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42 Comments

  1. Hi Ching,

    I’m glad you shared this post. I recently started a new fan page and was wondering how to keep things separate.

    I also now know how to keep things private and separate. Thanks! 🙂

    Great information and very helpful!

    Take care!
    -Evelyn

    1. You’re most welcome, Evelyn. 🙂 Glad these info helps. I appreciate your visit and your encouragement means a lot. All the best in your facebook page endeavors! *hugs*

  2. Great info on a very confusing subject, Ching Ya — Facebook Pages and Privacy. As an entrepreneur I have both personal and business friends and contacts on my Facebook business page and personal account. I decided awhile back that it was too labor intensive to divide my contacts into groups and assign them access based on the content of a particular status update. So I removed almost all of the privacy settings on both accounts and instead, temper what I say and how I engage.

    It’s not the perfect solution, as I love the back and forth on subjects such as religion or politics, but I’ve found that it’s potentially volatile and definitely consuming, and not always in a productive way.

    Learning as I go 🙂

    1. Thank you Tim for dropping by. We are all learning everyday. 🙂 There is no definitely way on what’s best and what’s not, I’m glad you found a way that best fit yourself. Yes, sometimes it’s easier that way. As Facebook does not belong to us, we can only make use of the functionality as much as possible.

      I have to agree, it is a confusing subject. 🙂 My hope is that few methods can be adapted by those in need and fine-tune their profile visibility if needed.

      Appreciate your support always. Thanks again.

  3. Hey Ching Ya, great article. I’m actually going to borrow some ideas in order to sell the benefits of a professionally oriented FB profile to clients. Many of them still opt to have a dummy one like “Name: John | Surname: From Acme Inc”.

    All the best,

    Facundo

    1. Welcome Facundo, wish you a successful discussion with your clients about implementing some methods above. 🙂 And hope to see you here again soon.

      Appreciate your comment.

  4. Hi Ching Ya,

    Whew! This is actually intimidating. Let me ask you something: What would be the harm if I just let everybody – business and personal – see all my “stuff”?
    If I simply limited the overall status updates so as not to annoy my friends, I feel like I could just march on without having my head explode.

    Cheers,

    Mitch

    1. Mitchell, good question there for everyone who runs a social media profile. 🙂

      In my opinion, if one is cautious enough and not over-sharing his ‘sensitive’ details/opinions (even that is subjective), there’s actually nothing much to worry about. Just make sure by making everything ‘open’, none of the exposed conversations/photo with friends/closed ones will affect your professionalism and branding online. People are easy to jump into conclusions by a simple remark, or a picture before getting to know someone better. Which is way that we heard so much about people getting fired/sued over a bad remark about a customer/boss/company product.

      Like awhile ago, Darren Rowse would like to have his fan page and profile separated for fans/family respectively. Either to keep things private, or just for the sake of easy monitoring between work and leisure. 🙂 And we all need to be ‘ourselves’ once in awhile.

      Social media is unlike before. More opportunities, more risks too. It’s up to us to keep our profiles manageable (while we can). ^^

      1. I agree with Mitchell, as long as your personal profile passes the ‘granny’ or ’employer’ test, just go ahead and let everyone in. I have set my photos to only show to about 10 people, everything else on my profile is open and it’s all clean!

        1. Thanks Jorgen for dropping by. Yes, keep our profile ‘clean’, spot on. 🙂

          Mitch, thanks so much for giving us all a chance to brainstorm when it comes to whether or not to keep things open. 🙂 I believe it’s an on-going question that we’ll be asking ourselves periodically.

  5. Great article Ching Ya! Since I’m still in the workforce, I have to be extra careful that my personal profile always looks pretty innocuous, but I must admit I envy those guys who are totally living off of blogging and internet consulting and “what you see is what you get.” 😉 I’m looking forward to trying some of your tips so maybe I can enjoy the best of both worlds – open sharing with family and friends, yet very general and vanilla to colleagues and customers!

    1. Christie,

      I understand what you mean. Frankly speaking, I too, am wrestling with that question from time to time. It’s quite challenging but my hope is that I could have both worlds managed so to have leisure/work separated. It’s like you said, the conversations are very much different. 🙂

      So great to have you here dear friend. Thanks again!

