Yes, you read right! Facebook has finally set up a way for people to convert their personal profiles to business pages.
First, why convert a profile to a page?
Because it’s against the Facebook terms. If you have your business on a personal profile, you run the risk of having it deleted. (and yes, I do know of people who have had this happen) Profiles are for people and pages are for businesses. For more info, see my earlier blog post, Facebook Fan Pages vs. Personal Profile.
Things you need to know before converting your personal profile to a page:
- All your confirmed friends will be converted to people who like your new Page.
- Your profile pictures will be migrated to your new Page.
- Photo albums, profile information, etc. will not be transferred. Be sure to save any important content before beginning your migration. (see step one, below)
- Once you convert your personal profile to a business page, that profile will no longer exist.
- You will not be able to convert your page back to a personal profile.
- You will continue to login with the email/password that you used before you converted the page.
Now, here’s how to convert your Facebook profile to a business page:
Step one
Backup your Facebook profile. Login to Facebook and click the down arrow next to Account in the upper right corner of your screen, then select Account Settings. Toward the bottom of that page, you’ll see Download Your Information. Click the learn more link to the right and follow the instructions.
Step two
Go to this page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php?migrate and select the type of page you want to create. If you’ve never set up a Facebook page, you’ll see that you have a number of categories to select from. Pick the one that’s right for you, and follow the instructions.
Now, if you want to, you can set up a personal profile in your name, and make yourself an admin of the new page. You can also assign admin rightsย to someone else if you’d like.
I could be wrong, but my guess is, that since Facebook is making this option available they may be gearing up to crack down a bit more on businesses that are set up on personal profiles. So, I think it would be wise for anyone with a business presence on Facebook to be sure it’s set up properly – on a page.
IMPORTANT UPDATE
Apparently, although Facebook has made converting a profile to a page, all of the bugs haven’t been worked out yet. Earlier this evening, one of the Mashable bloggers wrote about some of the problems she had when she converted her personal profile to a business page. See her post here: Facebook Profile Migrations: A Cautionary Tale.
UPDATE #2 (April 2, 2011)
Facebook has disabled this feature. Hopefully they’ll fix it and make it available again.
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greetings! i have 2 pages managed by my profile acct. these 2 pages are for my businesses. how could i convert the 2 pages into seperate fan pages? hoping for your reply.
Hi Lil, I’m not sure exactly what you mean. Do you have two profiles that you are using for business? Or, do you have one admin (personal profile) that you’re using to admin 2 business PAGES?
Sir, plzz help me, I proceeded all the steps according to you. But the problem arises in the final step, when FB asks my password to confirm my account and as I enter it, it shows “to complete this process, switch to a computer where you browsed Facebook before”. And thus I fail to convert my fb profile to a fb page. I have three different accounts, but they also give the same result…how can i do it? Plzz Give a prompt reply
Thanks for the reply.
It has all worked it. We just had to wait a day until FB had caught up. Yes they do have more than 100 fans which was why FB didn’t want to allow us to change the name.
We’ll change the user name tonight.
Another happy client.
Thanks a million.
Jorgen
I have just converted a client’s personal profile to a FB page yesterday. Just to give you the whole picture. They already had created a new FB page from the same personal profile but I deleted it as it was inactive. When I deleted it I was told by FB that it would take 14 days before it was deleted and that we had 2 weeks to undo it.
So the steps we took was
– no information download as they didn’t care about their existing pics/videos.
– went to the conversion pages and completed the steps
The conversion went well and all 1600 friends are now likes.
Just a few problems
When we log in now we of course go straight to the FB page instead of the personal profile as it has been migrated. There is not the option to switch between using the page as admin or the person who had the personal profile which is obvious.
1) Once logged in we can switch between the old now deleted fb page and the new fb page. I assume that will go away once fb have deleted the old fb page
2) There is no way to see who the fans are as there is no icon in the top left corner
3) we tried to add an admin but it wouldn’t complete the steps
4) The url is http://www.facebook.com/page/a series of numbers. Not sure why since they have 1600 fans
5) There is the notification ‘line’ on the right side but it’s not in the top left corner.
6) we can’t find the new page in search. The new page is called VentaquaDesign Nice
What actually happens to the personal profile that was converted?
Do you have any suggestion to what I can do?
I have several more personal profiles to convert and I prefer to get the process down 100% before I continue.
I appreciate any response.
I think that it is a good idea to set up a new personal profile before doing the migration and then add the email address as admin so it will hopefully work in the normal manner.
Jorgen
As far as the URL is concerned, you should be able to change this since you have a large number of fans. If you go into “Edit Page” and then under “Basic Information” there should be a option to change your Username. You should be able to then change your username to http://www.facebook.com/whatyouwantyournametobe. However, just make sure when you choose your name, its what you want and is spelled correctly, b/c you’re not able to edit it once you’re done.
