Convert your org's profile to a page, now!!

Hey there,

So I was on Facebook today, and looked over to the "People You May Know" box. Much to my chagrin, there I saw organizations and companies which were still masquerading as people.

Okay, I'm being somewhat dramatic...but only somewhat. This is a probably that is only as serious as you make it, and if you ignore it, it's probably more serious than you think it is.

When I started at Dance Place, as their social media coordinator, one of my first tasks was to reconcile the organization's presence on Facebook.

If this merely meant converting a personal account to a Facebook page, that would've been enough work in and of itself, but it also meant merging the newly converted page with the existing one that was created. Long story best shared for another time. We're going to focus on the conversion, not the merge, in this post.

Facebook actually has a great resource on converting a personal account to a page, go figure right. But one of the main reasons I urge any company or organization that still has a personal account set up is the answer to the first question of why?

Since personal accounts are meant for individual people, they aren't suited to meet your business needs. Pages offer more robust features for organizations, businesses, brands and public figures. Learn more about Facebook Pages.  

Maintaining a personal account for anything other than an individual person is a violation of Facebook's Statement of Rights and Responsibilities. If you don’t convert your noncompliant account to a Page, you risk permanently losing access to the account and all of its content.  

Click here to learn how to convert your personal account to a Page.

So to sum it up, there are three main reasons to convert:

1. corporations are NOT people too
2. there are features which help you better engage and measure that engagement
3. you're breaking the rules and risk losing EVERYTHING

Wow...I never thought I'd be so passionate about converting others.

Anyway, if this situation applies to you or someone you know, you're also going to want to convert sooner than later. The Pros just outweigh the Cons. And you can do so on your own terms, rather than risk losing access and having to start from scratch anyway.

It's really not that scary, either. You get to back up your profile before converting, and well...take a gulp and take a breath, and go ahead and sign the scroll.

Sorry...I couldn't help it. The moral of the story is that one of the first steps in using social media platforms effectively is that they need to be used correctly.

And in this case, it means making sure that you've got a page set up for your organization, and not a personal account. So if you're ready to take the next step, learn how to convert a a personal account to a Facebook page here.

Let me know if you have any questions or comments about this. And for anyone who does this, DEFINITELY please share your experience, and your newly converted Facebook page!!

JR