How to Separate Facebook Personal Profile from Business Page (pt.1)
Posted by Ching Ya | Posted in Facebook, How To, Social Media Tool, Social Networking |
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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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Good points for staying ‘secure’ from unwanted connections, but what if you have both business and personal connections in your address book at Facebook, that’s the more interesting question.
Many of us still like to use Facebook for business while managing discussions with friends at the same place. Your title seemed to more relate to keeping business and personal discussions separate at the same channel, don’t you think? Perhaps that’s the p.2 of this post.
I don’t think most people have issues whether people know they’re a fan of something (their own business page?!), but rather keeping the discussions separate – you sometimes want to blow steam with your friends, right? And it’s actually quite simple to keep those separate…
Create lists! A list of friends, to which list you only communicate ‘friend-stuff’, and a business list to your business-related contacts, perhaps one list for your home-location people, one for other locations, and the general list is where you want to send info that relates to anyone who want to get your feed. It becomes much more difficult if you actually want to hide the fact that you like your own company’s / employer’s page…
There are other features at Facebook where you can limit the visibility of your share (Links, etc.). You just need to choose who you want to have access to the shared item. You can either set it for friends, friends-of-friends, or custom, where you can choose exactly who gets to see and/or who does not get access to this certain share. Not too hard I think, what do you think?
Tom Laine
@lainetom
Hi Tom, thanks for your thoughtful feedback.
Yes, indeed, a lot more will be discussed in part 2. I wouldn’t want to suffocate everyone in one-go as the post already exceeded 1k++ words (surprisingly we have much to talk about when it comes to privacy).
In my opinion, ‘Privacy Settings’ is the first thing an admin or any user should consider before we carry on with anything else. Especially for novice facebook users, that is the priority.
The idea of this post is not to give the ‘best’ alternative, but some choices that people may find helpful or suit their business requirements. The main objective is to provide a guide so even early facebook page adapters will know how they can protect their accounts before going further in management and lists-making (one of the methods that will be brought up in next post too, so stay tuned).
Personally, I prefer to cross-posting. But since there are too many requests asking about separating the two (or shall I say, send the right updates to the right group of contacts without affecting others), I figure this is a much understandable title for many. Again, it is not to suggest to completely separate page from profile (which is impossible), but rather more about how one can properly manage their page & profile altogether — *light bulb moment* or maybe this is the title I should pick, ‘Management’.
Appreciate your comment.
You always have amazing social media tips!
Thank you Shevonne, I appreciate your visit and kind words. May us all learn from one another through experience.
I’m in the process of creating the most private profile I can for a family member. I’m wondering – if you restrict someone from being able to view your friends’ list, does this remove any of your friends from coming up in the restricted persons’ suggestions?
Kristi,
This is a good question actually. In my opinion, I don’t think that will prevent our friends from appearing on the restricted person’s friend suggestion. ‘List-hiding’ is probably just within our profile (on the spot), and we cannot interfere one friend befriending another. Facebook will recommend our friends to the restricted person if they are having enough ‘mutual connections’ with his/her confirmed friends. Do you think so?
Love to hear your thoughts in this.
I know that Facebook doesn’t want us to have more than one “people”-account, but I’m still wrestling with what to do. I’d like to have one Facebook account that’s Christie the Blogger, and that Christie could “Like” your page and others and leave comments on them.
But THIS Christie
doesn’t want my coworkers and relatives looking at all the things I “Like” in my blogging life. Worlds collide. If I create a new FB page for my blog using a different email account, can that email account “Like” other pages and leave comments on them, or does that take a “People?-account?
Christie, that’s the limitation of being a fan page.
A business page is static, cannot go across to comment/post/network as an individual. It’s more like a name card, or be seen as an added support for a profile’s branding/portfolio.
It is hard isn’t it? We would like to have a personal side that we can have fun/network freely; but then on the other hand, we need to be professional when dealing with blogging/business issues, as an individual too. A lot of us wrestle with this, personally I think FB is encouraging us to make things public with open page and profile – but sadly it’s not always that way.
That’s the consequences of a private social networking site moving towards open web. More dilemmas.
So nice to see you here, Christie!
Hi Ching Ya.
As usual great insight with valuable instructions that we easy can apply.
I was for long time seeking out options to separate my profile and my fan page.
But the last couple of month I have got a new perspective on my approach.
And I am turning my self into the brand of my business. This made think a little through if I really wanted to separate my profile and my fan page.
