Since the new page upgrade, there is a good chance you can better separate your profile from facebook pages, kindly refer to #4 in this post ‘7+ Major Tips in Enhancing Your Upgraded Facebook Page’.

Last week we had covered a major subject about Facebook privacy settings and how each customization can protect your personal profile from Facebook page (How to Separate Facebook Personal Profile from Business Page – pt.1). Today we will be exploring further in terms of profile and page management, along with several practical ways you should know in avoiding clashes between the two facebook platforms:

Part 2:

11 Things You Should Know about Profile and Facebook Page Management

#1  Separate your Business and Personal Contacts with Facebook Lists

A MUST if you have mixed both business and personal contacts in your ‘Friends’ list. Not just for the sake of following up easily in News Feed, but to better control over what to be shared to specific group of people when updating your Wall (will explain later). Follow the steps in decluttering your news feed via Facebook Lists to group your contacts based on requirements.

#2  Control Posting Visibility WITHIN the Profile via Share-ability

Facebook List enables you to hide sensitive information, friends and even real time Wall posts from appearing on some people’s news feeds. Use the Privacy setting in the Publisher as shown below, select whom to block from the info or limiting the update to specific group of people only. For instance, if you about to post a personal update to real life friends, select ‘Customize’ prior sending out the update:

i) Customize your privacy settings to allow only ‘Buddies’ to view it (list name consisting of all your best pals who are invited to the barbeque) OR,

ii) Block list containing your business contacts only:

#3  Tighten Up Privacy Option for ‘Friends of Friends’

The reason I am emphasizing on ‘friends of friends’ is because your business contacts may reach out to your friends for friendship. No way we can prevent that so if you have set ‘friend of friends’ for certain profile information, try to restrict its visibility further via:

i) Custom Privacy: If the person is in your ‘Friend’ list.

ii) Block: If the person is not in your ‘Friend’ list:

Or if you can’t find the user via ‘Name’, just block from his/her profile instead:

#4  Hide Wall Tab from Business Contacts Completely

Another alternative to separate business contacts from personal is by hiding Wall tab from them via ‘Things I Share –> Posts by me’. By doing so, you are only allowing close friends/family members to access your Wall tab, whereas business contacts will be blocked from viewing your account activities and real time updates completely. That way you can still message to business contacts, showcasing them other necessary tabs on your profile without disclosing Wall posts at all!

#5  Page Admin Can Only Represent Him/Herself Outside Business Page

Whenever a page admin tries to comment or post on other facebook accounts, all responses will be seen as coming from the admin’s personal profile that connects with the business page. If your business page has no profile, you won’t be able to comment or join any page at all. Therefore, if you are planning for external networking to boost fan page visibility, a personal profile is needed.

#6  Network with other Fans or Pages via Status Tagging

Status Tagging can be, by far, the only possible way to showcase your business page without giving out your personal identity. But in order to tag, page admin will need to ‘like’ another page with his/her personal profile beforehand (you can hide Liked Pages from Info tab). Even if your profile thumbnail may show in ‘People Who Like’ list, page admins won’t have access to your full profile thanks to the Facebook privacy settings we talked about earlier. Also, make full use of your page’s ‘Custom’ setting whenever necessary:

#7  Assign a Sub Admin for Event Invitations

Another feature that we crave for in a facebook page – able to send personalized invitation to fans for page events. Unfortunately, private invitations can only be done through a personal profile. If you are not comfortable to expose your profile link, temporarily promote a trusted PR or collaborator for this task. Since all email invitations will be going through him/her, be sure to select someone who’s trustworthy for the job.

Extra Tips:

• Share – use the ‘custom privacy’ settings to target business contacts in your ‘Friend’ list.
• Public Event – an event created from a fan page is ‘Public’ by default so by sharing the link elsewhere, anyone can join. (Only events created by personal profile can be made secret)
• Update Fans – like any other updates, it will be kept in the ‘Message -> Update’ folder. Remind your fans to check for it.

#8  Inter-Posting between Personal Profile and Facebook Pages with Social Aggregator

The ease to control what and when to post updates without messing up both business page and personal profile is via social aggregators such as Tweetdeck, Hootsuite, MarketMeSuite or Ping.fm. Instead of inter-switching between browsers, you can have the status delivered in matter of clicks, or even scheduled.

