HOW TO: Separate Personal and Business with Facebook Pages

Think Facebook is just for friends? I did too until Facebook recently rolled out a massive structural change to Facebook Pages. Now businesses that setup “Pages” have more options to use Facebook like a regular user. How does this benefit a small business or professional person like a blogger?

Facebook Page and the Facebook Profile

With a few simple steps I’m going to outline how it’s easy to separate Facebook “friends” into two distinct groups – your personal friends with your regular Facebook profile, and business fans and people you would like your page to be a fan of. Now, Facebook pages have the ability to like other pages. This comes in handy in four ways.

You can get other pages to notice your page when you like them.
You can keep updated on the news feed of other pages – and not see the feed in your personal account.
By liking other pages you are now in the group of people with similar interests.
You can comment on other pages as a page and get people to view your profile with your business pitch or any content you want.

I’ve heard of people using Facebook to network before with their personal profile. To me, it just doesn’t make sense. I think people live in two worlds – a business world and a personal world. In my case, my name is my brand. Since my business / professional name is the same as my real name, it causes an obvious problem on Facebook. I used to think that there were better tools to use for networking like Twitter and LinkedIn. But these new Facebook Page capabilities make networking on Facebook easy. Plus, Facebook opens your personal brand / business to nearly a billion people.

You don’t want your messages exposed to people who are not interested in receiveing them. That’s why it’s important to have a separate Facebook Page. We all know people who send business-related messages on their personal accounts. Nobody likes that! If you don’t have a Facebook Page, creating one is easy. Once you have it set up, you can take control of it with the powerful Use Facebook as Page option.

UPDATE 10/16/11: Facebook now has a Subscribe Button to enable anyone to subscribe to your public updates. This may make sense for a personal brand, as long as your friends don’t mind seeing your topic-specific posts. You can create filters in Facebook for your posts, but this is kind of a hassle. Separate pages can make more sense. In all, it’s not easy to separate business and personal in Facebook without some work.

UPDATE 12/15/12: Facebook is now changing the subscribe button to Follow button, so users expectations are inline with Twitter and Google+.

Use Facebook as Page

The new feature that changes everything is the “Use Facebook as Page” link in the Account menu at the top right of Facebook when you are logged in. Facebook Page veterans can see this link to see what’s changed. Once you are logged into your page you now take on your alter ego. Step out of your Clark Kent suit and post, like pages, comment, and see a custom news feed – just like a Facebook superuser. And of course you can use the page to syndicate your content automatically as before using RSS from a Web site or blog.

Another great use of the Use Facebook as Page option is that you can aggregate news from pages you “like” in your industry. When you see a story that catches your attention you can comment on it. It’s much easier to see relevant news stories when you’re not seeing updates of your baby cousin’s new halloween costume. Since making comments in Facebook is easy and fast, you can really get your name out there. Also, I noticed some blogs I followed got more comments from Facebook than on the actual blog site. Interesting. I think more technically-oriented people sometimes forget that regular Internet users use Facebook most of the time. It’s how they “make the rounds” in the digital space. Plus PR people NEED to be on Facebook all the time, so you need a professional presence on Facebook to get noticed and interact.

FaceBook Page Tab and the IFrame

You’ll notice a big design difference with regular Facebook user profile and business Facebook Pages because of what’s called the tab feature of the Facebook Page. Facebook pages can have a design (if the owner chooses) that look like mini Web pages. They are even easier to create now that Facebook has migrated to what’s called the iFrame to display tab content.

iFrames are literally Web pages within Web pages, so regular Web designers can easily create pages and host them on another server outside of the Facebook domain. When users visit your page for the first time, your welcome tab can appear with your logo, fonts, videos, and any other marketing material. The sizes are small though, only 520 pixels or roughly 5 inches wide on a standard computer monitor. Facebook Pages don’t automatically come setup with the iFrame component, so you’ll need to install an iFrame app to get it to work. I’ve investigated a few iFrame apps and this one has the best reviews.

Simple pages aren’t all that you can do. Having developed Facebook Applications professionally, I can tell you there is so much you can customize to make your page fun and viral. Pages give you access to limitless creative possibilities – you just need a skilled programmer familiar with the Facebook platform. Wanna add a game to your page? No problem! Want to use their friends list or gain access to useful personal data to build your database? Yep, you can do that too.