Since Facebook is now adding new dimensions to tagging and location based services, I will wait and see. I might stick with the personal branding approach.
This might for me be more beneficial. Still in the thinking box until I get a better aspect of the effects of all these new changes.
But as said it has made totally rethink my approach. It is exiting to follow all these changes, though some of theme has given us a couple of extra blond hairs.. tehe..
Cheers.. Are
That’s good, Are. The main idea is to make us all ‘think’ ahead and consider where shall we go from here. Personally, I enjoy a little bit of cross-posting, as I’m a believer of self-branding as well.
Hopefully readers can take what is necessary in this post, without having to limit all chances to reach out. We will discuss more in coming posts perhaps? See you soon.
Social channels have become plenty of information and after years you need to separate the waters, necessarily, in a more private profile.
Delicious bookmarked for reference! and excellent Facebook tips! Happy the site is live again
All the best,
Gera
Gera, thanks so much for dropping by. You’re the first one notifying me about the site issue! Big thanks.
Otherwise I would have only found out later, panicking who may have hacked my site. Scary online world..
There are too many grey areas when it comes to social media. We used to have fun on them, solely to connect with real life friends/family; now everything has changed. It’s better to know our options early before jumping into the mud, right? Appreciate your support, always. Hope to see you here again! ^^
Haha… I did not notice it when created new page for JayceOoi.com. Don’t know Facebook really bring traffic to me or not…
Jayce, it may surprise you.
Wish you best and hopefully facebook page will bring you more readers and fame. Best wishes.
great post Ching Ya… right now my facebook profile is a mess because of blog post updates on my personal profile
Cindy, you can control your post-updating via various facebook apps. For example, RSS Graffiti can be a good fit to post either to your fan pages or personal profile. You can even delay the publishing on your facebook account if needed.
Source: http://www.wchingya.com/2010/05/import-twitter-favorites-facebook-page.html
You always provide such good tips that I sometimes get lost in the amount of stuff that one can and must do to have a better user experience. I’m really glad you brought this up as I am about to do a major re-haul on my FB profile, pages, etc.. Can’t wait for Prt 2.
You’re most welcome, DiTesco.
I had some tweaking done on the settings myself prior releasing this post either. It’s a good opportunity for us to review our own privacy status before enhancing our fan page further. A good precaution for new page starter too.
Glad you enjoyed the post. Part 2 will be up soon so stay tuned.
Somehow I’ve lost my zeal for Facebook. I notice I only go to wish a “friend” a Happy Birthday or to respond to comments. However, I understand it’s the best network when you have a business … so I may have lots of questions in the future. Don’t get me wrong, I won’t use it as a tool to trick people into buying from me. I mean I will use it as a way to connect and they can buy if that’s their choice.
Thanks for all you do to make getting the most out of Facebook easier. I will share because there are plenty out there who can benefit.
Thanks again!
And, I’m not sure I have “personal” info I never wanted shared…. I’ll check!
Kissie, so great to see you here.
“I won’t use it as a tool to trick people into buying from me.” — now that’s a golden statement. Definitely, it is a place to meet and communicate, but not to spam or harassing people for nothing. That’s the true value of using any social media apps. ^^ Well said.
Really good stuffs Ching Ya. All are awesome advice!!
As of now, I don’t have a personal profile in Facebook. I would love to create one exclusively for real time friends.
Cheers!
Pradeep, you’re most welcome. Great seeing you here and appreciate your kind comment as well. Until the day comes, you know where to find the guide.
Have a nice week!
Hello;
Created a “studio page” for my dancing school to keep the students and parents from my personal account page. I deleted them from my personal friends list, went to the new studio page to add them back in, but they showed up again on my personal page. I must be doing something wrong, but maybe there’s no way to separate them? Please advise.
Thanks, April Nelson
Spisak Dance Academy
April, if you are adding them via ‘Add as Friends’ then no doubt they are reappearing on your ‘Friend’ list in personal account.
A fan page works differently than a personal page, it will not have friends but instead ‘fans/supporters’ of the page (or called ‘People Who Like’). You cannot add them, only they can ‘Like’ your page in order to follow your page updates and be listed in your page’s ‘People who Like’ list.
You should inform them to ‘like’ your page before deleting them, refer to this post on how you can promote your fan page through a profile:
http://www.wchingya.com/2010/05/promote-facebook-fan-page-personal-account.html
Hope this helps.
