Great little tip. I think a lot of people struggle with Facebook because of the difficulty of being able to separate your personal and professional life. I actually wrote something on my blog awhile back about how its almost like an identity crisis. The Facebook Identity Crisis.

The challenge with doing this is: that Facebook Pages that are not linked to an FB profile are not searchable by search engines and this is clearly stated in their docs re: Pages.

Great post, Nick. I too get asked about this all the time and know lots of peeps who just go ahead and set up two personal profiles without realizing it’s actually against the TOS. Changing/removing Admins is tricky too - if an assistant/hire sets up a business profile it gets tied to that personal profile, so it’s important to set up Pages properly.

Agree that it’s good to know you can’t do both (biz and personal), but it’s been my impression that a biz acct is weak and of marginal value because use options are limited. Your thoughts?

Facebook has come up with this brilliant idea of creating business accounts, without a personal one. This sounds like it would make it easy for the business users and increase them to create accounts rapidly.It’s going to be easier managing one account than two.But i have a question what if users want to maintain both a personal and a business identity?What will they do?

I’m assuming that the problem arises where there are 2 user “accounts” with the same email address?

For eg, I have a personal facebook account, which I intend to use for all my personal FB interaction for the rest of the foreseeable.

However, I might also want to set up some FB pages etc for my current main employer, or even for some of my small-business customers.

I (but more importantly: they) don’t want those connected or “owned” by my personal account, as they don’t actually belong to me.

Likewise, my own part-time “small business” may one day grow into a bigger project which I may sell off and would want that therefore to have it’s own contained self on facebook.

I’d be interested to know if these fall into the category of likely to be shut down by FB.

Hello,

Great article, thank you for the information.
I’m wondering if I have a personal account and then I set up a page for my business, and I’m signed on as my self is there a way that the business can join a group under the business name? I have not found a way to make this happen.

I opened an account..I thought it was a business account…but I’m thinking not…so then I added a page for my business…but I don’t see how you can connect the two together..is there a way…or is this a totally different account now? I’m so confused…should I delete both and start over?

Thanks for the post. I am a bit surprised more users haven’t complained about this limitation of Facebook. A fundamental rule of business is to keep your business and personal lives separate and this is even more true for small business owners. I followed FB’s rules in setting up my business page through my personal account but it makes updating the corporate pages a real pain because all of the utilities that help update FB are linked to my personal account. The only option is to have either a business account OR a personal account? That is stoopid.

I like FB for personal reasons and my friends/customers like being able to be a fan of my company through facebook so they can stay connected. Why can’t we do both? Just allow a separate login for the business account. If they are going to shut down accounts for people who establish separate accounts for business and personal (using different email addresses) then they should also start shutting down ALL of the accounts for people who work for companies with corporate profiles. That would be the only fair way to do it.

These posts are so on the mark. I set up a personal profile then added the business page… My question is how does someone coming to my personal page even know that the business exists. When I log in… I am always going to the upper right search box and and having to search my business. Also is there a way that someone could find my business without having to first go to my personal page?

I set up a business account but people can still add me as friends, not just as fans. Is there a way to fiz that?

Hi, I’m having a nightmare. Have a personal profile and had 3 attempts at setting up a business one. Have used 3 out of my 4 business emails so one left not to botch up. My problem is that it is fine setting up a business page, then when I come to edit my profile it asks for a personal name, won’t allow me to use the company name, so I enter my name and that is what shows up on the page title. Am I missing something? Please help anyone,
Rachel

I have a personal facebook account and want to switch that account over to a business account without changing the email address.

Several days ago, our IT guy created a fan page on behalf of the organization I work for. We successfully created a fan page under his email though he does not have a FB personal account. After several days and subsequently reviewing your online documentation, we quickly realized the benefits of converting the business page to a personal page.

He followed the steps on the FB help site, logged into the business page, chose to convert to a personal page, entered my first and last name, and he was immediately forwarded to what appeared to be a personal page that was entirely blank. Per FB online documentation, this was not what he was expecting. I have a FB personal page already and when he did the conversion I grabbed a user name and as soon as I did that I came to the blank page as well.

The original business page still exists and was titled “Flight For Life Transportation System” but I cannot edit/update/add photos/make comments as an administrator even though I am the administrator of the site.

