A lot of salons starting out on Facebook create a ‘friends’ Facebook page and not a proper page that gets ‘likes’. As a Facebook trainer for salons, I get asked a lot of questions about why you should switch over and how.
Here’s my guide to switching over a personal page to a salon business page.
https://www.facebook.com/help/
If you get lost along the way on your switch over, you’ll catch me on emma.farrell@phorest.com. Enjoy!
Why Switch Over?
1. You can have more fans than friends!
While the amount of friends you have on your personal profile page is capped at 5,000, your business page can have an infinite number of fans!
2. Tagging Your Brand
Your fans and other business pages can tag your like page. Only your friends can tag your personal page. You want to show up on as many Newsfeeds as possible, so you definitely want the option to be tagged in photos and other posts.
3. Monitoring how you’re doing
Facebook Insights, or analytics are a fantastic way of tracking what you’re doing and if it’s working. You can track the amount of views a post receives and monitor your weekly reach.
4. It’s against the rules!
If you add a person as a friend on Facebook, you have access to information that a business page shouldn’t have. In the case of getting reported, Facebook may remove your page without warning as it’s against their terms and conditions.
5. Checking-in at Your Salon
Facebook Like pages allow people to ‘check in’ to your salon. What a great way to promote your brand with clients advertising ‘I’M HERE!’ all over their Newsfeed for friends to see.
How do I switch over?
Firstly, Download Your Profile Information
Make sure you do this before you even consider starting to migrate as not everything will get transferred in the migration. Your friends will change to Likes ( HALLELUJAH!!! ) and you will also keep your username and profile picture…..the rest I’m afraid will be lost. So make sure to download everything so you can upload again! And here’s how…
– Click the account menu at the top right of any Facebook page
– Choose Account Settings
– Click on “Download a copy of your Facebook data”
– Click Start My Archive
– Then, appoint a New Admin to Pages You Manage
– When your profile is converted to a Page, the “old you” disappears. So that means if you were the sole admin of any Pages, they will now be admin-less. YOU MUST DO THIS BEFORE MIGRATION!
Convert Your Personal Facebook Profile to a Business Page
It’s time for the moment of truth….. here’s the Facebook link
https://www.facebook.com/pages/create
It’s not a million miles from setting up a personal page, and there are very clear instructions on what to do.
Merge Duplicate Pages
A dilemma a lot of salon owners have is that they have set up both a personal profile in their business name and an existing business Page;……so what now? Which one do I migrate and keep?! Panic stations!! Luckily Facebook will allow you to merge business Pages that represent the same thing. I know, how much easier to simply merge your Profile with the Page from the start? But you can’t.
So here is how to merge two existing, duplicate pages according to Facebook:
1. Go to the page with the most likes. This will be the one you’ll keep.
2. From the top of your page, click Edit Page
3. Select Update Info
4. From the left sidebar, select Resources.
5. Click the Merge duplicate Pages link. This link will only appear if you admin two Pages with similar names.
6. A dialogue will show pages you admin that qualify to be merged. Select the Page(s) you wish to merge. If you’re merging Pages with a location, they must have the same address information.
And there it is, the key differences between the page options and why you really should migrate to a like page. Remember Facebook will continue to change and diversity between the page options will only grow…
As always we are on hand to offer support in any way we can, and I will keep my ear to the ground for further changes, so watch this space!
Emma works in the training department of Phorest and specialises in Facebook, online and app training. If you have questions for Emma about this post or online and social media in general, email emma.farrell@phorest.com or leave a comment below. Many thanks for reading!
