5 Ways Your Facebook Page Could Be Stolen From You

Facebook has proven itself to be one of the most powerful forces in online marketing.  But what if you spend hundreds of hours promoting, designing, and updating just to have it all taken away from you?

The administrator of your Facebook page is just a regular Facebook profile.  If that profile gets terminated, you could lose everything that you’ve worked so hard for.

Yes, it could happen to you.  Here are some things you should know.

1. Your administrative account could get banned by Facebook.  Facebook viruses are commonplace these days and they can show up overnight.  If at any time Facebook thinks that your Administrative account is spamming, even if it’s because of an error or a virus, your account could be terminated.
2. Facebook can terminate, or at the very least suspend an account if just one person claims that your administrator is harassing or contacting someone without permission.  Any unwanted communication, from someone commenting on a photo, to a simple friend request, could get an administrative account terminated.  The last thing you want is to be unable to make updates and changes to your Facebook page during an ad campaign or important event.
3. Let’s face it, bad things happen.  I’ve heard about business owner’s who lost access to vital advertising because the person managing it simply passed away.  Your administrator could be faced with death, disease, or disability and simply be unable to turn over administrative access to your business.
4. Your administrator could simply be upset with you.  Perhaps it’s a contractor dispute or an employee that has left their job or ultimately has been terminated for one reason or another.  You may not realize for some time that they control your brand, your advertising and all of that time and money you spent building up a fan base is now in their hands.
5. It could be something as simple as losing the password and being unable to access an outdated email address.  We hear about this all the time with domain names, and as time goes on it’s very likely to start occurring with Facebook pages.

At this point your Facebook page is unrecoverable.  Don’t expect Facebook to help you. With over 500 million users, there’s not much chance that you’ll get in touch with any support staff anytime soon.

Facebook doesn’t have an admin recovery tool.  In fact, it’s almost impossible to determine who the administrator of any particular Facebook page is.

For instance; just recently one of our clients had no idea who their admin was.  An employee was forward looking and had set up a Facebook page a couple of years back, but they never really did much with it at the time.

When it came time to actually use the site and reach out to all of the people who had clicked the “like” button, it took reading every post to get an idea of who the admin might be. The owner had to go back and ask former employees if they knew anything.

In the end, they were fortunate enough to recover the administration rights.  But it was a long and arduous task that nobody expected.

They could have lost their Facebook page forever!

You can prevent this loss by doing the following.

• Make sure that your administrators are trusted.  Any administrator can remove the administrative abilities of any other administrator.  This can be extremely dangerous if you put your trust in the wrong person.
• Make sure you have multiple administrators.  You are going to want people who are competent to keep their passwords secure, avoid viruses, and they should not be doing anything that could be considered spamming.
• Once you know who you can trust, be sure to make them administrators, and explain the importance of their role.  You could lose a great deal of business if your Facebook account gets shut down, so leave nothing to chance.
• Don’t assume that you can assign a dormant account as an administrator.  In many online communities, accounts that are dormant for longer than a few months are automatically deleted.
• Use your Facebook page!  It seems like many advertisers simply do not take the time to keep their Facebook pages up to date.  They’re busy and have not yet realized the amazing impact that a great Facebook page can be for them.
• Keep it up to date, add your events, and watch your business grow.  If you’re actually using your Facebook page on a daily basis, then the chances of forgetting about the administrative access and those who control it will be much less.

Finally…

If you haven’t gotten started with a Custom Facebook Page, then now is the time to start.

You can encourage people to share your business with their friends, write comments, subscribe to your email list, subscribe to your text message service and watch a video, all through a Custom Facebook Page.

Click here to find out more.

Tony Darrick Baker  

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