Small Businesses Spending More on Facebook Marketing in 2011

Did you know small businesses are stepping up spending on Facebook marketing this year? According to an Inc Magazine survey, in 2011 businesses will spend more this year on Facebook than Twitter. Interesting. Twitter, blogs, and LinkedIn made the other top spots. What does this tell me? 1 billion Facebook users can’t be ignored. If you’re a small business or professional you need to respect the size of Facebook and its growing importance in the business community. With the increased features for separating personal accounts and business accounts, you can be sure Facebook has more in store for businesses. The place check-ins are already evidence of that. Think you can’t know what’s happening next? Developers usually know through a page Facebook has called the Roadmap. It helps them prepare their code for services changes and major upcoming shifts. You may want to check it out as you get deeper into Facebook marketing since Facebook changes can derail your marketing if they remove features.

Separate Accounts for Facebook Business and Facebook Personal Accounts

People often wonder if you can have two fully separate Facebook accounts – the quick answer is sort of. Facebook Pages should be connected to a Facebook personal account. While you can create a new Facebook login (not profile) for a business page, why would you? It’s another login to have — everyone has a Facebook profile, and there aren’t any downsides to connecting a business page to your personal Facebook profile. Remember, someone has to make updates to the page.

When you create a new Facebook Page with a personal profile that account becomes an “administrator” of the page. You can also appoint others to administer your Facebook Page – useful for large companies or busy business people. Users must “Like” a page before they can become an administrator. You can also walk away from your Facebook Page and let others manage it completely. You can create as many pages as you want with your personal account.

Don’t bother trying to create a personal account with a business name. There’s a Facebook algorithm that checks names. It the name doesn’t look like a real name it won’t let you create the profile.

Can I Convert My Personal Facebook Profile to a Facebook Business Page? How Do I Convert My Personal Facebook Profile to a Facebook Business Page?

Yes, you can, but this isn’t a great option. If you want to convert a personal profile to a business page it’s probably because it wasn’t setup properly. Business pages are for businesses. Before Facebook Pages, many business setup personal profiles for their businesses because that was the only option available to them. Now, you can convert the personal profile to a business page, but would your personal friends appreciate it? Do you want to lose your personal friends? I suggest creating a new, separate Facebook Page and let your friends know about it by posts in your personal feed and through page invitations.
Here is the official word from Facebook:

“When you convert your personal account to a Facebook Page, a business account will be created to manage your Page. We’ll transfer your current profile picture and add all your friends and followers as people who like your Page. Your account’s username will become the username for your Page, and the name associated with your personal account will become your Page’s name. If you want your Page to have a different name, consider creating a new one.
No other content will be carried over to your new Page, so be sure to save any important content before beginning the conversion”

What Benefits / Features do Facebook Pages Have Versus Facebook Profiles?

Facebook business pages are more capable than personal profiles. Useful Page features:

Tabs
Advertising
Like boxes
Multiple administrators
Categories – useful for the new Graph Search Facebook introduced
Instant followers – no one needs to accept the fan / follower request
Facebook Insights (analytics) – get useful information about your audience and posts. Personal profiles have NO analytics.
Peace of mind – know that with a page everything you post will be public – no need to worry about privacy or audience like with a personal profile

Like me, many people have a personal brand. I created a Facebook business page that included my real name, plus what I do. So, for example “Ken Morico Digital Consultant.” I have a Like box on my Web site that people can click. It helps my separate my family and my professional contacts on Facebook and helps me target my status updates.

When building your personal brand, you’ll also want to build up your authorship profile to establish your credibility throughout the Web.

Here’s what Facebook analytics look like:

I am a Consultant / Advertising Agency, How Can I Manage Many Facebook Business Accounts?

When I worked for an agency, I setup a new, dummy Facebook profile to connect all the Facebook Pages to that separate account. It’s a good way to fully separate many business accounts from your own personal account. You might name that separate Facebook profile “Ken at Work” or make up a name. Then you can create pages using that account. For most small business users and entrepreneurs with only a few pages, I would recommend just using your own personal Facebook profile to connect your pages.

Facebook Timeline for Pages

Facebook Pages fully support the Timeline option just like personal profiles. Timelines are a great way to tell your brand’s story. Add milestones to fill your page and showcase your long brand history. Adding milestones is great because if you didn’t post anything to your page in the past or you are late to social media, users will have something to read as they scroll through your page.

Add milestones with the timeline. They display large and help tell your brand story.