The intent was to convert that business fan page into an personal account for better interaction with our fans (for instance, being able to reply to comments, etc.)

Currently, when I attempt to login with the credentials that formerly got me to the business fan page I am redirected to a blank personal page. I believe he followed all of FB instructions accurately, so I am not sure what went wrong. We have 1137+ followers and as of now are unable to edit/post, etc. without access to the business page (ideally now linked to the personal account that was created through your account conversion).

Can anyone offer me any help? I have emailed FB 4 times and have gotten NO response at all.

Thanks!

We developed a business page on FB and are unable to create a username for the account and we are unable to locate an operational link that takes our new fans to the Wall page rather than our professional profiles. We’ve deleted, started over, used different cell numbers for verification and we’ve had no success. We have emailed FB regarding the issue and have not heard back but we realize now others are experiencing the same issue. We love FB and want to continue using it however, it shouldn’t be this difficult for business’s. Can someone please contact us or better yet hold a webinar discussing these steps and other matters people are having problems with, I’m sure you’ll have many participating. Help please!

I love the webinar idea! I’m also glad that I’m not the only one super frustrated right now. I posted a video on what I thought was my business page, but it posted to my personal page. I added my business through my personal page. I’m doing something wrong and don’t know what it is! Maybe I need to get a new email address, but can you have two email addresses on one combined personal/business account.

Thanks for the read. I hope Facebooks makes it easier to separate personal and business accounts in the future. I disabled my personal account, which I was only really using to promote my website. I’m not a big fan of wasting time on social network sites unless I’m looking for productive links or adding links to them. As far as the one line exchanges of “what are you doing?” I can live without those.

Thank you I’ve just created my business account, very useful article.

Best regards,

I too am BEYOND frustrated with Facebook. We set up a business page, we do not want a personal page, JUST a business presence. We thought we were all set - the page is there. However, it’s not searchable. Cannot get a username - that feature just hangs up, and EVERY SINGLE time we log in, it tried to get us to create a personal profile. FORGET trying to reach a human being or help personnel at Facebook - I’m convinced they simply do not exist. This is disappointing to say the least.

Personal and business. I have two separate groups of individuals, I really don’t want my work group to have access to my other group of friends. Is there a way to set up two pages, one for each?

Casey

I want to setup a facebook page for my client. However i am confused. which is better,
-creating page using personal Account.
-Creating page using bussiness Id.

please help me …….

my issue is, there are several facebook pages I have already created with my personal account. but now it’s time for the client to hold the reigns. They need to manage it with a business account, not a personal account. so wondering how to create a business account in a different order to what’s outlined above.

I created my business page but in some features it ask me to create a personal account.How do I get rid of that?

If we want to set up a personal account for the owner of our company so that we can create a searchable business page, can we set the privacy settings of the personal account so that the owner’s name isn’t searchable . . . only the business? He doesn’t want to add friends to a personal account.

I see a lot of the same questions I have about setting up a business account on Facebook but no answers. Does anyone have answers to these questions?

I don’t see the logic in this. What happens when a person that creates a business page quit the company or get fired? What if I have a personal account and want to add a business page but due to time constraints I would like my assistant to manage the business part. Would my assistant then get access to all my personal info/login etc as well?

For instance, who’s the person behind CNN’s facebook page? Is it Ted Turner himself? I hope he doesn’t have a personal account too, they might cancel both.

To me it seems like the only way around this is to hire a person that will stay with your company forever and who’s first name is not info because FB will not approve that as an email address.

I have to agree. I have a personal account with a business page attached. I have a hard time locating the business page, as it doesn’t show up under my personal Pages, as you would think it would. I really want my personal and business life very separate. I don’t want my having access to my very personal information that I would share with my family and friends. They don’t need to know my religious and political beliefs, or what I read etc… This could potentially be bad for a business, as you just cannot make all of the people happy. So to have a business page, I just cannot post any personal info on my personal page! I don’t want people to have my last name either. I write under a partial name, as I write murder mystery games and I really don’t want someone who might not be all there to have access to all my personal information, including last name. I just find this poorly implemented and feel like we should be able to have our personal and business information very separate. The friends and links I would post for my business are just very different from what I would post for my personal facebook profile.

creating a page is all well and good but you cant put apps on like video etc without it asking you to fill in your profile and once you do this it changes the page into a personal account, then you cant change it back…very anoying!!

does anyone know if facebook really deletes accounts? our business set up a regular account (not knowing the difference) and we now have many friends of the business. is it ok to set it up as a regular account? how would they know if you even have multiple accounts? email, IP? has anyone even heard a story of them deleting business accounts?

