Is FaceBook an effective tool for a business person? I believe it is, and it’s also a great way to connect with family and friends. One FaceBook account isn’t a great tool for doing both. My solution is to break my FaceBook account into two accounts. One is for Personal and one is for business.
In researching this I found a few people online, saying this is against the terms and conditions of FaceBook. I looked up the terms, and don’t find a reference to this being against the rules. You’ll find one statement that says, “You will not provide any false personal information on Facebook, or create an account for anyone other than yourself without permission.” I believe this is basically saying that you can create multiple accounts as long as they are all for you. This said, you need to make your own decisions and be aware that FaceBook could delete both/all accounts if you are found breaking the rules.
**** UPDATE ****
Alert reader, Brad Schrock, Beaverton Attorney, found where FaceBook specifically states that they see it as a violation of their terms to create multiple accounts. Here’s the link.
If they catch you doing this, they may take down both accounts. Also, I suppose they could blacklist you. I am betting on a more likely risk of losing the “duplicate” account, and I’m leaving mine up. If they take one or both down, I’m going to ask for clarification on what part of their terms they are talking about.
Put up a second FaceBook account at your own peril!
Another way to have a business presence separate from your personal, is to use pages. You can find much information online about pages, or if you’re subscribed to SocialNetworkingProfessor.com you can see how to set them up. These lack many of the connection tools that a normal account has, so I don’t find it to be as useful. I suggest you have one, but an account is good too.
Steps for creating a new FaceBook account, and adding people from my existing account to a new one.
Note: I chose to make my new account the personal one, because I have far fewer personal contacts as business ones. If the ratio was the other way around, I’d create a new profile for business. Additionally, I needed to use a new email address for this new account. If you don’t have multiple email addresses, you can create a free one at Gmail.com and you can even set up a “filter” on there to forward messages to your main email account.
Step 1: Create new account
Go to the home page of facebook. If you are logged in, logout and go to the home page again. You can create a new account directly from that page.
Step 2: Add Yourself as a Friend
From the home page, when you’re logged in, you can search for people to add as friends. Search for the name on your original profile and find your original profile. Click add friend.
Step 3: Log out of your new account and into your old one
(optional) Step 4: Create a friends list or lists and send a message
If you’d like to tell your friends that you’ll be requesting them to be friends from a new account, you can create a list or more. You click on Friends>All Friends>Create List at top and then select the people to be in the list. Put at most 20 in a list, so you’ll be able to email them. To email them, you click on inbox and then compose.
Step 5: Accept Friend Request and Suggest Friends
The whole reason we sent a send request from your new account to your old one, was so you could use your old account to suggest friends to the new one. When you accept the friend request, FaceBook will ask you if you’d like to suggest friends. This is where you can select the appropriate people who you want to add to your new account.
Step 6: Log out of your old account and into your new one
Step 7: Look at your Suggested Friends
Now you should have good suggestions. You need to click on see all, and send invites to all of the people you want to connect to this account.
Now you have your new FaceBook page setup and you are on the way to having the people connected to it.
Ready to learn more about FaceBook, Linkedin, and Twitter?
Take a look at SocialNetworkingProfessor.com