When delivering Facebook training there’s often one question that crops up.
‘How do I persuade someone that it’s okay to use their Facebook profile as an admin of the corporate Facebook page.’
In other words, I really don’t want my locked-down Facebook profile with my holiday pics anywhere near that page where people shout.
When you stop and think about it, it’s a really good question.
Good news is there’s a series of answers to reassure people that they won’t be inundated with messages from angry people when they clock off and go home.
But wider than that, there’s a few things for you to think about if you’re looking after one page or a series of pages.
For my money, I’m convinced that people should use Facebook Business Manager if they’re thinking Facebook pages. This is a Facebook platform that’s free and makes it easy to look after multiple pages and grant multiple people multiple levels of access. You can create content as well as Facebook ads if you have the right permission.
Q: ‘Why can’t we have a shared work log-in?’
I’ve blogged on this before but in summary, it’s a bad idea. In the past, the shared Facebook profile was often used to collectively by a team to log on. That shared ‘Kevin Comms’ profile that had three friends and would log on at 9am and off again at 5pm. It wouldn’t talk about Strictly and wouldn’t share pics. The bad news is that they’re against Facebook’s terms of service.
Not only does Facebook consider them fake but the algorithm is hunting them down. There’s a strong chance they’ll get deleted without warning. Facebook has deleted three billion accounts in six months. So, if a fake account is the only way to reach your page you risk losing your page. Which is awkward.
Besides, this is almost certainly against your IT policies.
Double whammy.
A: Because it’s against Facebook’s terms and conditions, there’s a good chance it’ll get deleted and we’ll be locked out of our page.
Q: ‘I don’t want people to see that I work for the council or am posting onto the Facebook page.’
Good news. Being an admin for a page means that the internet doesn’t know you are admin unless you publicly tell people. Other admin know. They can see your profile if the profile has been added. They can also see which of you have added that post. But unless you’re connected on Facebook they won’t be able to click through to browse your holiday pics if they’re locked down.
A: The only people who can see who is admin are other admin.
Q: ‘I don’t even want to use my Facebook profile at all.’
It you find someone who is dead against connecting their personal Facebook profile to a page don’t worry. There’s a way round that. If your organisation uses Facebook Business Manager you can add someone using just an email address. However, you do need at least one person to link their Facebook profile to the Business Manager. Preferably, you need more than one if that person leaves or gets run over by a speeding truck.
A: That’s fine. We can just add your email to Facebook Business Manager and you can access it that way.
[EDIT: I’m testing this out as it seems Facebook asks you at the end of the process to validate yourself with your Facebook profile but doesn’t make this clear.]
Q: I’m not sure I trust <insert person’s name> with all the amazing powers a Facebook page has to offer.
Again, this is a reasonable concern. The FA have a ‘fit and proper person’ test if someone wants to be a director of a football club. The idea is great. In practice, all sorts of questionable characters have been allowed into boardrooms. So, have a think about what your test looks like and who will vouch for them. If you do add someone think of the level of access you’d like to grant them.
Adding admin via Facebook Business Manager
Every time you add someone to Facebook Business Manager you can make them either an ’employee’ or an ‘admin.’
Employee status = allows you to see the settings and be assigned to a page.
Admin status = allows the person to add and remove employees, manage employee permissions, add pages to the Business Manager or add ad accounts that will create adverts.
Adding admin via the Facebook page direct
If you don’t use Facebook Business Manager but use the pages’ own admin direct you’ve a few more options. The full explainer is here and the table you need is here:
A: There’s two ways you can manage what people can do once you give them access to a page.
Q: ‘I don’t have a Facebook profile. Can I be an admin?’
Technically, you probably could be if you are added by email address through the person running Facebook Manager. But I’m really not sold on this. If you’ve got no experience of using the telephone or refuse to use it in your own time would you give someone a job in the contact centre? Probably not.
A: Technically, yes. But I’ve never seen this done successfully.
Q: ‘But what happens when an admin leaves?’
Anecdotally, I’ve heard of horror stories of pages disappearing and former colleagues going to ground. That’s the exception rather than the rule but the fact that it has happened is enough to make you think about future proofing your page. Again, this is where Facebook Business Manager comes into its own because if you have oversight of a series of pages you can do this simply.
The mechanics of deleting access to a page is pretty straight forward if you have Business Manager than if you don’t.
If you’re managing social media across multiple pages you need to think about what happens when people leave and people start. You’ll find people coming and going every month and you’ll need to build a process when either HR or the team on the ground tell you when people have moved on.
A: You need to build a process to delete old admin and add new ones. This needs to have some central oversight.
You can find out more about the Facebook training I deliver with Sarah Lay here. Or drop me an email dan@danslee.co.uk.
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