Facebook Fan Pages and Personal Profiles
Can anyone correct where I might be misunderstanding? Thanks.
There's a lot of discussion of what is the difference between a Facebook Group and a Facebook (Fan) Page, pros and cons, etc., but there isn't a lot of discussion about how to interact between Facebook Fan Pages and Personal Profiles. Here are my thoughts.
For an organization, there should not be a "person" Facebook page....that's why fan pages were created. In fact, a person profile page, if it gets more than 5000 friends, will have Facebook force them to start using a Fan page instead, because that person is viewed as a celebrity instead of a person. (Plus you lose the ability to message all of your friends, since that is limited to 5000 as well). And, if you set up a personal profile page for an organization, FB will shut it down eventually, because these are for people, but organizations, which is why there is a first and last name requirement (one reason there can only be so many capital letters and so many characters in a personal profile name is to help ensure only people sign up for these...not organizations or celebrities).
The way it works is for someone who has a FB personal profile page to set up the fan page and then they are an "administrator" of the page. Then that person ads as many other administrators as s/he wants. When these administrators log into their personal pages, they will have full access to the fan page as well. You get there by clicking the "Ads and Pages" button (next to the "Applications" button on the lower left) and clicking "Pages" on the left and selecting the Fan Page you want to administer.
To see what Pages you are a Fan of (not an administer of) you click "Friends" at the top and "Pages" on the left.
You cannot change the name of a Fan Page. To change it, you have to set up a new Fan Page (with the correct name) and delete the old one and all the fans would have to join the new one.
3 comments:
I think I followed, now what was the question you asked again? The one thing that kept popping in my head was "myspace was set up for FANS"...so I think Facebook wasn't so much set up for "fans"...an than Twitter, I don't go there because the only people I truely want to keep up with are friends and family. I do enjoy this one organization that has a FB page, since they tell us when they are running a discount. Did this just confuse the issue more? You are a Professor of what now? I guess instead of asking here, I could ask on yourFB page or just look up your info. I find it hard to remember to stay focused when I go to check out what a friend's "info" is...once I see a picture I'm lost in laalaa land.
Personal pages with company names are weird. I rarely become 'friends' with a company. They need to start fan pages.
Fan pages are much better for orgs on Facebook because they are accessible to non-Facebook users and pages interact with user much more professionally.
The one thing I don't like about fan pages is that you have to have at least 1000 fans to get a vanity URL, i.e. facebook.com/yourcompany. But if you are dying to have a cool URL and start a profile first you can, but when you decide to make the switch to a fan page later you have all the time to make up and build your fan page. Better just to start with the fan page.
You brought up a good point about not being able to change the name of a fan page. For some companies this is a pain because just like a domain someone might have claimed your name and have control over it whether it's an employees or a customer. You should search for Pinnacle Security and see all the litter they have uploaded to Facebook.
On that note... if you ever want to see an online presence nightmare look up the summer sales companies! Luckily APX Alarm just hired Seth Jenks to help them out, but it is going to be a long time before those orgs get a good presence online.
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