  6. Thanks for the info Ching Ya. I just started a fan page and wanted to know how to separate personal from business. Great info as usual 🙂

    1. Welcome, Kiran. My pleasure and feel free to drop me a message anytime if you have any requests or questions about it. I’m always open for suggestions and brainstorming. Keep up the great work in your blog, looking forward to visit your page too.

  7. Hi Ching Ya,
    I’m very new to Facebook. I’m the administrative of the business page for my company. It is a page on my personal account. My employer wants to be able to block non-facebook users from seeing our wall. It was suggested to us to use a landing page. Will this stop non – users? I set our page to land on our Info page but during the test – my non-user just clicked on the wall tab and our wall page opened. Is there any way to block non-users from our wall.

    1. Nan, Facebook page is meant to be public viewable. To avoid certain people from viewing your page, you can set age/country restictions – but not confirmed if non facebook users will be asked to sign up first in order to view it or not. By doing so, you will be blocking other facebook users that fits in the restricted category from seeing your page too.

      Landing page won’t stop people from viewing your page, but works more like a ‘Welcome mat’ before they explore your page further.

      Therefore, it’s not really logical to block non-facebook users from seeing your page, as they can sign up anytime. If you’d like to have more control over who can view your company page, Facebook Group is a more controlled, focused platform but of course, has its own limitations.

  8. I had made this mistake of creating a business page from my personal account but was able to rectify it by changing the admins for the page.

  9. Hi Ching Ya,

    This post is awesome it is exactly what I was looking for.

    I was just talking to my wife about how I have all these new contacts in facebook, but 200 of them are friends of mine and I didn’t want to mix business with pleasure.

    Now I know how to separate the 2 thanks for sharing this!

    Larry

    1. You’re welcome, Larry. Glad this post can help to provide some insights in securing your profile from facebook pages if needed. Do visit again. 🙂

  10. I am soooo confused about separating my personal page from my business page. I’m trying to set up a business page, but all comments people make as well as when I send a message seems to go to my personal page, any suggestions on what I’m doing wrong…it’s VERY important that I have a stand alone page dedicated to acquiring fans on my business page that does not inflict on my personal page. Do I just create a new account with a different login to do this? I’m so confused and need help NOW. Thanks!

    1. Deniera, to answer your question:

      “but all comments people make as well as when I send a message seems to go to my personal page”
      — all comments made on your page will stay in your page, it will only go to your News Feed (if you liked your own page) as an notification but won’t appear on your Wall, so don’t worry about that. As for private message, it’s only dedicated to be used for personal profiles. Therefore, to contact your fans, you need to use ‘Send an Update to Fans’ which can be located from Edit Page -> right column, above ‘Admin’ panel.

      “Do I just create a new account with a different login to do this?”
      — if you already have a business page connecting to a personal profile, then no you don’t have to setup a new acc at all. FB has strict regulations for users having more than one account so try to avoid that at all costs. Just try to secure your profile as suggested in Pt.1 of the post (whenever suitable to your needs) then you should be all good.

      If you have further questions, let me know. 🙂

      1. Hi there, is there a way that when I post to another wall, I can choose whether it is posted under my personal profile or shows as being posted from the business page, ie I want to post photos on Africa Geographic’s page, showing as being from our business, rather than as from me personally?

      2. This is driving me CRAZY…if I want to post a comment, send a friend request or send a person a message from my business name, why does my personal name & pic keep coming up in the “from” box next to “comment”. I simply want to correspond with certain people through my business account….aaaarrrrrggghhhhh? I’m sooooo frustrated…what am I doing wrong?

        1. Deniera,

          You did not do anything wrong, it is designed this way that ‘commenting outside a page, sending a friend request or a message’ will always be from the admin’s profile instead of page. Therefore it is important to utilize your profile (while protecting it) for all interactions outside the page. FB is not a business network since start, so try to see page as an added value for your profile instead of the main feature may help to ease our frustration a little. 🙂 At least that’s all we can do as an ordinary user.

          1. the biggest I have with this is that not being able to post or comment from my business page is “frankly” STUPID. If I’m trying to conduct business with someone, they’re not going to recognize my personal page, nor should they be expected to…it’s like mixing your personal funds with your business funds. YOU JUST DON’T DO IT… This sounds like a “glitch in the system” that needs to be addressed. When I’m conducting busines, I’m conducting busines. I simply cannot believe that there’s not a way to fix this, or is it me??? I see businesses post all the time with their business info…any ideas with that????

