Facebook Name Issues – A Warning!

Don’t say I haven’t warned you!  As mentioned before, your Facebook name must reflect your actual name – and the Facebook police are moving in on offenders.

Don’t be caught out by this!

Yes, it’s true. Facebook have had enough of people pretending their businesses are people and are taking aggressive action.

And by aggressive I mean actions ranging from requesting you confirm your identity to them using official documents all the way through to just closing your account without warning!

And yes, if they close your account you lose EVERYTHING.

All messages, all friends, all information.

If you are using a proper business page for your business then you’ve nothing to fear.

If you’re using a personal account for your business, and called yourself something like ‘AmysAmazing Nails’ then Facebook are coming for you!

Why Facebook, Why?

The reason that Facebook is cracking down on this is fairly simple; in 2012 Facebook announced that there were 83 million fake Facebook accounts.

Wow!

They want to reduce this number and if they believe that the name on your profile doesn’t match that on your credit card, driving licence or student ID then you’re on their radar.

In addition to this, they also want businesses to be business pages, and not personal accounts.

Whilst you may be up in arms over this, don’t fear.

You should want your page to be a business page as it offers you lots of features to help grow your business.

What Is Allowed?

As you can see from the excerpt directly from Facebook below, they are clear about what is and what isn’t allowed.

The Facebook name policy is quite clear

Does your name fall within these parameters?

My bet is that at least some of you reading this won’t be complying currently.

Don’t get put on Facebook’s naughty step!

You should also pay close attention to the penultimate reason on the list; profiles are for individual use only.

Now this is one of the main gripes so many people have. Especially those who are self employed sole traders who effectively are the business. Well sadly that argument won’t hold with Facebook and as you’re trading on their patch then quite simply you have to abide by their rules.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

Simply put, it means that you need to start using Pages for your business.

However, there are plenty of good reasons why you should want to do this anyway, especially if you’re serious about growing your business and getting more clients (which I assume you are, given you’re reading this blog!).

– Increased Exposure To New Customers

People are out there right now searching for what you do. By having a proper business page you are increasing the likelihood of them finding you. You are not going to grow your business by posting a status once a week to 250 friends and then hoping they all book a treatment with you.

– More Professional Appearance

Simply by having a proper Facebook business page you’re giving the impression that you’re a professional outfit. It also gives the impression you’re serious about business and looking after your clients. It can also give the impression that you’re more than just a sole trader, something of some comfort possibly to some of your clients.

– Use of Facebook Insights

Want to know when your fans are online? Want to know where they live? When they are online? What your most successful posts are? How many people are engaging with your posts? What they have for lunch? (Okay, maybe not the last one). All of this and much, much more is available at your fingertips with Facebook Insights.

– More Traffic For Your Website

Posting links to your website will help gain extra clicks to your website. Special offers, blog post updates, news and any other business on your website should be linked to Facebook to help give your traffic a boost.

So there are plenty of good reasons to start using Facebook Pages if you don’t already.

If you’re not sure of how to set up a page then you can watch our video tutorial here.

However the overriding one really should be that if you don’t play by Facebook’s rules then they can and will shut you down. It’s happened to countless small businesses already, don’t let it happen to you.

Have you had a run in with the Facebook name police?   Let us know in the comments if you have!