When I was a newbie on facebook, I set up a personal account and must have somehow linked my business account to that. Then when the vanity urls came out, I got one for my personal account. When I tried to get one for the business account, it said I already had a url set up. Is there any way to unlink or separate these two pages and to give the personal account one url and the business account another without doing away with both of them and starting over again….? (Please, please, please…hope this is an easy fix)
Cheryl, when you said ‘business account’ you are referring to business page/fan page right?
Personal profile and business page supposed to have separate vanity URL and that’s absolutely recommended. Separating the two with different email login is not possible once they are connected, you’ll always need a profile in order to access the fan page for administration purposes.
“When I tried to get one for the business account, it said I already had a url set up. ” –> so now the vanity URL is on the personal profile but you’d like to use that on business page, is that right? If so, you can change your profile username to another via Acc Settings > Username (only ONE-Time edit can be done); when the url is free for grab, head over to facebook.com/username and ‘Set a Username for Pages’ > select your page and key in the username before confirm it.
Remember fan page/business page is fixed with the vanity URL once confirmed, there’s no way to edit it so you need to be 100% sure.
This really is a very useful post Ching. I came to know a lot in this post. I will be making use of all these tips in my facebook page. Thanks a lot for this awesome post. Keep writing.
Thanks Aswani for letting me know how the article can help.
Appreciate your visit and support always. Wish you a great facebook page experience ahead.
Killer one Ching
Loved this post. Shared this one up 
Thank you Mani for the visit and comment.
Thanks so much for the information. I periodically review my privacy settings; this has become more frequent with all the changes/additons facebook makes. I do get annoyed that when a change/addition is made to facebook, the feature is automatically enabled. I would prefer it if we could simply opt in as opposed to opt out. As we all know, educating ourselves on facebook issues can be very time consuming. I try to keep up and pass on what I have learned. I am amazed how casual some of my friends are concerning privacy issues; for some I know it is more of a matter of being overwhelmed with the frequent changes.
Well said, N. Talbott. I would also hope there can be less changes in short notice or at least an official release regarding the changes so we can all respond to it. It’s not easy to be Facebook, but when it comes to customer service and users satisfaction, it’s something Facebook should look into.
We started off with a business only page, lots of fans – then we got interested in an inventory application that required a personal profile. They did place it on the business page, but now the RSS feed from the page wall won’t show unless a visitor is logged into facebook. This application worked well for everyone for a few days – but now even the direct link to our page requires a log in (Or you get a Sorry, We’re working on the problem message) NOT exactly a public page that we used to have. I’ve tried reporting it (4th day now) Is this somehow related to having that personal profile?
It may not necessary be the profile but instead, could it be the application instead? Unsure so you may need to test it out. Try to temporarily remove the application and see if the problem still persists after clearing the browse cache and history. See how it goes.
Ching Ya, this is something I’ve been thinking about for some time but never took the time to try figuring it out. now you’ve come to the rescue once again.
Thanks for this post, I need it.
Thank you Jimi, appreciate your support always.
It’s been two weeks and I still can’t link our website to our facebook page. We have a vanity url but when I put in the html on our website, it just points to the main facebook login page. I see that with other business facebook pages, you can just type in their vanity urls and you are sent directly to their fb page. I’ve had it!!! FB engineers are supposed to be helping me with this and I’ve heard nothing.
Rain, firstly try to identify if your page has set age/country restrictions in your Edit Page -> Settings. If yes, remove it and see if that is causing you the issue.
Hi Ching Ya,
I haven’t started my facebook fan page yet because I want to have a marketing plan for it when it goes up. Maybe I’m overthinking it – LOL. I tend to overthink things instead of just doing them. This week a friend of mine told me she was starting one so I told her to come over to your blog because you have so many step by step tutorials for Facebook. When she came over she was like: “Wow- this is exactly what I neeeded!”
Thanks for this.
All the best,
Eren
Thank you so much, my dear friend. You’re truly an angel and I appreciate your kindness of directing her to my site. Just ask her to contact me if she needed any assistance, be glad to help out.
Actually you’re right on giving it a thorough consideration before starting. It’s important to have a clear direction and how you can maximize each section of the page for your requirement. Will be expecting your new page in near future, be sure to give me a nudge when it’s up.
Thanks again for everything.
I have a business page associated with my personal page (hasn’t been a problem). All of the sudden, my business page does not recognize me(my log-in and password) as admin. I have tried changing the password but no help. ???????
