Facebook has streamlined the process of advertising to users only the things they like. A business “profile” would skew those results.
There’s also the issue of the hassle of “friending” all your clients. With a Page, they just have to like it. You don’t have to approve them. You also don’t have to deal with all the game invites and annoying memes that people send out to their real friends.
Those are 2 very basic explanations you could give a client instead of just “Facebook doesn’t like it”.
Andrea, very good points, thank you.
One of the things I like to be sure clients think about as well – is that friends and family can be people who refer you business. If they see bits and pieces of what you do through your personal profile, they learn more about it. And when someone they know needs a service you provide it will be in the back of their mind. Unless you hide your business from your friends and family I wouldn’t hide it on facebook. I do however have a clear guide on who to friend, because not everyone wants clients as friends on facebook. Lists can help with this by targeting updates, but still it all depends on what you are comfortable sharing and with whom.
Good article . . . I have a question and not sure where to turn. My client set up a fan/business page for her record company and after that a user profile was required. She set up the business page a few days earlier. Now as we added content, etc. it can to a point where a profile was required. Well, we filled it out thinking this was for the business and facebook created a blank user profile and she lost the business page as her login page. Now when she logs in it is for a blank personal page and the only way she can switch to her business page is selecting ‘use facebook as page’ under accounts. She wants to be able to have her busiess as the “User”. Can this be switched? Can her created Business fan page be switched over to her login user profile again?
She was told by someone that you don’t need a personal account to have a business page. Do you think this is true? Not sure if this can be done from my research. since she wants the “Fans” on her facebook to be “Friends”.
Just one more thing, . . . One of the problems is that she wants to upload contacts to her Facebook business page but I don’t think it can be dome some these contacts fall into her Personal profile instead of her fan page.
She wants her user login to open to her business page and not the blank personal profile.
thanks
Daniel,
You do need a personal profile to open a business page. the way facebook works is the same as real life – a person owns thee business, so a personal profile owns the page. The profile you login under is the person and then you can go and use the business page. On Facebook the person has friends and Pages have ‘Likes”
You cannot upload contacts to a business page, nor can you to a personal profile. When you upload you are sending a friend request, that the ‘friend’ has to okay. Since a page cannot have friends this is not possible.
Also, keep in mind if she already has another personal profile on Facebook, then you are in fact violating their terms of service – one account per person.
Kathy
Thank you . . . someone at a company told my client that you didn’t need to set up a Personal profile in order to set up a Business page. Thank you for your expert opinion in this. 🙂 Thank you very much. 🙂 One of her things is she wants her login area to open to her business page and not her personal page. Plus this other person said that if she deleted the profile that she can manage her Business fan page as her login without using a profile page. I doubt that it can happen that way.
Daniel,
This statement “One of her things is she wants her login area to open to her business page and not her personal page.” is not possible. If it were then Facebook would allow businesses to open profiles. But they are two very different tools, the profile and page.
It means she makes one click when she logs in. Not a big deal if you ask me.
You can probably try deleting the profile, but in my opinion I never try to work around Facebook’s terms of service and the reason for that is I have seen people have their facebook accounts blocked and their pages closed. All with no warning. So any time and effort put into building this online network will go down the drain. A big waste if you ask me.
Kathy
Thank you for the information Kathy Much appreciated.
In order to comply with Facebook’s terms and get my business more organized, I need to make a change and am not sure what direction to take. I have a Personal Profile for myself, a Personal Profile for my business (a violation), and a Fan Page for my business created with the Personal Profile for my business. The Profile for my business has approximately 60 Friends and a Vanity URL. The Fan Page has approximately 75 Likes and a URL that is not my business name exactly (a less than optimal workaround). Should I delete the Personal Profile for my business? Should I migrate this to a Fan Page and delete the existing Fan Page? Any advise would be greatly appreciated!
Tabby,
What you need to do is get to 1 personal profile that has control of the pages. Making that personal profile an admin of the page is the start (you may need to like the page first if you do not).. Your business is not to have friends – only likes on the page. Once you have the page admin in place then you need to send messages to the page’s friends and ask them to click like on the page. Once enough have migrated the friends to likes then you can delete that profile. As admin you will still control the page from there under your personal profile. Your personal profile is the one that will have friends.
Make sure you do the admin part first and then check that you can see access to the page under that admin.
Kathy
Hi Kathy,
How can I like another business or non-profit group on my business page?
Hi Kathy,
Thank you so much for clarifying this… it is rare you get your question so confidently answered. Finding answers on Facebook has wasted hours of my time and the penalties high and I almost made a big mistake BUT FOR YOUR POST.
Annemarie
So glad to help Annemarie!