Manage Accounts with HootSuite

HootSuite can help you manage your social media accounts and help you separate your personal and professional social media lives. Basically, it uses tabs for each stream in a social media account. You can create custom tabs, for instance called “Personal” and “Professional” and keep track of feeds and special search feeds. For instance, I have a tab called “Monitoring” where I keep up to date on what people are saying in the blogging world, allowing me to enter the conversation at any time. With HootSuite’s posting abilities, you can choose which accounts you want to post from and schedule them in the future. Very handy. I’ve found monitoring works better with Twitter than Facebook primarily because I think people are better with hashtagging on Twitter.

I also created a “Me” tab where I gather mentions and searches for my name so I can monitor my personal brand. I suggest you do the same.

What about Google+?

Google+ is a new social media service from Google. The great thing about it right now is that you can keep personal and business separated from the start with their “circles” feature. Any posts you create can be set to private – shared with groups you create, or using pre-built groups Google provides. Or, for maximum exposure, they can be set to public. I like using Google services since I feel they give me an edge in SEO. Google rolled out brand pages for businesses, so if you have a brand that is separate from yourself you’ll want to check that out.

Do You “Like” Me?

If you have found this helpful please “Like” Ken Morico on Facebook or add me to a circle on Google+. I’ll be posting more articles on Facebook strategies and learnings as I go, so please subscribe to my blog to stay notified. Also, I periodically update this page with new information.

Rossy

I have a personal profile and a business page on facebook. However, I would like to change the url address for my facebook business account to appear as http://www.facebook.com/businessname. Right now it looks like this: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Agenso-Group-Bilingual-Virtual-Assistants/182646698418471

How can I change that?
Thank you!
- http://kenmorico.com/blog Ken Morico
  
  You can now change it in your page admin area. You used to need 25 fans to do this. After this year’s F8 conference, you can pick a name without having 25 fans. Great for pages with just a few fans!
Jay

Hi,
I want to know how to separate out my bosses facebook page it is both personal and business and he wants them to be separate. Is there a way to do this without losing friends or business contacts?
Thanks
- http://kenmorico.com/blog Ken Morico
  
  Unfortunately no. There might be a way to convert a personal profile to a business page, though. He should have a separate business page though. Friends don’t want to see posts related to a business. If you create a new business page you can have him create some posts on his personal profile to direct people to his new business page.
Haddixa

I have a personal FB page. I believe I created a business FB page w/a different email address; it’s not set up correctly and recieves 0 likes. I now understand I can’t have both according to FB. I’m struggling w/how to get a business page attached to my existing personal page.
- http://kenmorico.com/blog Ken Morico
  
  You can have both. You need to make yourself an administrator of the page from the other account you have.
Empress of Virtue

Hi Ken I had an existing personal FB profile and recently added a business page. The problem I am having is when I try to link FB to my business website it only links my personal page because I have one log in for both. Please help
- http://kenmorico.com/blog Ken Morico
  
  You might try the feature “Use as Facebook Page” and see if that gets you what you need. There are info sections for the business pages and you can modify links there.
crystal_spae

Hi KEN,
I have a personal facebook account and I have created a page for my company under this account to promote my business. My initial thought was then I can invite all my facebook friends to “like” my company page. Then I realized with this page if I want to gain “likes” I can only wait for people to find me and “like” me. Should I sign up another personal account using the company name instead of this page so it can interact with random people on facebook better ? Please advice. Thank you !
- http://kenmorico.com/blog Ken Morico
  
  Hi Crystal. You can use the “Facebook as Page” option as I describe in the blog post. You only need one personal account. Once you use your account as the page, you can comment on random public posts as your page instead of your personal account.
Jule

hi ken-

my boss has 3 facebook pages linked to her account (clients of hers). Is there a way to completely separate the one page to be it’s own and no longer linked to her account? Thanks!
- http://kenmorico.com/blog Ken Morico
  
  Hi Jule. Pages need to be linked to an account, but you can transfer the page to a different account.
Kyle

Hi Ken,
I started out with Facebook setting up a “Facebook Business Page” first “without” having a personal profile. I simply created the business page as an adminstrator. Somehow later I may have attempted to create a personal profile which got linked up to my business page. The problem I am having is that I can not change the profile photo for the personal facebook profile – it’s just the blue facebook avatar. My business page is fine and I do see myself as the administrator but I can not change my profile pic nor find my “personal profile page”. If I attempt to set up a new facebook personal profile – facebook states that there is already a profile set up with this specific email. This is correct as my facebook business page is attached to this email. How can I rectify and or edit the personal profile pic from my business page – if that’s at all possible?
- http://kenmorico.com/blog Ken Morico
  
  Hi. Sounds like a bug with Facebook. You might want to delete everything and set it up again. Create a personal profile first and then the biz page. Or, contact Facebook directly if you put in a lot of effort. Facebook breaks a lot.
PDXjohn

This was not helpful at all. It read more like an update on changes then the promised “how to”.