    1. Shermayne, you can only unblock a fan if he/she re-like your page (look him/her up in ‘People Who Like’ list and unblock).

      1. Company pages are public and cen be seen by anyone whether they are Fans or not…Is there a way to Block/Ban someone that hasnt “liked” a company Facebook Page?

        1. Justin, we won’t be able to block someone from our page if he/she has not liked the page. Unless you set age/country restriction but that will affect other users from the same criteria so not advisable.

  11. I am just as frustrated as Deniera in her comments! I have set up a page for our organization, it is connected to my personal, I have gone thru and set most of the privacy settings as you suggested but still have a few qzs?
    1.Is it possible to set privacy settings so that everyone can find and post to the organization page wall but still have my personal wall restricted to friends only? If not, there should be separate settings!
    2. What is the second page FB automatically setup when I set up the page? It has a yellow message box at top that says “Administer of pages” and says something about ‘administrater interface’? what is this page for and what do I do with it?
    3. How do I get rid of the ‘Get Started’ tab that still shows up on the organizations page before the wall, info …tabs?
    FB really needs to implement phone support!! HELP Please!!

    1. Steph,

      To answer your question:

      1. Yes, just make sure all info & wall tab been set to ‘Me Only’ when it comes to customizing its visibility. The highest security a personal profile can get is an Info tab with no Friend Request & Messaging. Did you check out Part.1 of this article: https://wchingya.com/2010/08/protect-facebook-profile-business-page.html Make sure you have checked through your basic privacy settings as well.

      2. I have yet encountered this, can you send me a screenshot? (advisable to post your screenshot to the Wall of the fan page: http://facebook.com/SocialBloggingTracker and I’ll try to have a look at it)

      3. This is a tricky one. Some said ‘Get Started’ tab will only go away if you filled up everything. Personally I just ignored it, then after a few months the tab just disappeared by itself. Unsure why though but it happened. 🙂

      1. Ching Ya,

        I recently took over as admin for a fan page and was prompted to create a profile and did so.
        Doing this affected my ability to do page administration on THE FAN PAGE.

        I was listed as the administrator of the page and REMOVED myself in an effort to disconnect the profile from the FAN PAGE leaving NO ADMINS!!!!.

        Today, The FAN PAGE is active but is still tied to the newly created profile with no way to do page administration.

        I have tried contacting FB for support to no avail. Do you know of a fix to restore page administration and correct the profile issue?

        Thx

  12. Can you please tell me if it is acceptable to be a business on a personal page. I was informed by a business that their Facebook page was shut down by Facebook because she needed to be on a business page. I am the manager of a boutique, but we have a regular page, NOT a business page. We are trying to determine if we need to switch, as we do not want to lose our contacts. Thank you.

    1. Jennifer,

      A fan page without connecting to a profile is referred to business account. A fan page = business page, so can you explain what do you mean by ‘regular page’ and ‘business page’ you are referring to here –> “I am the manager of a boutique, but we have a regular page, NOT a business page.”?

      A personal profile can NEVER be used for business purposes. However, you can manage a fan page FROM a personal profile, meaning you can connect your profile to a fan page and administer the page from there.

  13. Dear Ching Ya,

    I’m new in facebook. Need your advice on the following:
    I’ve created a personal profile earlier & later only I know I should create a page for business.
    1. I can add friends to the personal profile but can’t add from business Page. How could I add friends so that it could divert the friends direct to my business page ?
    2. I hope my company name will appear instead of my personal name when adding / inviting friends, how to do that ?
    Yr immediate response wll be much appreciated. tq

    1. You won’t be able to transfer friends from profile to a fan page. The only way is to suggest your friends to join you page as from this post – refer to #1, #2, #5 :
      https://wchingya.com/2010/05/promote-facebook-fan-page-personal-account.html (#3 & 4 are no longer valid since fb removed boxes from profile).

      Invitation via private message will always be seen as from the page admin but not the page profile. Suggest you to use some of the methods mentioned here to encourage people to like your page:
      http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/10-ways-to-grow-your-facebook-page-following/

      Hope the info helps.

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