creating a facebook PAGE

After a few months on facebook, I realized a facebook PAGE would be a better fit for me than a PROFILE. What’s the difference? In a nutshell, profiles are for people and fun, pages are for businesses and work. Check out the following excerpt from the facebook terms of use:

“Pages are special profiles that may only be used to promote a business or other commercial, political, or charitable organization or endeavor (including non-profit organizations, political campaigns, bands, and celebrities).”

You put anything about your business on your facebook profile wall and you run the risk of having your facebook account suspended. It’s a violation of facebook terms of use. (more terms of use excerpts)

“You will not use your personal profile for your own commercial gain . . .”

and

“If you violate the letter or spirit of this Statement . . . we can stop providing all or part of Facebook to you. We will notify you by email or at the next time you attempt to access your account.”

I’ve read about such “notification.” The person logged in to facebook to discover his account was removed. All friend contact info gone. Everything gone. Bummer.

I also liked the fact that I could keep my page activity separate from my profile activity: (yet another terms of use excerpt)

“Please keep in mind that the fans of any of the Pages you administer will not have visibility or access to your personal account or profile.”

So I set out to create a facebook page. Logged into my facebook account, I couldn’t find anything to click on to create a page. Nuthin. However, logged OUT of facebook, the link is smack on the login page and somehow completely escaped my attention: (click to zoom in)

If you want a link to get to the “create a page” page (pictured below) regardless of whether you’re logged in or not, type in:

“http://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php target=”blank””

You’ll be faced with three options for the type of page you want to create. Don’t stress about this. The bottom line is that, depending on what you choose here, facebook will prompt you for different info, which you can fill in or not. Note that you currently CANNOT change the type later. To change your page type, you will have to delete it and create another one. Just don’t put a lot of time or effort in until you know what type of page you want to stick with. Until you make a final decision, you may want to put a check in the box marked “Do not make Page publicly visible at this time. (You will be able to edit and publish later.)”

The type of page you choose here will also automatically include certain common facebook apps for that type. However, your use of different facebook apps isn’t limited by the type of page you create. You can add any app you want later. The type of page just automatically adds some based on the most common apps used for a particular type of page.

After you’ve created your page, you will be faced with an option to link your page with twitter. (again, click to zoom in)

If you choose to link your facebook page to your twitter account, your facebook page updates will automatically tweet the first 140 characters of the update – including a shortlink back to the update so your followers can read the entire thing – and possibly become a fan of your page.

Last but not least, become a fan of your own page. It makes getting to your page from your facebook profile quick and easy. At your facebook profile page, click the “Info” tab and scroll down to the bottom. There’s your page! Click on it to continue customizing and adding content any time you want. You can also go to your page directly by typing in the URL, but until you get 25 fans of your page, you get a weird URL with a bunch of numbers at the end:

“http://www.facebook.com/pages/Pragmatic-Computing/102258476476825?”

Once you get your 25 fans, you can request what’s sometimes referred to as a “vanity URL” and you can ditch the giant number at the end of your URL. (CLICK HERE for a post on how to request a vanity URL)

So what are you waiting for? Go make your facebook page! (And watch for more posts from Pragmatic Computing as I blog my way through my facebook page learning curve.)