Facebook Page Migration – Not A Good Idea

As of Friday (April Fool’s Day), Facebook disabled the Facebook Profile to Page Migration Tool.  The new tool was launched just a few days earlier to help brands and organizations migrate personal profiles, being used for business branding, over to a business page.

But as I mentioned in my previous post, the migration wasn’t perfect. Now we find out that nothing is ever as easy as it seems.

Based on the experience of a contributor on the Mashable blog, avoid using the tool (if it’s brought back) unless you are desperately on the verge of losing your account. (Unfortunately you likely don’t know how close you are to getting your account suspended because Facebook doesn’t generally offer you any warnings.)

For many companies it seems like a trivial problem to have friends or fans. But Facebook’s terms of service (TOS) specifically state that inanimate objects, pets, and businesses can’t have personal profile pages.  Many organizations have had their accounts suspended for using a personal profile to represent their business.

So, I’ll reiterate my recommendation.  The best way to changeover from a profile to a page is to follow these 3 steps:

1. Create a new business page
2. Announce to all your friends on your personal profile that effective immediately, your business is now represented at <Your company> business page. Request they “Like” the page to keep receiving updates and posting their pictures/videos/comments.
3. Change the name of your personal page back to your name and remove the logo of your business as the profile picture.

Tip: How do you know? If you have “collect” Friends, you have a personal profile; if people “Like” you page, you have a business page.