Have you accidentally or mistakenly set up your business page on Facebook as a personal page? Hey, it happens—and was once more common than it is now, with most folks having a better understanding of Facebook and how all of the different account and page types work. But if you do happen to have your business or organization’s page set up as a personal account, you need to take corrective action right away.
Why?
Well, first of all, it’s against Facebook’s terms and policies to have your business account set up as a personal account. They can DELETE your entire account at any time if they happen to come across this configuration.
It just doesn’t look very professional. Some people have set up their businesses using part of the business name as the personal “first name” and part as the personal “last name.” To most Facebook users, when they see this, it really sends out the message that the business doesn’t have a clue what they’re doing. Not worth chancing making this type of impression.
Actual Business Pages from Facebook offer a much better and more solid set of features for business marketing and interaction purposes. Personal Facebook accounts are designed to help the individual interact with family and friends. Business pages offer many more features that help you promote your business and your brand—plus, by default, they’re open to the public just like your business is.
Again, if your business is doing business on Facebook as an individual through an individual personal Facebook profile, it’s time to get that account correctly converted over as soon as possible, and here is exactly how to do it:
Step 1 – Log into Facebook using the exact personal account that you wish to migrate to a business page. Please double check this—as the results are permanent and you wouldn’t want to disrupt the wrong personal page.
Step 2 – Backup your existing profile / timeline if it contains any info you want to keep. Unfortunately, converting a personal profile to a business page deletes all of the wall/timeline info other than your friends list and subscribers. So make a backup if you’ll ever want to see this info again by going to the account menu at the top right of your Facebook page. Once there, choose the Account Settings option, and then choose the “Download a copy of your Facebook data” option.
Step 3 – Visit the Business Page Migration link from Facebook. http://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php?migrate
Step 4 – Select the category of business page you would like to use for your business. You can choose from:
Local Business or Place
Company, Organization or Institution
Brand or Product
Artist, Band or Public Figure
Entertainment
Cause or Community
If you’re having trouble deciding which of these options to choose, please check out our post How to Make a Facebook Page for Your Business from a few weeks ago for some additional pointers.
Step 5 – Complete the process. Facebook’s migration tool will guide you through the steps of finalizing the conversion process.
Step 6 – Once you’re done moving your personal Facebook profile to a Business page, be sure to add all of the important details for your business to the profile. Most personal profiles didn’t include the place to put these details, so you’ll need to do it for the first time once you’ve migrated in order to have a complete, helpful business profile.
For additional information, please be sure to check out Facebook’s help section that contains information just about this popular topic. They provide some answers and tips related to frequently asked questions on this process. You can get to it here: http://www.facebook.com/help?page=213602951994043
It’s not glamorous, but it’s something you need to do…if you haven’t converted your business’s personal Facebook page into a proper business Facebook page, please do so as soon as you can.