Yesterday, I explained some of the basic concepts of Facebook Pages, so you're probably all just itching to set one up yourselves! :) But before you do that, there's an important choice you need to make about HOW you're going to set up your Page. If you don't give this some consideration in advance, it could cause you problems down the line.

Setting up your Page from your own profile.

When I log in to my individual Facebook account and go to the Tech for Luddites Page, I see a different screen than the general Facebook population does when they go to the same Page.

I have some extra links in my left-hand nav bar because I'm the Page administrator: Edit Page, Add Admins, View Insights, etc. But I also have a couple of links that any fan would have: Suggest to Friends and Subscribe via SMS.

At first glance, this can seem like a good thing. I don't have to keep logging in and logging out of Facebook to switch from my individual profile to the Pages I administer. However, it also causes a few not trivial problems.

The biggest issue is that whoever originally creates the Page will never be able to be removed as an administrator. You can add as many admins as you want, but you can never transfer actual ownership of the Page to anyone else.

This isn't a big problem if your Page represents your own brand, especially if you ARE your brand—for example, authors, musicians, website publishers, etc. However, if you're administering a Page on behalf of another brand—for example, your company or a nonprofit you volunteer for—this can eventually be a problem (more for the brand than for you). What if you leave the organization and they want someone else to administer the Page? You can grant admin status to another person, but you'll still be the primary administrator. What if you left them on bad terms? And you're the person with total control over their Page? Not a good scenario. I suppose if you were causing them a big problem, they could go to Facebook and try to have you removed as an administrator, but that's hardly the optimal solution. I suspect at some point, Facebook will allow transfer of Page ownership because it simply doesn't make the slightest bit of sense, but who knows when that could happen?

Another issue that has nothing to do with control is, if you're the Page's admin, you can only ever post to the Page as the Page. By that I mean, if a fan posted a comment on a post and you wanted to reply to it as your "real self," not under the name of the Page, you can't. That may not seem like a big deal in the abstract but, believe me, it can be frustrating. For example, I also administer (and am a fan of) a Page for a nonprofit organization I'm involved with. It's a Page where we encourage fans to post their own photos. I have pics that I want to upload to the Page but, if I had it set up so it was tied to my personal profile, I wouldn't be able to do it. (Based on the last sentence, you're probably realizing there IS another option. Coming up...)

The third problem is that it can be very easy to accidentally do something, like post a link or a photo, that shows up on your personal profile, rather than on the Page's Wall. Let's say you're administering a Page for a large company and you're posting a link to one of their press releases. You may not really want to spam all your personal friends with that showing up on their home pages, but it can very easily happen.

I also know of someone who was trying to get a Facebook username for a Page she administers and she accidentally had it assigned to her personal profile. Since they're non-transferable for all eternity (supposedly), she had to find a new solution.

As I mentioned earlier, none of the above is likely to be a major issue if you and your brand are basically one and the same. But I would strongly suggest you consider the alternative before you go this approach. Even if you've already created a Page, but you haven't done much with it and you don't have many fans yet, you may seriously want to think about deleting it and creating a new one that isn't tied to your personal profile.

Note: I know some people who have created an individual profile page, separate from their own, for the sole purpose of managing their Page. It does solve the problem of reassigning the admin function, because Facebook does let you change both your name and contact information on your profile. So the new admin could just put his/her info in there. It also solves the problem of posting as "you," because you can always become a fan from your other account and add comments under your own name from there. However, I think it's an even bigger risk for the third point about accidentally posting things to your profile instead of your Page. Because while you're thinking of this account as the Page's account, Facebook is thinking of it as a personal account that just happens to have a Page attached to it. (I should also point out that having two individual profiles is a violation of Facebook's Terms of Service as well.)

Update 02/16/10: Facebook seems to have removed the multiple-accounts restriction from their Terms of Service. See this post for more information: Is Facebook Allowing Multiple Accounts Now?

How to set up the Page from your profile.

If, after all that, you still want to create your Page this way, click here and you'll be taken to the following screen where you can select a category and name for your Page. Note that multiple Pages can have the same name. That makes sense as I'm sure there's more than one city that has an Italian restaurant named Mamma Mia. Likewise, you can delete a Page at any time and create a brand new one with the same name. (Page names and usernames are not the same thing. The latter refers to the special URL you can set up so, by definition, each one has to be unique.)

IMPORTANT! Think very carefully about what category you want to be listed in (check out all the dropdown boxes to see what your options are) and the name of your Page. Facebook doesn't allow you to change these at a later date. You might think these are "duh!" settings, but maybe you first decide to write your company's name out in full, then decide later you'd rather use its acronym, because that's how everybody refers to it. You won't have that option.

Setting up an independent Page.

As hinted at earlier, Facebook also allows organizations to set up pages that are not tied to any individual's account. So far, the only disadvantage I've found of this approach is that sometimes some features aren't accessible without a personal profile, even if they're intended to be used with a Page. For example, when I tried to sign up for a username for the nonprofit's Page, it prompted me to set up a personal profile, which was exactly what I was trying to avoid. However, there's a pretty easy workaround to this situation. You can simply add yourself (using your personal account) as a secondary admin and do what needs to be done. After that, you can remove your admin privileges again to avoid the earlier problems.

Now to set up the Page. If you log out of your personal account, you'll get the regular Facebook sign-up screen and below the text boxes is a link that says "Create a Page for a celebrity, band or business."

When you click that link, you're taken to the same screen shown in the previous section and the same caveats apply about choosing a Page category and name. (Note that when you enter your name in the box as your "Electronic Signature," it doesn't tie the page back to your personal profile in any way. You're simply acknowledging you have the authority to create this Page on behalf of the company/brand and it's never used for any purpose again later.)

Next you'll be taken to a screen asking for a few more details.

The important thing here is to select the button that says, "I do not have a Facebook account." If you select the other one, you'll be prompted for your username and password and you'll end up tying this Page to your profile.

Tip: For the nonprofit Page I'm administering, I had them create a unique e-mail address for the Facebook administrator. That way, if for any reason I'm no longer available to administer the Page, they can simply give someone else access to that e-mail account.

Once you've finished signing up, you'll be sent a verification e-mail. When you've confirmed your identity and log back into Facebook, you'll be taken to this lovely screen. (Not daunting at all!)

This is where you'll be able to start adding content to bring your new Page to life. And THAT will be the topic of tomorrow's post because, if I had to guess, I would say this is probably one of the longest set of instructions you've ever seen just to sign up for something! :) But, as I said, if you don't think about this from the get-go, you may find yourself with a problem on your hands later on.

If you're still not sure about all this, please send me a note with your specific questions and I'll try to clarify it some more.

Posted in Facebook, How To, Social Media