Facebook business pages

Not surprisingly many small business people like to keep their personal profiles separate from their business pages.

They ask how they can delete their personal profiles once they have created their business pages.

The blunt answer is that you can’t.

Perhaps because as it was originally conceived as “social” and nowadays, perhaps also to have some measure of verification of the authenticity of a page, Facebook’s rules are that all pages must be created via a personal profile.

It is not permitted to use the name of a business as a personal profile or to use a personal profile to conduct business and Facebook does act promptly to remove such pages.  If that happens you may also find it harder to create a new one.

There is no doubt that for very small businesses, particularly those selling goods or services to consumers, facebook business pages can be really helpful not only for showcasing products or examples of work, but also for building credibility, contacts and getting the business name remembered.

So what to do about privacy?

Given that you cannot delete your personal profile even after creating your business page, people will have access to it.  That means that if you value your privacy you need to do several things.

Firstly, only post things that you do not have a problem with people knowing.

Secondly, change the profile settings to the most private you can have which is “me only”.  But if you use your personal profile to keep in touch with friends and family, you can select to limit posts to these people only.

Provided that you maintain control over what is posted on your profile and who sees it, then the old adage “people buy from people” in terms of marketing your business can work well for you.