How To Migrate From Facebook Profile To Fan Page
Are you using Facebook to promote a business or a cause? Then you better make sure you’re using a Facebook Fan Page rather than a Facebook Profile. The good news is that Facebook allows you to easily migrate your personal profile into a fan page.
Many FB users have been active on the network for years without really knowing the difference between the two, so we’ll use this post to explain the distinction and to guide you through the steps of moving from profile to fan page.
Profile or Page? Which One Is Right for You
Personal profiles are meant for the social use of private people. Individuals use profiles to connect with other individuals, aka “Friends”.
Fan pages are different since they are run by organizations, businesses and public figures. Fan pages allow this type of users to communicate with private users who are interested in them, aka “Fans”.
Fan pages use the ‘Like’ option to gather their followers because they are not allowed to befriend personal users and send them personal messages. They can talk to their fans, but have a limited access to their personal data. These distinctions were intentionally created to differentiate the public and private spheres on Facebook. However, fan pages also have great benefits for businesses and organizations: they’re allowed to have limitless fans (personal profiles are restricted to 5,000 friends); can be redesigned to your own needs, and offer a wealth of analytics and stats. If you’re using Facebook to promote a service, a brand, a cause, a musical act or an institution, the best way is to choose Fan Pages. In fact, it’s the only way, since using personal profiles for these goals is a violation of FB’s terms.
How to Migrate from Profile to Page
Facebook makes it very easy for you to switch. Simply follow these steps:
- Download the personal information from your profile by following these instructions. This is important not only as a safety measure (in case something in process goes wrong), but also because FB transfers only parts of your data to the new page.
- If your personal profile is an admin of groups or other fan pages, you should appoint a new admin to them before you migrate. Otherwise they will be left adminless.
- Go to this link to start the migration process . Make sure you are logged into the correct account! You will be asked to specify the type of fan page you’re creating and then to edit the page information.
Once the switch is completed, all friends on your personal profile will become fans on your new page. Your photos will all be kept as well, and the login info remains the same.
Make Your New Fan Page Shine
Now that you’ve migrated, you’d want to make sure that your new fan page makes a real impact with your current fans and potential ones.
A personalized fan page offers a unique look for your business or organization. It allows you to communicate with your fans in a clearer and more appealing way and helps to increase Likes and engagement with your fans.
With WixPages, you can design a beautiful layout for your fan page. You have dozens of templates to choose from and numerous customization options. Check out these pages to see what we’re talking about:
15 Comments:
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I really like Wix, but what if I already have a page but still I want to migrate my profile to this exist page ?
November 25, 2011Thank you for this information. Question? Once I migrate my friends to fan page, will I still have access to my personal profile OR only be able to communicate via the fan page?
November 27, 2011Greate………..
December 3, 2011Great post! Can we insert a facebook ‘Like’ button into a wix website?
December 6, 2011Hi Christopher! Sure you can! You can read all about it on our support page here
December 6, 2011Really nice! ty ty ty…
December 6, 2011all my pictures and data were lost while trying to migrate,what can do about it
December 7, 2011thanks for all your advice, I love your website
December 8, 2011I know people have been using FB for a long time already to advertise their site and I also have some friends that do it, but probably never used it cause I couln’t understand well the concept how to use it in my advantage. Ty for this post, it kind of opened my eyes and am probably going to build a funpage soon :)
December 9, 2011Dear Zeljko! Happy to hear that, you’ve just made our day!
December 11, 2011Hey, after reading your post I did start my fan page on facebook at
http://www.facebook.com/pages/WebPocketGuide/113716888744725
Just the next day after I started it, I saw a FB post from one of my friends about FB going down next year…what do you think about that or do you have some additional or better information about that?
December 13, 2011what if i’m migrating a profile to a fan page that’s already been created (not a new one)? Does that migrate link still work? https://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php?migrate
February 8, 2012Hey Yana, Check out the Facebook help section about migrating from personal accounts to page – it will have the most updated info http://www.facebook.com/help?page=213602951994043
February 16, 2012Hey, you seem to know your stuff so…here goes – I have a profile page and have already created and had a fan page for some time now. Is there away to export (what I think is xml) and append it to the fanpage? It’s driving me crazy trying to maintain both.
April 18, 2012Hi Ryan,
Thanks for getting in touch! We know it’s possible to transfer a personal profile and switch to fan page, but can’t say exactly how you can export the profile data to an existing fan page. The Facbeook help section might give you a hand: http://www.facebook.com/help/
Cheers!
April 19, 2012