gretchen says

I love social media, and I love connecting with business on social media. However, there are way too many businesses who are operating under a Facebook profile, and not a Facebook page. Generally, my thought is “well, they just don’t know better,” and I sigh, loudly, and move on, because I won’t friend a business. 

But, the internet is real life! It sure is. And just as I don’t invite door-to-door salesman into my home, I won’t invite a business into my Facebook. I don’t have anything to hide, but it makes me question their motives. After a recent conversation where I learned that, actually, there are several businesses that prefer the profile, just to have access to their client’s pages, I’m even more committed to trying to right these wrongs.

Firstly, it’s against Facebook policy to represent a business or organization via a profile. No, really, it is.  There’s even a way for an average user to report it, over on the left of their profile, scroll down to “Report/Block this Person” and a menu comes up. Choose: “This profile is pretending to be someone or is fake,” and then “Represents a Business or an Organization.”

Or, if you are realizing that you yourself are committing this faux pas, you can easily roll your business profile to a Facebook Page following these steps:

Convert your Facebook profile to a page

Or let’s try it the nice way. Fill out this form and let businesses know WHY this is bad, and why this isn’t winning them any friends. I can think of a half dozen businesses that I’d love to see in my news feed, but I won’t make them my friend. Are you in the same boat? Let them know. I’d love to email the businesses doing this with the instructions above, and solid reasons as to why it isn’t working for the rest of us when they operate this way. 

Loading…