#9  Ability to ‘Share’ as your Page Profile

‘Share’ is another key influential option for personal profiles. The only workaround for a fan page to ‘Share’ something is to re-post the item on your page Wall and give credit via status-tagging.

When sharing, it’s suggested to do it manually so:

• Can personalize the status
• Post excerpt available with image thumbnail preview (if a link involves)
• To make sure status tagging with @mention works

#10  Mobile Users: Update to Business Page and Personal Profile with Different Emails

For mobile users, a unique email will be given to each profile and business page RESPECTIVELY for updating/media file uploading purposes. Set the email correctly so not to mistakenly post to either one of the platforms. Profile will have its own email ID, while page another.

Facebook Page: Edit Page -> Mobile:

Personal Profile: go to this link http://www.facebook.com/mobile -> look for ‘Upload via Email’:

And last but not least,

#11  Knowing that ‘Privacy Setting’ is not Invincible

Not to be a party pooper but it’s important to be self prepared. Do not post what you don’t want others to find out. Moderate your messages, photos, videos and status updates so that even if there may be security loopholes you’ve got nothing to hide or worry about.

What Do You Think?

Some tedious work isn’t it? As I explained earlier, the idea of this post is not to offer you the ‘best’ method but suggestions that one may find helpful in managing his/her facebook account. Facebook will continue to evolve. No matter how far we go, always remember we are responsible for our online presence and branding. If you do not bother about it, nobody else will.

Did I miss out anything? Share your ideas in the comments. If you missed out part 1 of the story, check it out here.

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The new facebook upgrade has given page admin better opportunity in securing their profile from facebook pages. Please refer to #4 in this post ‘7+ Major Tips in Enhancing Your Upgraded Facebook Page’.

So now, if you have associated your personal profile with a Facebook page, don’t mind using both platforms to boost your business brand and visibility, Facebook is doing you a huge favor with its revolution. But what if we are to separate private network circle from business profile? Is that even possible?

We can modify our privacy level and adhere to several precautions, but there is no 100% satisfactory when it comes to separating the two. A few clients have approached me with this issue, therefore I decided to divide this subject into two sections. This week we will emphasize on privacy settings while the next, discuss the important measures to be taken while handling both apps.

Part 1: How to Protect Personal Profile from Facebook Page

The only way you get to separate a fan page from any personal profile is to create a business account.:

Advise for New Users –

To create a business account:

• NEVER sign up a new profile or click ‘create a profile’ while in the fan page
• NEVER create more than ONE account on Facebook. If you already have a personal profile, DO NOT create a business account or you may violate facebook terms of use.

Updated-1 (11/09/10): It seems like to create a business account without associating to a personal profile is no longer possible. Following a discussion we had at our fan page which confirmed by this post later on, a business page will be needing a personal profile for administration purposes.

Updated-2 (29/09/10): Business account is back again (tested on 28/09/10), the option that requires us to ‘log in’ has been removed, replaced by its previous business acc registration form.

Advise for Existing Users –

If you have connected both sides, be informed there is no way to separate a fan page from a personal profile with a different login. Here are some ideas on what you can do to tighten your profile visibility and manage contacts accordingly:

Limit Profile Visibility

#1  Hide Profile from Facebook Search

The highest level of security is to hide your profile completely from Facebook Search, shield off all possibilities for business contacts to find you via Friend Finder:

Go to Account > Privacy Settings > Basic Directory Information (View Settings) > Customize ‘search for me on Facebook’.

