The popularity of Facebook has meant that businesses are starting to flock to Facebook in order to be where their customers are. Good move.
However many are diving straight on in without proper advice and have set their businesses up as ‘Personal Profiles’, rather than a ‘Page’. Not so good move.
Our previous post 15 Reasons to use a Facebook Business page goes into more detail about why you should be using a page. In addition to this exhaustive list, I would like to highlight a few more:
- It is against Facebook’s Terms of Service for a business to use a personal profile, and your profile could be removed
- People may not want to accept you as my ‘friend’ because even if they know your business, they don’t know who has access and can therefore view their baby photos, random thoughts etc…
- You’re selling yourself short. A Page has so much more functionality than a personal profile – custom landing tab option, auto post to Twitter, 5000+ fans and more.
Migration is here
Ok so you’ve realised you need a business Page, but what if you already have 100′s if not thousands of friends?
Here’s the Good News. You can ‘migrate’ your profile over to a business page and take all your friends with you. They will automatically turn into ‘fans’.
YAY!! And it works. Just recently I migrated local business Alta Queenstown (snowboard shop) over to a business page, bringing all 600+ fans with them.
The only downside is that you lose all photos and content. But there is an option to download this information to your computer should you wish to upload it again.
How to Migrate
If you are keen to DIY, simply follow this link: http://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php?migrate
Make sure your are logged in as your businesses personal profile, NOT your own. At the top of the page you should see your business’s profile picture with the heading ‘Profile to Business Page Migration’, as shown in this picture.
Then select what sort of business page you would like to create, e.g. Local business, Artist, Cause or Community. Facebook will then ask for your permission and give you an option to download any information that will be lost in the migration.
Tip: If you are the administrator of any business pages from this personal profile, make sure you add at least one other administrator before you migrate.
If you’re a bit nervous to attempt yourself, contact us, and we can help you upgrade your professional presence online 
