Comments on: Facebook Small Business Success Stories

By: ginar

ginar — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 20:17:29 +0000

It’s possible to UNLINK now!

If you had previously created a FAKE Personal Profile with a business email address to create a Fan Page, but now want to change your Personal Profile to be a Business Account with the same business email, this is the how to for you!

Here are the steps if you want the administrator of your Facebook Page to be a business account as opposed to a personal profile. This might be a little crazy, but it really worked for me!

1. Create a fake email in Gmail or Yahoo, etc.
2. Login to your original Facebook Fan Page account. Click on ‘Account’ and then ‘Account Settings.’ Click on ‘Change’ next to the Email section to change/add emails.
3. Type in the email address of the FAKE email you just created in Step 1 and click ‘Add New Email.’ It should appear as a bubble under the Contact Emails now. If it doesn’t, just confirm the address with the link that gets emailed to you first and refresh the page.
4. Now change the main contact email of your page by clicking on the bubble next to the FAKE email and clicking ‘Change Contact Email.’
5. Now you must REMOVE your original email address so that it is not associated with any Facebook account. You’ll need this for later. Click the ‘Remove’ button next to your REAL email address.
6. Now logout of Facebook.
7. Go to http://www.facebook.com/pages/ and click on ‘Create a Page.’
8. Proceed to create a fake Fan Page. Name it whatever you want and click ‘Create official page’
9. Click the checkbox titled ‘I don’t have a Facebook account’ and input your REAL email address info. Before you were not able to do this because it was associated with the Personal Profile, but since we have removed it from there, we can! This will create your new Business Account under your REAL business email address.
10. Now logout. Re-login to Facebook using your original account (that is now under the fake email) that hosts the REAL fan page that you want to change.
11. Click on ‘Account’ > ‘Manage Pages’ and choose the Fan Page you want to fix.
12. Click on ‘Edit Page’ on the left hand module.
13. Scroll down and look for the Admins box on the right module. Click ‘Add.’
14. At the bottom of the box that pops up look to the last box title ‘Add Admins via Email.’ Type in the address of the REAL business email address that is now connected to the fake Fan Page.
15. Click ‘Add Admins.’ Facebook should send a confirmation email to your real email address.
16. Now login to your real email address (which is now linked to the business account). Click on the confirmation link within the email. This MAY take you to a page that asks you to create a profile page in order to access. DO NOT DO THIS! It will turn your Business account into a Personal Profile and you can’t take this back!
17. Simply Logout of Facebook completely.
18. Now RE-login to the business account using your real email address and password.
19. Facebook should open you up to a page that lists your REAL Fan Page (that you are now an admin of) as well as the FAKE Fan Page you created initially. Feel free to delete the fake Fan Page, since you don’t need this anymore.
20. Now click on the real Fan Page and go to the same Edit Page link that you did earlier.
21. Scroll down to the Admins box again. REMOVE the fake email address that you wanted to disassociate completely with the Fan Page. You can even delete this account totally.

Now you’ve done it! By a random turnaround of creating fake emails and fake pages, you’re able to trick Facebook into letting you switch users to a Business account!

Why all the huss and fuss? Because Facebook won’t allow you to create a business account for an email that already exists in the system. You have to do the turnaround so that only one email is associated with an account at a time. So you’re able to turn your personal profile page into a Business account. Tadaaa!

By: Jennifer

Jennifer — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 18:21:48 +0000

My husband owns a record store and uses Facebook quite frequently to let his customers know about new inventory, bands playing in the store, and special limited-release items that have just come in. He also has his status updates fed directly to Twitter through Facebook, so he can get time-sensitive information out to a large number of people very efficiently. He also mixes in pictures of in-store events and links to articles about the store. He spends a minimal amount on Facebook ads, which are an effective way to spend his limited advertising budget. For his business, Facebook has helped to build customer relationships with limited time and funding.

By: jtcobb

jtcobb — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 14:07:00 +0000

Stepheny – Thanks so much for commenting and contributing. Glad to hear you and your clients are having some success. I think discount/coupon strategies on Facebook can work particularly well for consumer products and services. I’m also starting to see a little bit more in the way of wholesale/B2B type success stories – still planning to write a post on one I know of, and of course it certainly makes sense that Facebook would work well in the case of your business. I hope, as you say, that others will chime in as you have. We are still in early days, but I know there have to be good stories out there to share! – Jeff

By: Stepheny Hinkle - Palabra PR

Stepheny Hinkle - Palabra PR — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 01:10:16 +0000

It may be too soon to see exact revenue a company picks up from Facebook, but I do believe it’s there. I own a public relations and social media management company in Albuquerque, NM called Palabra PR, and we build social media pages for small businesses in order to tap into a market they might have otherwise missed.

I know for my clients in particular, Facebook has been a huge revenue source. A cleaning company I manage offers a 10% discount to clients that add them to their Fan list, and have had new clients every week mentioning that they found them on Facebook. The laundromat I manage offers a free 10lb wash once a month, and discounts to university students. They have also had many new faces mentioning these promotions from Facebook. My business is the best example, because I get to showcase my FBML work, and in fact, 95% of my clients found me on Facebook.

I hope your article gets more responses because I think it’s a great topic, and in fact, I’m going to repost it to my facebook right now!

By: jtcobb

jtcobb — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 19:12:13 +0000

Kevin – Thanks for commenting. I hope to add a case study or two on Facebook to the mix in the next week or so, based on conversations with other businesses, but I am a little surprised not to have had more response on this post. Really, I think small businesses are struggling a a bit with how to get significant value out of Facebook, and I am not surprised to hear you are having more luck with Twitter. Given how you are using it/plan to use it, have you looked at http://foursquare.com/ at all? – Jeff

By: Kevin at Utah eBikes

Kevin at Utah eBikes — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 18:13:37 +0000

As a brand-new small business entrepreneur who is currently a one-man show, I’m thinking Facebook will be a big part of my future success. However, the lack of responses to this article is a bit worrisome! I do love the cupcake story, and I think those small promotions are excellent. As for myself, I am dealing with electric bicycles and don’t plan on giving any away to people who whisper a keyword (though for 100,000 fans I probably would!). My plan (and I’m really just barely getting started) will be to use FB (and Twitter) to let people know where I will be doing demo rides. Plus, I want to find people who are active networkers on FB and loan them bikes for a day or two so they can post pictures, write reviews, etc. So far I have actually found Twitter more useful.

By: jtcobb

jtcobb — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 22:30:29 +0000

Michael – Thanks for offering this example. Sounds like Facebook is a very good fit for what you do. – Jeff

By: Michael Jackson

Michael Jackson — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 05:22:55 +0000

As a global B2B conference speaker I ask my audiences to friend me (and refer conf leads) to me. I also dispense advice to them and save them in groups by business or country to tailor specific answers to them). I have received about twenty to thirty bookings directly from fb. I link the page I use to my blog and am gaining two or three new readers per day as a result. The blog is a new initiative but is already hitting 3000 page views and growing every day. I like to think of fb as ‘business electricity’; you need to be plugged in.