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Posted By WebAdvantage.net on Nov 4th, 2010
Facebook, the social network with more than 500 million active users, has positioned itself as an essential part of many brands’ and businesses’ social media marketing strategies. Yet for many companies, the process of creating and maintaining a Facebook presence remains something of a hassle—and it’s through no fault of their own.
Official Pages (formerly called “Fan Pages”) are the primary means of creating a brand or business presence on Facebook. But the process isn’t as straightforward as you might think, and there are a number of quirky, limiting, and downright weird issues that create hurdles for businesses trying to establish themselves. And unfortunately, Facebook’s official support for these issues is practically nonexistent.
For a huge social network that prides itself on the ease and simplicity by which it helps us connect, it’s somewhat laughable that Facebook’s Official Pages are still a source of confusion for so many. Whether your brand or business is already on Facebook, or if you’re considering setting up a Facebook presence for the very first time, here are five potential headache-inducing problems you need to be aware of:
In addition to Official Pages, Facebook also has something called “Community Pages” that are a huge source of frustration to most businesses that encounter them. Community pages are unofficial pages created by users in support of topics or causes they care about. Any Facebook user has the ability to start a Community Page on any topic. If the Community Page becomes popular enough, Facebook will give ownership of the page “to the community,” meaning that everyone in the community would then have the ability to edit and update the page (similar to a Wikipedia article). At least, that’s the intended purpose of Community Pages.
In reality, Community Pages are cropping up everywhere that directly compete with Official Pages for brands and businesses, and are often difficult to differentiate. They can even have the same name as your Official Page! (Here’s an example for Toys “R” Us: check out their Official Page vs. this unofficial Community Page.) To make matters worse, Community Pages are sometimes auto-generated by Facebook and populated with Wikipedia content and Related Global Posts from Facebook users (see #2, below). They also cannot be edited or deleted, even if you become part of the page’s community. Here is an excellent post from BlueGlass that explains the intricacies of Community Pages and suggests some steps you can take to protect your brand.
As we mentioned above, Facebook’s Community Pages are automatically populated with Related Global Posts. Related 
Global Posts are essentially unfiltered, unmoderated status updates posted by Facebook users that mention the name or topic of the Community Page. Using the Toys “R” Us example again, any time any Facebook user mentions “Toys R Us” within a Wall Post or status update, it will automatically appear on the unofficial Toys “R” Us Community Page.
In other words, they’re a potential PR nightmare for your brand. It is very likely that your brand is being actively discussed (either favorably or unfavorably) on a Community page that you cannot respond to and have zero control over. And because Community Pages often closely resemble Official Pages, it’s also very likely that visitors are mistaking these types of mentions for official communications. Companies who are concerned about reputation management on Facebook, beware!
If you have created an Official Page for your brand or business, you can optionally claim a branded Facebook URL (also known as a vanity URL) for your page. For example, ours is http://www.facebook.com/WebAdvantage. Facebook calls these custom URLs “Usernames” and they’re a lot neater, more memorable, and more marketable than the ugly, lengthy URL that is assigned to your page by default. However, Facebook requires that you first acquire 25 “Likes” for your Official Page before you will be eligible for a Username.
By the time you’ve gone through the Official Page creation process, populated it with some company information, and reached out to your fans to get enough Likes, there’s a very real possibility that your desired Username could already be taken. Of course, as with web domains, Twitter, and other social media sites, there’s a lot of name squatting going on, too. There is also a small possibility that your desired username might match or contain parts of a username that Facebook has placed on reserve, rendering it unavailable to you. If you find yourself in one of these situations, there is a username request form you can submit to attempt to reclaim your Username, however, it’s worth noting that Facebook clearly states there are no guarantees.
Once an Official Page is created, it is virtually impossible to modify its basic settings such as the name/title and category. Furthermore, Facebook does not provide much warning about this during the Official Page creation process, so it’s something you need to be aware of going in. This might not seem like such a big deal at first. But let’s suppose you’ve built up your Facebook presence and have acquired tons of fans; then your company merges, re-brands, or has to change its name for any reason. Currently, the only solution is to delete your Official Page (losing everything, including fans) and start all over from scratch with a new page name/title.
The inability to modify categories is also a wrench. At first glance, categories seem inconsequential. But most businesses don’t realize that their choice of category also controls which fields are available to them. Different categories provide different fields of information, many of which are very limiting. Before you set up your page, we’d recommend doing a little research to ensure you choose a category that is most appropriate for your brand or business and provides the most flexibility with fields. Though not a guaranteed solution, Facebook recently instituted this Request for Page Category Review form, which you might have success with.
Currently, Facebook does not provide a way to change ownership of an Official Page. This has serious implications for brands and businesses that have a need to transfer ownership of their Facebook pages for any reason, for example, when someone leaves the company. Although Facebook does give us the ability to assign as many Administrators as we like to a page, it’s the page’s Owner—the original creator—who has full control. This is why we stress that Facebook pages should be created and “owned” by someone very reliable within a company, such as a business owner or CEO. The Owner can always assign administrators to manage the page.
Want to learn even more about social media marketing? The Marketing With Social Media: An Hour a Day collection is now for sale on Amazon and includes:
-Mark Brownlow
Pragmatic, professional advice with no hidden agenda.
Internet Business Forum
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