I have been trying separatemy business page from my personal profile for over two years. I even paid someone to help, who came back and said it can’t be done. Your images and examples are great – but it’s not as easy for a small business as you have implied.
- http://kenmorico.com/blog Ken Morico
  
  I’m sorry to hear that Shelah. My method of separating my business page and personal account works for me and others. Why don’t you post your situation / details and maybe I or someone in the community can help. There might be some limits to what you can do on Facebook because it was designed primarily for personal use, with features for businesses added second. Now that it’s a public company I expect better tools going forward, but you never know.
Adam

Hi Ken,
I have been setting up FB pages for a few months now for some clients and all the accounts I have set-up are stand alone business pages that are not attached to a personal profile account as you suggested. We have a current client who had an existing business page that was linked to their personal account and would like it removed. Is it possible to remove a a business page from a personal account and continue updating it?
- http://kenmorico.com/blog Ken Morico
  
  Hi Adam. Users can remove themselves from being a page administrator, but I’m not sure what would happen if no one can update it. Someone must update the page, so usually I would suggest pages are created by the person that will manage the page. When I worked with clients I setup a fake personal profile and created the Facebook Pages using that account and assigned administrators. For most small business, they should have a personal profile and create the page from their personal profile, since they are already logged into Facebook and it’s easy to manage when they are connected.
  - Adam
    
    This is very true Ken. The only way I get around managing the several accounts we have is by using Hootsuite also. It is a great program to manage and view many Facebook accounts at once. Given we have already set up a few pages without a page administrator is there a way we can connect them if i created a dummy profile? Or would simply have to make all new accounts again?
    - http://kenmorico.com/blog Ken Morico
      
      Yes, you should be able to add them to a new dummy profile through to page administration interface. I believe the dummy profile would have to “Like” the pages before it could manage them.
Amy

Hi Ken,

I have a personal Facebook account and I have recently created a business page that I am the Admin for. Can I make my business page public without having to make my personal page public. If, yes, how do I do that. Spent hours trying to figure this out.
- http://kenmorico.com/blog Ken Morico
  
  Hi Amy. Yes you can. Business pages are usually public. I keep my personal Facebook profile very private. I believe you just set your privacy settings and there is a feature that allows you to view your personal profile as the public sees it.
Dainius

Hello Ken,

I have personal facebook account and now i have created business page. I don’t want friends know about that, how would i do it ? Don’t ask why! I need fully functional page like a separate account.
Thank you
- http://kenmorico.com/blog Ken Morico
  
  Hello Dainius. As far as I know, if you setup the page using your personal account and you don’t click “like” on your own page, then I don’t think anyone will know. If you sign out of Facebook and start a fresh business page without attaching it to a personal profile, that might be the best way. Or create a fake personal profile and create the page from the fake profile like I mention in the post. Hope this helps!
Phil Drane

hi ken, I am a solo musician so i’m in a similar situation to you regarding personal and private networking. I have read many opinions on which is better – a) converting a personal account to a business page or b) setting up a completely separate business page attached to my existing personal profile. I know for instance that in scenario a) existing friends can be transferred as ‘fans’, but this is not possible in scenario b). I understand there are other important differences too. Which way did you choose and what persuaded you to go that way? Cheers, Phil Drane, New Zealand
- http://kenmorico.com/blog Ken Morico
  
  Hi Phil. I have a separate business page from my personal profile. My situation is a bit different from yours in that my page is for a very specific audience. Music and art have wide audiences and are great for Facebook. The personal account will let you keep your family separate from your fans, which personally is the way I want it. You can obviously cross-promote and let your friends and family know about your Facebook page. If you have an email list, that is best because you can message your real fans so you are not dependent on any platform like Facebook. My brother is an artist and I setup a page for him, but I know he does most of the marketing for his shows through email. I think most of my friends really don’t care about my blog to be honest, but my real fans and blog readers do. And I care about mom seeing photos of how fat I’ve gotten. So, to make a short answer long, I prefer separate. Regards, Ken
Sherry

