Why and How to Convert a Facebook Profile to a Business Page

I continue to receive “friend” invites from “Businesses” so I thought I would look into helping everyone figure how and why to convert to a proper profile page.

The first reason I want to point out is that in order to find you when your Profile is your business is that it should be set to public. Otherwise all of your posts will go to waste as far as SEO is concerned. However, if your Profile is set to public, all of your personal information that you’ve submitted is publicly available; such as birthday, addresses, and “personal” posts and shares. You Business Page can be set to public and filled in with all of its contact information, and not include any personal information. And since so many sites link to Facebook, you might accidentally share something you wouldn’t want to share to your Business “profile.”

Another practical reason I think people should convert to a proper Page is that it can allow multiple administrators without giving out the password for your “personal” Facebook account. This is a great help if you decide to hire a marketing professional, as they will be able to post and comment “as” the Business Page. For Mackey Productions, I am able to upload and post a video I produce for you as a client to your Page. This avoids having to figure out to get a very large video file to you via the web or a “thumb drive.” And you can remove administrators at any time.

Third, it is technically against Facebook’s rules:

Since personal accounts are meant for individual people, they aren’t suited to meet your business needs. Pages offer more robust features for organizations, businesses, public figures, brands and organizations. Learn more about Facebook Pages.

Maintaining a personal account for anything other than an individual person is a violation of Facebook’s Statement of Rights and Responsibilities. If you don’t convert your noncompliant account to a Page, you risk permanently losing access to the account and all of its content.

Below is an article I found that sounded like to would be very helpful during your transition. NOTE: I have not actually tried this method. My Business Page and my Personal Profile have always been separate.

http://scalablesocialmedia.com/2011/07/convert-facebook-profile-business-page/

Here are links to my business and personal profiles to show the difference.

• Stuart Mackey Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/stuartcmackey)
• Mackey Productions – Full Service Video Productions Page (http://www.facebook.com/MackeyProductions)
• Stuart C. Mackey Twitter (@stuartcmackey)
• Mackey Productions Twitter (@mackeypro)
• Stuart Mackey Google Plus Profile (http://plus.google.com/101889123042325747282/posts)
• Mackey Productions Google Plus Page (http://plus.google.com/103069141431169689512/posts)

I hope you found this helpful. If you also want to automate sharing Page posts to your Profile, check out this If This Then That recipe at ifttt.com.