Disconnected – Has Your Facebook Account Been Unplugged?
Are you on Facebook®? Do you also use the ever-increasingly popular social network for business? If so, we’d like to share a personal experience with you, which could happen to anyone at anytime, leaving your business vulnerable to a major loss of valuable web presence, personal and professional connections.
With the sudden rise in popularity of social media in the mainstream media and the increased usage by businesses as of late, everyone is being encouraged to utilize the social web to promote their business. The platforms are amazingly dynamic and offer a wonderful opportunity to connect with others, and promote your brand. However, there are some important caveats that those who are using social networks for business must be made aware. What would you do if you utilized Facebook for your business regularly, including the paid advertising features, and went to log in and found this message?
This happened to Virtually Ready’s owner yesterday, just after the most recent Facebook privacy changes took place. This is someone who has followed the frequently changing terms and methods to their best understanding, has experienced the growing challenge of keeping personal and business as separate as possible, helps other businesses grow on a regular basis and is always willing to lend others a hand on the social web. We are not sure as to the reason this occurred, but we convey our list of concerns below. Perhaps the account is gone forever. Perhaps not, as we have heard from others who have had the same thing happen to them only to have their account recovered later, but the main problem… we just don’t know.
The above disabled account message is accompanied by a link to Facebook® Help addressing “Why was my account disabled?” and a few other seemingly common user questions. If you believe your account was disabled accidentally, the option is offered to email Facebook®. However, there are a few problems that the scenario presents:
1) If in fact the user had done something wrong, no advance warning is provided – the plug is literally yanked from the wall leaving the user powerless.
2) No specific reason is provided to the user. They have no idea what they’ve done wrong, so how could they possibly address the issue and rectify it?
3) If you send an email to appeal, the user has no idea how long it will take before the network representative gets back to you. Historically social networks themselves have not necessarily been known for their prompt customer service, although ironically, many businesses now utilize these platforms as a method to improve customer service and increase customer response time. Please note: We always try to remember that social networking has grown incredibly fast, have struggled to find revenue, and manage their rapid growth. While many may criticize the various networks, they have continued to strive toward improving the functionality for everyone.
So now what? If your business relies on the social web, what do you do? Do you wait for a response with complete uncertainty as to the length of time this might take?
Virtually Ready takes the web seriously and we pride ourselves in provided basic knowledge to others who simply do not understand fully how the social networks actually work, especially when it comes to business. This situation has put Virtually Ready in a very difficult position as we are a web presence solution company – the business simply cannot sit back and wait for a response. Every minute that we cannot utilize the tools that our business utilizes regularly potentially hurts our business. We fully understand “glitches” and “network difficulties”, but if that’s the case, we would very much like to know right away.
“It is no disgrace to start all over. It is usually an opportunity.” – George Matthew Adams
Virtually Ready does like to look on the bright side of things, and would like to utilize this opportunity to help other business owners or representatives avoid the possibility of this happening to them, so we will provide some tips that will hopefully help others avoid being “unplugged” in the future.
Developing a Business Presence on Facebook®:
If you have a business and you want to “put it on Facebook”, DO NOT simply use a personal profile to do this. Please Please Please note the difference between a Personal Profile and a Fan Page – though they look very similar, they are not the same. To create a professional web presence for your business on Facebook®, you should be sure to do the following:
1) Create a FAN PAGE for your business. http://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php – NOT a Personal Profile. If you already have a Personal Profile, you will become the main administrator for the Fan Page by default. If you do not have a Personal Profile, you will be asked to create one.
2) If you don’t already have a Personal Profile, you will be asked to do so as stated above – or you can do so prior to creating your Fan Page at Facebook.com. When you set up your account, make sure to adjust your privacy settings immediately to reflect your personal comfort level. These settings are for your personal profile only, not for the Fan Page, which is created for business and is public. If / when you have a personal profile, set-up, DO NOT create a Fan Page for someone who doesn’t have a profile, as it seems this automatically designates you as the main admin and you cannot be removed.
3) Assign a back-up administrator for your Fan Page. Should you be the sole administrator and your account is disabled, your Fan Page COULD BE LOST as a result as well – this was the case with Virtually Ready’s Fan Page…. gone. We had developed a decent fan base, and are unhappy with the loss. Now we have to rebuild from the ground, up. We would thoroughly appreciate it if you would Become a Fan of our new Page and invite your friends as well. Thankfully, no client pages were effected since they all have more than one admin assigned.
Facebook® does not tread lightly on people who use Personal Profiles as a sole purpose of building a business – this is something we have always conveyed to our clients, so be sure to keep the two separate – See Facebook’s Terms of Service for details. A few tips:
1) Do not use your business logo in your Personal Profile photo.
2) Do not use your Personal Profile for the sole purpose of promoting your business.
3) Though it can be very tricky, keep your business and personal as separate as possible. We’re not exactly sure where the lines are drawn here, unless you’re very blatant in constant promotion and little else.
We thoroughly appreciate the opportunity to provide professional web presence solutions for other businesses; we look forward to continuing to do so.
______________________
Virtually Ready, Inc. – “Extend Your Reach”
Professional Web Presence Solutions for Business
www.virtuallyready.com
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[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Virtually Ready, Alltop. Alltop said: Disconnected – Has Your Facebook Account Been Unplugged? http://bit.ly/6zXICv [...]
See Related Article from Mari Smith, written in 2008:
Facebook Account Deactivation – Can It Be Avoided? http://whyfacebook.com/2008/12/22/facebook-account-deactivation-can-it-be-avoided/
Lisa, thank-you for your informative article. I have not been disabled by Facebook but a number of my friends have. They all said they were suddenly dropped by Facebook and given no reason. I constantly worry that this will happen to me because I have a lot of friends and think I’ll suddenly get dropped for accidentally going over the friends number. I realize this isn’t the only reason they will disable accounts but it is one of them.
I have received warnings when I first started Facebook about 3 years ago about having too many friends and to stop asking people to be my friend. I did stop and then suddenly people started asking me.
I’ve noticed the new trend seems to be people who take all off their friends from their profile page and move them over to their fan page so they can have more than 5,000 friends since a fan page allows you to have as many friends as you want.
Thank-you for posting the problem, and giving a solution to the problem. Great work Lisa!
That’s right, Susan!
On all fan pages there is an option to “suggest to friends” under the main photo on each fan page. You can invite your friends to become a fan of your own page. The friends that you select will then receive a fan page suggestion notification.
The “share button” is a bit less obvious option that you can also use to help spread the word about your fan page. The button is located all the way at the bottom left corner of any fan page and provides the option to share your fan page link on your personal profile wall – or – send the link to a friend via facebook email that will arrive in their facebook inbox.
Note that these internal promotion options are only available for you to share with your existing friend connections. It is a great boost to a fan page when friends & fans suggest and share your page with their friends as well!
Related Article: Five Notable Facebook Limitation Facts – http://www.virtuallyready.com/five-notable-facebook-limitations-facts/
Related Article: 10 Factors of a Facebook Page – http://www.virtuallyready.com/10-factors-of-a-facebook-page/
[...] we reported an unfortunate experience where we were inadvertently disconnected on Facebook and lost our Fan [...]
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the qute from Gerorge Matthew Adams is first-rate