Facebook Business Pages: It’s Personal

With all the new businesses starting up in Halifax we’re seeing more and more local businesses join Facebook and Twitter. In turn, I seem to be getting more and more questions about the best way to set up a Facebook business page. Even more disturbing to me is when I hear that another social media expert has told a client they “broke Facebook” or there’s nothing that can be done except to start a new page and try again. What is causing all this commotion? The outdated belief that in order to keep your personal and business lives separate you must have separate log-ins for your two Facebook personalities.

One Login To Rule Them All

Back in the day Facebook showed all of your fans who owned a business page. That meant that your fans could connect with your personal profile, ask to be friends, see information that was public, etc. For most it was really just a nuisance. Some people decided that to keep things clean they would set up a separate login so their page wouldn’t be linked to their personal profile. (Was it really better to have it linked to a dead profile?)

Today this is a mostly unnecessary step. If you have a small business and you’re doing your own social media, there’s really no reason to have a separate login to get to your business page. Facebook no longer publishes a link to your personal information automatically–you have to choose this if you do want it. All this does is create another login/password combination you have to memorize. It’s much easier to make your real personal account an administrator on your page. You’ll have all the same access to the page, but you won’t have to login separately.

The Case of the Broken Facebook Page

I’ve had several business owners contact me recently because they could not do many of the things they were told they should be able to do with their business pages. Yes, one client was told she had “broken” Facebook! They were all told that the only solution was to start over by creating another page. What was happening?

These clients were somehow directed to set up a business page without first having a personal account. Yes, Facebook will let you have a Business Account that isn’t tied to personal information, but the abilities are limited:

• You will not have a search bar at the top, making it impossible to search out and interact with other businesses;
• You have no way to invite your friends, from your personal account, to like your new business page;
• If you follow the link to another business page, from a comment on yours, your comments may not be linked properly to your business page, but to a blank “personal” account. See that picture above? I commented from a business account on my Twirp page. The business account isn’t linked. In fact, when I logged in as me and went to see the comment, it wasn’t even there;

Fixing Your Broken Facebook Page

Should you find yourself in this position, rest assured you did not “break Facebook”. You simply found a lesser known way to start your business page, or did so while not logged in to your personal account. Fixing this issue and linking your business page to your personal account is VERY simple:

• Log in to your personal account and ensure you have liked the business page;
• Log out of your personal account and login to your business account;
• In your admin panel on the business page, check the box on the bottom left corner for new likes. Your personal account should be the first one listed. If not, you may have to wait until your page recognizes the like.
• Click on the “See All” link inside that box;
• Beside your name, click the “Make Admin” button;
• Log out of your business account and log in to your personal account;
• You should have a notification saying you’ve been made an admin on the page. You should also see the page listed under “Pages” in your left-hand sidebar on the home page. Click on the page name in your side bar to visit your page. You should now have access to all of the functions you were missing previously.

If this worked you no longer have any need to log in to the old business account. You can run your advertising and all other admin features by logging in to your personal account now.

There is only one good reason I can think of to have a business account set up for your business page and that’s to act as a back-up log in should you be locked out of your personal account. So while it’s not a total waste to have one, I wouldn’t recommend setting up your page this way.

If you’ve set up your business page this way because you didn’t have, and don’t want to have a personal Facebook presence, then you have two choices: keep using a limited version of Facebook Pages, or set up a personal account so that you can access the full set of abilities. Just because you set up the personal account doesn’t mean you have to actually use it! Now… I’m off to fix this for yet another client.