I am also really frustrated with the way Facebook encourages businesses and then doesn’t support them. I originally setup a separate personal account for work so that I could set up a group for our my company. I used my work email so that any announcements I sent would receive replies to my work inbox. This was great until I learned that I couldn’t support a separate account for business.

So I moved the group’s admin to my personal account and deleted the work account. Now, I can no longer send out announcements because I do not want replies to my personal email account. And I have to clearly state that group members should not email the admin because I would receive those in my personal account as well.

I want my work COMPLETELY separate from my personal. A Facebook Page won’t solve the problem as it would still be tied to my personal account without the ability for me to separate myself even if I no longer worked for the company.

Why can’t a company have its own account so that admins could rotate based on who has that position at the company? Those of us who want to enjoy FB personally shouldn’t have to use our personal accounts for our companies.

I am equally frustrated. I didn’t know anything about social networking, so I was told by my boss to find out everything I could about it. In my attempts to learn, I set up a personal facebook account and connected to a lot of family and friends. Now that I have some idea what I need to do, FB is not allowing me to set up a profile for the business. If I can’t set up a business account, I have wasted hours of my employers time. That upsets me a lot. There has to be a way around this problem. Any ideas?

I am fustrated by FB lack of clear explanation regarding the business and personal. Just simply put two column table to illustrate the difference and steps to sign up. By doing this, it will greatly reduce their work load by less policing work on user with one person two account check. For users, we can straight away put our effort on content.

I used one email and is struggling to migrate from personal to business.
Just found out from some FB user that I create a business page and email their sales-support@facebook.com and requested them to remove my personal profile.

Btw, it is so difficult to get their contact number or email, they are truly ‘face on book’. Many people rated Facebook worth billions, I begining to lower my rating for them. I hope people at FB read this comment and do something about it.

I pray that they are able to help me.

I created a facebook business acount then somehow when I was filling out the settings informaton the account switched to a personal one owned by the business admin set up for the business acount. Now the only way I can get into change the business account page and its features is to search for the business name and then — very very very confusing and frustrating

We have created a “Personal” facebook page recently before we knew about the Business Facebook. Yes, should have done more research….. but is there a way to convert a personal facebook to be business, without having to upload all our information back into the page?

I have a personal account and want to set up a business page. Where are the directions on how to do this
Thank you

Really straightforward advice which I’ve followed. But I seem to have got a really long URL! How do I shorten/change it to facebook.com/lonesomepine? Otherwise, I have got a long and unwieldy facebook account name??

the person who fixed my computer has all my infro. and now i’m having trouble excessing my information. And its all important. I am a beginner on the computer with no expericeince and i feel they all getting over on me.

I have a personal acct and also admin for a fanpage. I want to delete my personal acct, how can I do this and still access the fanpage to admin? thanks

my girlfriend set up a buisness account without realising she couldunt have a personal one aswell now she cant access her personal one all what can she do please help thankyou

This is exactly what I wanted to do. I know a facebook account is necessary for my business, but I’m really funny about my personal privacy. Thank you so much.

yara @

I thought getting a business url like facebook.com/xyz would be quick and easy.
Instead its f…ing nightmare.
How the hell do you do this???

It’s obvious Facebook staffers gave absolutely NO thought on how users would set up Business Pages. It’s a complete disaster that makes no sense. I just deactivated the account and gave up. Don’t have time to waste on poorly planned junk like this. Grrrrrrrrrrr

Facebook is a joke and if they keep up this poor planning and lack of insight into their their customer base, will be going the way of MySpace. I agree with all of these negative comments. Combining your personal with business is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. I guess it’s the nerds at Facebook who have nothing but business in their lives that made up this rule. stupid. Where is the Facebook replacement already???