#2  Select a Unique Username or None at all for your Profile’s Vanity URL

So you cannot be found on Facebook Search, your business contacts may still able to locate you via Username – ‘http://facebook.com/yourname’ just may give you out. Do not set one for the profile or modify it if necessary. You only have one chance to edit the profile username before the option will be hidden from you so use it cautiously:

Go to Account -> Account Settings -> Username -> Change to other username

Limit Profile Info-Sharing

#3  Protect Profile Information from Public Viewing

There are several information you can hide from strangers. Modify them properly as instructed by going through your Account -> Privacy Settings -> Basic Directory Information > View settings:

a. Hide your Friend List

If you are to protect private contacts such as close friends or family members, customize your Friend List to ‘Me Only’ or ‘Friends Only’. Be alerted that your business contacts may still reach out to your real life friends so advisable to tighten the option as suggested.

b. Hide Your Education/Work; Hometown

Unless you are using personal profile to enhance your fan page networking with other facebook contacts, otherwise better to protect the info or not fill up your Info tab unless really necessary.

c. Hide Your Interests & Other Pages Joined

If you have liked a page, most likely you will be displayed as a fan on the page via random thumbnail display. You can delete or unlike the fan pages anytime via:

Info Tab -> Edit (Likes and Interests) -> Remove.

If you insist on following these pages, hide them from you Info tab.

Sharing on Facebook:

d. Hide your Contact Information

Go to Account -> Privacy Settings -> Sharing on Facebook -> Customize Settings-> Contact Information, set the visibility to ‘Friends’ or ‘Me Only’.

Note: If you have set a vanity URL for your username, it will appear in Contact Information and there is no setting to hide it.

e. Hide your Birthday and other Personal Information

Check through the settings:

Go to Account -> Privacy Settings -> Sharing on Facebook -> Customize Settings-> Things I Share

And Info Tab -> Edit

#4  Limit Contact Ability to Your Profile

Below options require you to be selective in whom you are friend-ing on your profile.

a. Send Friend Requests

The highest level of security is ‘Friends of Friends’. It is an option set so to encourage friends to find one another. Strangers will not see the ‘Friend Request’ button until they become friends of your friends first.

b. Send Messages

The highest level of security is ‘Friends Only’. Strangers won’t be able to contact you individually.

#5  Limit the ability to be tagged or shared by friends

You cannot control what your friend is sharing, but you can certainly avoid been tagged by going through the below settings. This will prevent your profile link been exposed to public while making sure no outrageous videos or images attached to your profile:

Go to Account -> Privacy Settings -> Sharing on Facebook -> Customize Settings -> Things Others Share

Your friend my still able to use status-tagging on you, at least you can remove the tag as soon as you found it on the wall:

#6  Check and Remove Unnecessary Facebook Applications

Make it a regular habit to check on your Facebook Applications. Remove the game apps by clicking ‘x’ to avoid intrusion or hacking. Be skeptical in all games and quizzes sending your way. Ignore or block the apps for good so they won’t appear on you Wall posts. Go through each section as most of them are opt-in by default:

Go to Privacy Settings -> Applications and Websites -> Edit Your Settings

a. Game & Application Activity

To prevent your recent activity been shown on the app’s dashboard, customize the visibility to ‘Only Me’.

b. Info accessible through your friends

You can set which information you allow to be shared by applications/games/websites when your friends use them. For the info you preset as ‘Everyone’ in the Privacy Setting, the app can automatically obtain the info unless you remove or turn off the platform applications.

c. Instant Personalization

Untick the checkbox if you do not want to be included in the relevant information shown to your friends when they land on Facebook partner websites and vice versa. If you still wonder why we make such a big deal out of this, read this article ‘Facebook’s Instant Personalization Is the Real Privacy Hairball’.  

d. Public Search

This involves Public Search where things you have approved to be shared with ‘Everyone’ can show up on and off Facebook, this including showing a preview of your profile as search results (see below). Do not conflict this option with the ‘Facebook Search’ in Basic Directory Information, synchronize them both.

Updated:

#7 Avoid Tagging and Exposing your ‘Places’

Facebook has announced a new geotagging feature called ‘Places’. By allowing integrations with other location-based services such as Foursquare, Gowalla etc, it enables facebook friends to tag and check in for each other. It may be a good feature to discover interesting places and claiming business premises, even so you should know there are several privacy settings that could protect you from unwanted exposures.

Go to Account -> Privacy Settings -> Sharing on Facebook -> Customize Settings -> Things I Share, and look for below settings:

• Limit visibility of Places you checked in;
• Prevent your profile from showing up with other checked in users;

Go to Account -> Privacy Settings -> Sharing on Facebook -> Customize Settings -> Things Others Share

• Disallow friends to check you in without consent.

