As Facebook approaches the 700 million user mark, it’s easy to take for granted that pretty much everybody you know is a member of the social networking behemoth’s site.
Although the total number of Facebook users continues to climb, many people simply don’t want to have a profile on the site, whether because of concerns over privacy, information overload or their marriage-crippling Farmville addiction.
For brands, however, not maintaining a presence on Facebook can be damaging, if not downright suicidal. Some businesses may prefer that staffers avoid logging into their distraction-filled personal account to manage the brand’s Facebook presence. Fortunately, there is a way to set up a page for your brand without needing a personal profile.
1) Go to http://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php
2) Click “Local Business or Place”
3) Choose the category that best fits your business. Enter its name, location and phone number.
4) Check off “I agree to Facebook Pages Terms” and then click “Get Started”
5) On the next screen, select “I do not have a Facebook account” and enter your email address (which is hopefully not already associated with a Facebook account). Pick a password, enter your date of birth and squint trying to figure out the captcha. Then click “Sign Up Now!”
6) You’ll have to confirm your email address via an email Facebook sends to you. Do that. You now have a Facebook account with no personal profile.
7) Set up your brand’s page and be sure to optimize it for search engines.
NOTE: If you’re passing admin rights off to this account from another account (like your personal one), there are a few more steps. You should remove the old account from the page’s admin list, and then add the new account. You can set up a dummy business in steps 1-6 if the page already exists and you’re just transferring ownership. Just be sure to delete your fake business when you’re done.
To transfer ownership to the new account, first log out of it and into the old one. Go into the settings of the page you administer and go to “Manage Admins.” Enter the email address of the account you just set up and hit return, which will add the new account as an admin.
Once your new, profile-less account is set up as an admin for your brand’s page, you’ll be able to remove any unwanted admins. This also makes it easier to manage employee turnover moving forward.
