You have to have a personal profile to have a business page. You don't have to show who is the administrator of your page which will link you to your personal profile but I suggest that if you chose to use Facebook as a marketing strategy, you should show to your fans the person behind the page. The best way to split the personal and business is to create lists on your personal profile so that you can chose who will see what you publish on your personal profile.

From my own experience, it is really difficult to build up fans if you're not building relationships on your personal profile first and then inviting them to like your page. Facebook is not making it very easy to invite people to like your page anymore so you have to be very creative.

By the way, you can have several pages and administer other pages as well.

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Genevieve Lachance
VA Simple Services

I keep my privacy setting about as tight as you can get them on my personal FB profile. So even though I show myself as administrator of my FB business page there is still basically no connection between the two. I like to keep as much distance between the two as possible and it's pretty easy to do.

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Pam Deyerle - Transcriptionist in the Richmond, Virginia area
The Perfect Word Transcription Services

I like the idea of keeping them seperate too and agree with setting privacy settings!

Thanks for all the good information. I have been wanting to create a business page so this is very helpful.

Another way that many businesses are setting up their fb accounts is by setting the business itself up as a personal page, no link back to your personal page. It makes it a little easier to communicate doing it this way it think.

Well, my problem with my personal page and my business is...if I go to a website or someone's VA blog (not a fb page) and I want to "like" or share something. It "likes" it as Caroline Mills and not LC Mills, Inc. How can I keep it as using LC Mills, Inc.?

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L. Caroline Mills of LC Mills, Inc.
www.lcmillsinc.com

Caroline, you just need to change your settings. Login to FB and click on Account at the top right. In the dropdown list, it will give you the option to Use Facebook as Page. Click on that and it will open up a window with a list of all pages you admin. Click on the one you want and you are good to go! Remember----you will need to change it back if you want to use FB as your personal profile.

Gladys

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Gladys Strickland
GS Business Resources

Businesses may set up their page as a personal profile but they are violating Terms of Use on Facebook and risk having their account suspended. Personal profiles are for individuals only; Fan pages are specifically for businesses (or artists/public figures); many don't realize this until it's too late. Also, setting up a "pet" as a profile may violate Terms of Use too. Another underutilized option on Facebook is to create a "Group" page that anyone can join.

Gladys- Thanks so much. I'll try set it up and try it out asap. It's been driving me crazy. LOL!

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L. Caroline Mills of LC Mills, Inc.
www.lcmillsinc.com

Gladys,

I think I did for a client and it was added to her personal profile as soon as she logs in. You didn't get a chance to change your settings to the FB business page.

I'll have to try it again to see if FB changed the way it's done now.