Suggested Read: A Field Guide to Using Facebook Places

Quite a lengthy procedure in protecting a personal profile right? Precautions can save you from major headaches. Watch out for the next post in which we will be discussing part 2 of separating business pages from personal profile – 11 Things You Should Know when managing them both.

Other Suggested Read : 7 Facebook Changes You Must Know in New Profile (about profile-tagging in Employers and other privacy/application settings for added features)

Now Is Your Turn…

What is the Major issue you faced when managing a facebook page connecting to a personal profile?

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This is a guest post by David Smith, a conversion rate optimization consultant working for ConversionRate.net.

Every day, a growing number of companies are jumping on the social media bandwagon. They’re blogging, Tweeting, Facebooking, YouTubeing, and creating custom social media campaigns so they can connect with customers and “join the conversation”—whatever that means. In fact, this year alone, companies will spend about $900 million on social media marketing. By 2014, social media spending is estimated to eclipse $3 billion a year. It’s one of the fastest growing channels of marketing.


But what exactly are companies getting out of their social media marketing efforts? From what I’ve seen, not much. Most companies are blindly navigating their way through the new social media landscape one meaningless Tweet at a time. In short, they’re going nowhere fast, and they’re wasting a lot of time, money, and resources doing it. That’s because too many companies dive into social media marketing without a plan. And like the old saying goes, “He who fails to plan, plans to fail.”


The first step to creating a plan for your social media campaign is to set realistic goals. What do you want to achieve through social media marketing? Here are 5 realistic goals you can strive for.

1. Improve Search Engine Rankings

Social media marketing can be a powerful tool for increasing your organic search engine rankings. Social media sites like Digg, ReddIt, StumbleUpon, YouTube, and Twitter can do wonders for boosting your search engine visibility as Google weighs links from social media sites and even ranks those social media mentions to help you take up more space in the SERPS.

Additionally, whenever you promote your content through social media, you can earn more links as more people will begin to link to your content on their blogs and websites, creating a viral effect. Of course, the more natural back links you have, the better your search engine rankings will be.

To maximize the SEO benefits of social media, you need to create relevant content on hot topics that your audience cares about. Having strong, linkbait-style headlines can also go a long way to driving more traffic and earning more back links.

2. Increase Brand Awareness

One of the great things about social media marketing is that it levels the playing field by giving small businesses a voice. Small businesses that blog and interact with their target audience on Twitter, Facebook, and other social media sites can raise awareness for their company, letting customers know who they are and what they do.

A word of advice: Don’t treat social media like a typical advertising medium. Rather than shouting your offers to your Twitter followers, focus more on being personable and building relationships and trust with your audience.

3. Increase Positive Brand Mentions Online

Social media has given consumers a voice. Now, customers share their experiences with companies—good and bad—on Twitter, Facebook, review websites, forums, and more. There’s a good chance that your company has been mentioned already.

By creating a strong social media presence, being aware of what’s being said about your company, and reaching out to your customers, you can work to minimize negative brand mentions and earn more positive mentions. Reach out to those who say negative things about your company to see if there’s anything you can do to rectify the situation. And also, encourage your satisfied customers to review you online.

4. Improve Overall Customer Service & Satisfaction Ratings

It’s interesting to see how social media has turned into a customer care medium for many companies. For example, AT&T recently decided to start using social media to reach out to customers who are having problems with their service.

This is a great way to connect with customers and solve their problems quickly. However, if you plan on using social media as a customer service tool, make sure you train employees on how to do so properly. Also, don’t get rid of your other customer service mediums as not everyone wants to talk to you online.

5. Earn More Sales

One of the biggest criticisms of social media is that it’s not a viable tool for driving sales and improving the bottom line. I disagree. Sony recently said they made an extra $1 million in sales thanks to Twitter, and Dell said their Twitter presence earned them $3 million more in sales. Some companies are even combining social media with other forms of marketing like direct mail to help spread the word about their offers and earn more sales.

You can also take advantage of the new group buying concept found on websites like Groupon and BuyWithMe. These websites allow you to create special offers that customers share via social media, earning you more sales and increased brand awareness.

Do you have any set goals for your social media campaign?

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