Facebook Business Pages
There has been nearly no coverage of Facebook‘s new business pages feature.
Inside Facebook reported on the feature in early November, but I hadn’t heard a peep about it until a colleague stumbled upon the business pages feature yesterday.
Facebook, wisely, requires its users to represent themselves honestly when they open an account by using your real name, which then becomes your account name, which you cannot change after the fact. Because the accounts are based on individuals, it makes it virtually impossible for an organization to have an individual page without lying about it and thus violating Facebook’s terms of use and, more importantly, the spirit of the community.
The problem I’ve been struggling with is that if I wanted to create a Facebook Group for a client, for administrative purposes at the very least, that Group had to be attached to an individual’s account because that’s the only way you can create a group.
So who, then, within a given organization, controls the Facebook account that created the group? The only real choice is the owner and/or CEO or Executive Director of the organization because they would be the least likely to move on to another job, thus avoiding ownership/access issues.
Happily, Facebook’s business pages obviates that issue.
I’m testing out the service now with an e-Strategy page I just created.
At set up, Facebook offers you an array of choices for organization type (business, nonprofit, government, etc), brand or product pages, or even band, artist, and writer pages, for precise categorization.
The pages themselves have much the same functionality and features as an individual’s pages, including the ability to plug in an RSS feed to automatically populate your Notes section with blog posts.
Facebook Business Pages Search Optimization
Business pages also are viewable outside Facebook’s walled content garden, so a limited version of the page is viewable without having to log in to Facebook. The limited pages include a logo, a listing of "fans," a link, your description, and Wall postings.
That makes Facebook business pages also search engine readable, so expect more Facebook links to begin appearing in search engine results.
The ability to search engine optimize business pages is limited to including the account name within the HTML Title tags, external links to web site(s), and the Company Overview, Mission, and Product text boxes.
Could you explain how “Happily, Facebook’s business pages obviates that issue.”
As I understand it… to create a page an account is needed. According to facebook TOS an individual can only have ONE account.
So the business page is still tied to an individual.
Or am I missing something?
Could you explain how “Happily, Facebook’s business pages obviates that issue.”
As I understand it… to create a page an account is needed. According to facebook TOS an individual can only have ONE account.
So the business page is still tied to an individual.
Or am I missing something?
Thanks for your question, Kathy.
What I was trying to say is that prior to introducing the pages feature, if you wanted to represent yourself as an ORGANIZATION on Facebook, you had to use an personal account to do so. Therefore, if you wanted to make that account look official, you’d need to open it using the name of your organization, rather than your personal name, thus violating Facebook’s TOS.
With the pages feature you can now have an official presence without having to force a personal account into doing that job.
Thanks for your question, Kathy.
What I was trying to say is that prior to introducing the pages feature, if you wanted to represent yourself as an ORGANIZATION on Facebook, you had to use an personal account to do so. Therefore, if you wanted to make that account look official, you’d need to open it using the name of your organization, rather than your personal name, thus violating Facebook’s TOS.
With the pages feature you can now have an official presence without having to force a personal account into doing that job.
David- Thank you for the information and link to your fbpage. I have created one for our business, I have not yet published it, as I am struggling to find some features – in particular under “Info” on your page you have several websites, company overview, mission and products specified – WHERE O WHERE did you find the option to include this – I have searched and can only find the basics – address and hours of op.
Thanks.
David- Thank you for the information and link to your fbpage. I have created one for our business, I have not yet published it, as I am struggling to find some features – in particular under “Info” on your page you have several websites, company overview, mission and products specified – WHERE O WHERE did you find the option to include this – I have searched and can only find the basics – address and hours of op.
Thanks.
You still arent making any sense./
You said that the major issue is that if you create a facebook account paired with the personal page of anyone less than the owner/CEO, you run the risk of the person leaving the business, thus taking the facebook acct. with them
Well.. that is STILL the case with pages.. Only a PERSONAL acct can create a PAGE, and the creator is still the OWNER although you can add other admins.
That also means that when the owner decides to leave the company, they STILL are the owners of the facebook page.. So its still pretty useless on that level..
You still arent making any sense./
You said that the major issue is that if you create a facebook account paired with the personal page of anyone less than the owner/CEO, you run the risk of the person leaving the business, thus taking the facebook acct. with them
Well.. that is STILL the case with pages.. Only a PERSONAL acct can create a PAGE, and the creator is still the OWNER although you can add other admins.
That also means that when the owner decides to leave the company, they STILL are the owners of the facebook page.. So its still pretty useless on that level..