Dave, you mean after using the ‘forgot your password’ option you’re not receiving any response from facebook via email? How many days since this been going on?
Ching Ya – I have a personal page and have set up a “shop” from that page. Each has a total different set of friends / fans. Is the above post (part 1 & 2) what you are recommending for this situation? If I am attempting to utilize a posting automated software like hootsuite, it only allows me to send it as my personal account not from my Shop that I have set up. Is this a different situation to try and pull these two identities apart? Is deleting my Shop and starting over under a different login my only option?
Rebecca,
By ‘shop’ I assume you’re referring to a busienss page, right?
This post is a reference for those who are connecting their business pages to personal profile. As far as I know, Hoosuite is available to post either to personal profile or business page, even both. By configuring it correctly you should be able to control where to post the update so you won’t have to start over a new page just for Hoostuie to post to page. It can do both.
Hi Ching Ya,
I loved this post (found it through your FB page). I already have a personal account, and am trying to create a Page for my new blog. I want the two to be STRICTLY separate.
I’m thinking the easiest way to do this is to create an all-new personal account for my blog. So people will be able to ‘like’ my blog Page, and I’ll also have full functionality with a personal account under my blog/Page name. My blog email address will also be linked to the new personal and Page accounts.
To me, this seems the easiest solution. Is there any reason why this would not be feasible? Thanks for your help!
Gorgeois, thank you for commenting.
For your new project, it does seem well to have a page interconnected to your personal profile, however the only problem is that FB does not allow multiple accounts on Facebook (read the details here: http://www.facebook.com/help/?faq=12841)
Therefore, you need to decide whether to leave your existing profile, or make use of it with your new page but apply privacy settings on certain contacts/visibility when necessary as suggested in the post. Never try to outsmart FB with multiple accounts – that’s rule.1 for all users.
Hope this helps.
What can I do if I have a website in collaboration with a friend and I want to start a Facebook business page for my site? So, is impossible to associate my personal Fcb profile beacause is…personal and I don’t want to share the passowd with anyoane (such my collaborator). My solution was to create another facebook profile (with my name), and to assign a business profile. But now, when somebody search my name, the result is two profiles with my name…. Any solution to hide my second profile? Is just for control the business page not to add friends! I know that is restricted to have two personal profiles but we are two persons that manage the business profile and nobody wants to share his personal profile in order to attach a business presentation.
*Sorry for my bad english!
Liviu,
you don’t have to give out your password at all. To manage your facebook page with a friend, add him as an admin of the page will do. That way he can access the page with his very own profile login details. So now it is two personal profiles managing one fan page.
To add your friend as a page admin (either way will do):
- Edit Page -> Admin -> Add (invite the new admin via Email invitation or friend list)
- Ask the new admin to ‘Like’ your business page, then look him up in ‘People Who Like’ list -> click ‘Make Admin’ at the same row of his profile name
i was trying to set up a business page for and now i can’t make any changes i have no idea if it is a group or a page
i put my email address as an admin, but never had a profile associated with that email address. my name is in fact my business email address so i can’t tell if it is associating with my personal account. i can’t change or edit the company page and i need to as people are beginning to “like” it and post images on the page
Kim, it’s most likely you’ve created a business account (since your name is the email add that showing). You should have a password configured during the acc setup, did you try to login with it? Just login from the facebook main site, see if you can access the page?
Thanks for all the useful advice – I’m a complete novice to facebook and this has been the most useful info I have found.
I’m having a problem setting up a separate url for my business page though. Followed your advice in one of the earlier posts and have changed my profile username (I used the one that I want for my business page but this is now showing as the one for my personal profile page). Went to facebook.com/username and tried to ‘set a username for page’. When I selected my business page from the dropdown box there was a message saying: ” is not eligible for a username at this time. will be eligible for a username in the future”
Help, what does this mean? Do I need to have a certain number of fans/likes on my page before I can proceed?
Yes, Maz, you need to have at least 25 fans before you’re able to claim a vanity url for your page.
I am in the same boat! I created a business page for a client. I thought I was required to create a personal profile for him so I could get a URL. But the URL linked to his personal page. He does NOT want to be on facebook at all except for his business. I followed your instructions above to change the URL on this personal page so we could grab it for the business page but cannot grab the new URL. ?? FB keeps linking back to his personal page not the business page — they seem to be “stuck” together. Can I de-activate his personal page without deleting the business page? How do I fix this URL problem?
