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Subject :Why Businesses Should Think Twice Before Investing Money or Time in a Facebook Page
I read a very interesting article by Maggie McGarry http://ow.ly/16O18 today and thought it's a topic worth discussing further.
As part of our web design service, I work with clients to create Facebook & Twitter accounts, link them and if they are not familiar with either service, work with them to use them to promote their website & business further.
Unaware that it would be a problem, their fan pages were created & linked to my profile & it was only when I went to participate in their pages by adding comments (& therefore generating traffic) did I discover; Any comments were appearing as the company &; when I went to remove myself as an admin so I could add comments, it wasn't possible 
So we then spent ages researching the help pages & forums only to discover that the person who creates the account cannot remove themselves as an admin or transfer the main admin to someone else.
Now, where that's not a problem for our clients (we notified them immediately), you've only got to spend 5 mins on the forums to read the horror stories of how it can all go sour and Facebook doesn't want to know!
There's a couple of options to prevent this; the owner creates the page (only works if they never plan to sell) or create a business account. Of course it looks like the choice is easy.... Not so!
You are only entitled to a personal OR business account!! Facebook states that they check and will delete BOTH accounts if they find you have both. Some people are happy to take the risk, but you plan to invest alot of time, energy & possibly even money into promoting your business only to risk having it all deleted. One of the comments related to the article says that their account was suspended (for mis-use) & when they finally got it back functions were missing.
I think it's important to remember a few things.
- Anything you do on any of these sites may NOT your property. You may pay for advertising & therefore (rightly) feel that you're paying to use their services, but that's the point - It's theirs and they have the right to delete, suspend or re-produce anything you add to their sites. They also can close down altogether and you've got no comeback!
- They all have rules! You can't play dumb and say you didn't know. However, tt's your responsibility to know their rules & check back n a regular basis to make sure nothing has changed. They have the right to punish you as they see fit, so basically, if you don't like it, don't use it!
- Your fans have the right to complain that you are spamming them, so think about how often you'd want to receive messages before constantly bombarding people. They can just remove themselves as a fan, but they can take it so much further. Is it worth losing your page, even for a short period???
I know alot of people & businesses are not happy with this. I'd hope that Facebook sees the opportunities available to it, even if they charged for the usage. One of the best tips in this article was to always have more than one Admin.
I don't know about anyone else, but a few functions I'd like to see on FB are;
- The ability to contact the owners of the fan page without leaving it on the newsfeed.
- Allowing people & other businesses to promote to the pages that they are fans of.
- Business accounts that are not personal and what I mean by that is that you should be entitled to have a professional & personal life, allowing your personal opinions & actions to be totally separate to that of your business.
I hope as business owners start discussing these topics more, Facebook will start to listen. Afterall, they'd be silly not to. Let's hope it's sooner rather than later.
What do you think?? |
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Lou Guy
Our Corner
info@ourcorner.com.au |
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