I have a personal profile and a professional page set up; but I still don’t see if friends have access to both or how to keep professional friends from accessing my personal profile? Am I being clear as mud? I must be missing something. Thanks.
- http://kenmorico.com/blog Ken Morico
  
  Hi Sherry. The two are totally separate, however your friends would normally only see your page content if they liked the page. Note that Page content is almost always “public,” so anyone could in theory see the content. The same goes for content in your personal profile. If you set your status updates to public, anyone could see them. If you don’t want professional friends to see your personal profile updates, set your status updates to a limited exposure in your privacy settings.
Barbara

Hello, I have my own personal face book page connected to a businees page. Is there a way I can have my status updates from the business page link to my business twitter acct?
http://www.facebook.com/people/Teddy-Rose/100001634227838 Teddy Rose

Ug, I just migrated my personal profile to a business page, I didn’t realize I wouldn’t be able keep and join groups. Is there a way to create a personal profile page besides the business page?
- http://vocino.com Travis Vocino
  
  Teddy, I’m wondering the same thing, I converted to a Page assuming I could then create a new personal profile under the account. I can not find such an option anywhere and no one else seems to be asking this question or getting any answers.
  
  Very frustrating.
  
  If I could find any answer at all, at least a note that it’s officially NOT possible, I would perhaps create a new account with a new email address and then add it as an admin to the old page. That’s about all I can think of.
  - http://kenmorico.com/blog Ken Morico
    
    Hi Travis. What would you need a personal profile under the Business Page for? Groups? Let us know and there might be a workaround. Thanks.
    - http://vocino.com Travis Vocino
      
      Hello Ken,
      
      Here’s how it went down:
      
      My personal profile was /vocino (username/url). I wanted that to be my public figure page. I converted my personal profile to a page.
      
      Subsequently, I now have a strictly business account under travis@vocino.com. Now, I’d like to create a personal profile under that same account which owns the Pages.
      
      My only option appears to be to create a personal profile under a new email address, add that account as a Manager to the Page, then delete the old account, switch the new personal profile account (which now owns the pages) to my primary email address.
      - http://kenmorico.com/blog Ken Morico
        
        I see. Yeah once you converted the page it screwed things up. I think it’s too late to fix, unless you contact Facebook and maybe they can do something, but I wouldn’t count on it. Your solution seems to be the way to go with creating a new personal account. I think it’s important to keep in mind when Mark Zuckerberg was originally programming Facebook in the early days he wasn’t thinking about brands and brand pages. Now things are messy.
        
        I actually have the same problem with the username. I use /kenmorico for my personal profile and haven’t given my Facebook Page a friendly username. The way Facebook setup the links it makes it difficult for personal brands. Honestly though, most people type a name in the search bar to get to pages these days, so the url isn’t as important as it used to be. It’s good for business cards, but those are going away soon anyway.
- http://kenmorico.com/blog Ken Morico
  
  Hi Teddy. A personal profile is really just for friends. I understand your frustration not being able to join groups. It does seem like a huge flaw with Facebook Pages right now. Maybe instead of joining groups you can comment on the walls of other pages and reach out that way? You could create a feed and mimic a “group” so it’s easier to keep track of posts and comment.
Soph

Hi,

I created a Facebook Page and now my boss will take over the control of it. Do I need to switch it over to his personal profile as he is already an admin?

Also, whenever I do anything on the company page it comes up as my company’s activity. Is there a way to switch between a comment from Sophie and comment from the company on my company page where I am also an admin? It would be nice to mix so that my personal friends see something that I write on my company page.

Thanks for your help
- http://kenmorico.com/blog Ken Morico
  
  Hi Sophie. You can have multiple admins for a page connected with personal accounts. You can drop off the page as an admin if you like and let your boss run it. It sounds like he is already connected to the page with his personal profile. As far as switching, when you are on the company page as an admin, there is an option at the top to switch to your personal profile. It’s above the status updates, but different from the main switch button at the very top right.
Carolyn Sylvester Odell

I have a personal account with Facebook. I build a photography page Carolyn Odell Photography page to share my work. It won’t let me it automatically switches to my personal account. How do you separate or prevent this from happening? ANy ideas?
- http://kenmorico.com/blog Ken Morico
  
  Hi Carolyn. I’m not quite sure what you are asking. I discuss some methods of switching between your personal account and business page in the blog post. Please review the blog post again and let me know what your specific issue is. Thanks!