As far as your admin issue is concerned, I would make sure whoever you are trying to add as admin is a fan of the Page. I ran into this problem occasionally, but as soon as I became a fan of the Page I was trying to become admin of, it went through.
One other thing is that I would also make sure to change the name on the profile to whatever you want the name of your page to be before you do the conversion. If you have more than 100 fans, facebook doesn’t let you change your Page’s name.
Hope this helps!
I haven’t converted a profile to a page myself, so I haven’t seen the lock out you’re talking about. I suspect it’s possible that it may have to do with the changes they’re making converting profiles to timelines. I think that is supposed to happen in the next few weeks.
If you haven’t already, see the help section on Facebook about converting profiles (timelines) to pages:
http://www.facebook.com/help/?page=18918
I am having the same problem. Everytime I try to convert it, it locks me out. And when I log back in nothing has changed? Who would I contact for help with this?
I have looked more into the issue and have found that it might also have something to do with what computer you are logging on to do it from. I took my own laptop over to the property and was working off of it, rather than the computer the leasing manager usually works off of. FB wasn’t recognizing that computer as the normal computer associated with the account, so for security reasons it locked us out. I’m also guessing that since we then changed the password so many times, it kept us from switching it over.
Has anyone had issues while trying to convert their profile into a page with Facebook locking your account. I work for an apartment management company and we are trying to convert one of our properties profiles into a page, however whenever we start going through the process, it locks up the account and we have to identify pictures of friends to unlock the account. Even after all of that it is still not converted. We have tried this several times tweaking things here and there, and even have used the recognized computer for the facebook account, but no luck…any suggestions?
Like many others I thought I set up a business page in the name of OrangeBee, but it appears to be in the name of Buddy Hooper.
After we convert the personal page to a business page, will I be able to change the name from Buddy Hooper to OrangeBee?
Buddy Hooper
If you have less than 100 friends (which will become fans) on your page you can change the name. If you’re talking about the custom URL though, no. Once you set a custom URL for a page you cannot change it. Be careful with the switch though, there have been issues and I’m not sure if Facebook has worked out all the glitches.
Thanks for this important info. Its work fine ๐
I just convert my one of profile to page and its take only 2 minutes of work
Shajjad
Hi! We recently created a company page but although it is set up initially as a company profile, you really can’t do much unless you create an admin page that is really your personal information. So… in essence Facebook is still pushing you to do everything as a personal vs a business. Am I missing something? Thanks!!!!
Not really. It’s true that you’ll be able to do a bit more if you have a personal profile, but some of the recent changes added more options to pages. For example, if you have a page, you can now Like other pages and post on those pages as your page. One thing you can’t do though is to friend people if you just have a page. Only people can friend other people.
Therese,
I have been looking for guidance on using facebook for personal and business, for me as a person. Just like I have two email addresses…one for personal use and one for me at my company, it seems like having two facebook profiles is what is needed. It seems to be against facebook policy, but how would you suggest someone practically use facebook for staying connected to friends and family and interacting with business associates?
The business associated don’t want to wade throught comments from my high school niece about her boyfriend and goofy thinks that happened at school. My family likely doesn’t need to see interaction with engineers about what techical problems we are working on today.
These are both “me”, but just a bit compartmentalized versions of the same person. Any suggestions?
I would use your personal profile for your friends/family, and set up a page or group to use with colleagues. Using a page means everything you post will be public, whereas a group can be set as private and by invitation only. So, if you want to connect with colleagues, but keep it private, a group may be the way to go.
I’ve been holding off on setting up a Personal Profile and making myself an Admin of my Business Page, so I can have more access in the Business Page portion. I started to recently set up a Personal Profile but came across the field where I had to fill in my email address. Should I use the same email address I have for the Business Page? I know, stupid question, but I just had to ask just in case they are supposed to be different.
Hi Mona, nope, not a stupid question ๐ I believe the only way you can use the same email for both is to login to your business page first, then set up the personal profile. I’d probably do it that way, so there’s only one login to worry about.
(I would have answered sooner but have been on vacation.)
I am not going to dare mess around with this until I can talk with someone from this site.
Would like more information about your fan page/business pages.
My appreciation for your help, Therese! Timing is everything, as they say. I created a new page a month ago and it doesn’t seem possible to migrate a personal profile to an existing company page. A new page, yes. With over 100 fans on our new page, it just doesn’t seem worth it to start all over again. I’ve exported the email contact information from our personal profile, so we can at least email our “friends” to become “fans” on our new page.
We’ll deactivate the personal profile within a weeks time, so as to clearly have one location on Facebook when people search for us.
Again, thank you for responding to my email on this topic and so quickly! All these changes are very good…we just missed the boat slightly. Drat!
I’ll be sending my clients a link to this article for sure. Thanks for posting Therese! Clear and simple. I bet you are right, they are offering this before they crack down on these pages.