THANK YOU!!
“How do I fix this URL problem?”
– First of all, Debbie, is your client’s page has more than 25 fans for starter? Also, while you’re at facebook.com/username, did you able to select the page from the drop down ‘set an username for pages’? What happens after that? Kindly specify the steps involved during your claiming.
“Can I de-activate his personal page without deleting the business page?”
– you can’t, the page requires the profile for administration purposes once connected.
Yes they have 156 fans. When I got the username for his business, the link went to his personal page, that is the problem.
Try to check the profile username: Account -> Account Settings -> Username (see if you can change the profile username to something else). If you tried and the username is not changing/updating, it may be something with the FB server side. You need to notify them via this form:
http://www.facebook.com/help/contact.php?show_form=pages_bug
Once you make sure the profile username is changed successfully, only then can you try to grab the desired username for your page.
Hi Ching
I would like to know how to migrate members from a facebook group to a business page on faccebook. I had iniially created a group linked to my profile but after reading some of the really useful info on ur blog realised that a business page was what my company needed. I thus need to move these group members to the page and delete the group. The page is called IFAS- Impumelelo Financial Advisory Solutions
Hi Ismail, it is not possible for group to page migration. You need to start over a fan page from scratch via this link: http://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php
Even so, you can publicize your page link on group wall, at the same time notify your members via messaging so they can support by ‘liking’ it.
I read your article but want to know if I can get rid of the personal side completely? The problem is that I want to attach ‘like’ buttns to my site posts and then like them right into my business side of FB. While a personal side exists, they will always go to personal side (Review Guy) which is defeating.
I am at http://www.facebook.com/thessdreviewFB
Thanks ahead.
Hi Les,
When someone ‘like’ using the ‘Like button’, the info will always be sent to their personal profile; and same for your case – all ‘like’ cannot be directed to your page wall, but instead your profile. This is how facebook designs it to encourage personal ‘recommendations’ among friends.
By removing your profile/un-attach it from page (or make it as a business account), you won’t be able to like your own blog post because it requires a personal profile to work.
So…can we delete my personal page and leave the business page?
Can we then connect the website?
Could we then create a way to post from the site to the business page as others could?
My concern is everyne goes to the business page and sees nothing while I keep posting as review Guy!
If your profile is already connected with the fan page, you cannot separate them by assigning a login for fan page after you delete the profile. It doesn’t work that way. Your fan page will still be needing a profile for administration purposes otherwise the page will be left with no admin at all.
To setup a business account (without connecting to any profile) it has to be done prior page setup but not later. But do be reminded that business acc is limited in features, such as unable to do status-tagging, unable to claim vanity URL etc. And without a personal profile, you cannot comment/like other fan pages, and I doubt the ‘like button’ will work as well (it will prompt you with this message – “To use this feature, you will need to sign up for a personal Facebook profile.”
I understand your concern, it’s the struggle we all have to face as a page admin.
I think the easiest way to understand is that facebook is not meant to be a ‘business’ platform in the beginning, but fan page is more or less like an ‘added’ feature for user profile, but not as the ‘main’ product. So there are limitations, and sadly as a user we can’t do much but adapting to their changes, until we found a work around that’s legitimate to their rules.
Can I create a business page without a personal page? And if I get 25 fans, can I get a URL? I would like to do this without the personal page altogether. I know that facebook recommends both, but I have many clients that want a business page but nothing personal AT ALL. Thanks!
Great thoughts and advice Ching. The big issue, in my view, is how to manage whether your professional audience or the personal audience should see what you post on an ongoing basis. That is a key challenge particularly if you are actively using Facebook for both. Friends lists are not a good solution for a number of reasons (for one thing if you post from other applications such as games, Foursquare, etc you cannot restrict the posts to certain friends lists).
We created a Facebook application to experiment how to easily separate work and play in a single account. Works sort of like rules in a mail program. It allows for assigning applications, keywords for posts (i.e if the post has #work or #professional in it), time frames for posts and it automatically applies the privacy setting you specified in the rule when you post it (it actually reposts your message with a custom privacy setting).
The app is experimental at the moment to see if this is a good way to control personal and professional personas on Facebook. Would love to have your feedback. The app is called Don’t Tell Michelle and it is here: donttellmichelle.com
Zoli @ Don’t Tell Michelle