Hi All,
I left the name “Anonymous4Obvious” because I took a chance and created 2 accounts. I am knowingly breaking Facebook’s rules and TOS, but this is their fault! Like many of you, I did not want to have my personal info linked to my business in any way. This is an obvious flaw in Facebook. I tried several times to create a biz page, like Jay Z, or Chad Ochocinco, where there was an option for users to become a fan, as well as have the option to have a username extention (ie: Facebook.com/JayZ), like on a personal account. I cannot figure out how they did that for the love of GOD. And Facebook will not respond to any of my emails…. So, I took a chance and I created a separate Facebook (personal) account for my business/website, so I could add the username (mysite.com/username) simply for promotion and SEO purposes. I used an alias as my name, with my business/website title cleverly nestled in. (ex. First Name-John, Last Name-Website) I hate that I had to go thru all this just to get a Facebook page set up how I wanted, and I hope Facebook is reading this. All those rich jamokes have to do is, allow a business account or page to have a separate extension (ie facebook.com/mysite) and be separate from a personal page.

you cannot get a “name” url for your business page until you have at least 25 fans =)

I am also frustrated- I hate that I have to search for my business page in order to ‘edit’ or update it. I also wish that it wasn’t linked to my personal account- because I would love to post business related comments/posts from my BUSINESS NAME and not have it show up as from my personal account- that frustrates me soo much. What better way to network with other businesses than to be able to do this?

By accident i set up another personal account when i tried opening up my biz account. I then found out about them shutting down accounts.

When i log in with the email address that i used to set up the biz account. all it does is bring me to my second personal account. HOW DO I log in under the business? I cannot figure out how to log in under the biz account in order to add posts and stuff. This is extremely frustrating. any help would be great. also. how do you delete an account? I created another personal account on accident, and now I am worried all will get shut down. this jsut seems ridiculous. it was an accident! haha. please help

Lots of the same questions with no answer, where do we turn?

I have a personal account, and would like to have an account for my business, without clients being able to access my personal profile. How can I do this?

Can somebody help?

Businesses can be individuals (ie a Sole Trader), but in the case of a Limited Company it is not a “person”, but a legal entity. Therefore there should be no problem if a Business Facebook account was created at “generic” email account like info @ vpntelevision.com.

The challenge with this is that if you bypass the option to set up a business account when you’re done creating the Fan Page - there doesn’t seem to be a way to GO BACK and create a business account later. The only option seems to be to create a personal profile. Such a shame there’s no clear information on how to access this option AFTER THE FACT.

I AM HORRIFIED to see the LACK OF INFORMATION BY FACEBOOK TO ITS USERS!!!. We are all left to “FEND FOR OURSELVES”, asking each other, going to forums, searching google, etc. to find our HOW FACEBOOKS WORKS!. This is really appalling. I like facebook but still needs a lot of improvements if they really want to sell the site one day for millions of dollars. Maybe with that in mind, they will start to put more effort in explaining the users HOW IT REALLY WORKS!. I honestly thing that FB has one of the WORST CUSTOMER SERVICE records!!!.

I see that if you are on facebook to PROMOTE YOUR BUSINESS, better to stick to just 1 kind of page, the BUSINESS PAGE and DO NOT create a personal page under any circumstance.

Thanks for the article and all the replys. I am learning with all of you guys. Monica.

HI EVERYONE!
I have gone through the trouble of spending 2 hours READING ALL THE POSTS ABOVE and analyzing some questions. I also created a PERSONAL A/C first and a BIZ A/C after that. Now, like many of you, DO NOT KNOW HOW TO ACCESSS MY BIZ A/C, FC has not implemented any link or anything in my personal page where I can go and access my biz a/c. This is totally annoying!. How can people in charge of FB be so foolish???.

After reading all your replies and suggestions, I have decided to ERASE BOTH A/Cs. I read in another article that you could close your a/cs on FB but SHOULD NOT TRY TO LOG FOR 2 WEEKS!, otherwise, you would cancel your petition of cancelling your a/cs. Type in google: “HOW TO CLOSE ACCOUNT ON FACEBOOK”.

I will try to create a BIZ A/C or BIZ PAGE. Do not want to do anthing with personal a/cs. Good luck to everyone!. Monica.

I am just starting out in this arena (social media) and do not have an account of any kind and would like to start. I must say, after reading all these comments regarding starting a Biz fb account–I’m totally confused and don’t know where to begin! Any help out there?

I agree with most comments. It is extremely confusing setting up a business/fan page.

How do you promote your website at FB? Do you open a personal account or better a business account?