Claiming a Facebook Page

We all “like” pages on Facebook but not all of them are official pages. This can be a problem when setting up a page for your business. I hope to give you some useful pointers on how to resolve these problems! When planning to set up a fan page for your business or brand you may notice that fans have set up a number of fan pages impersonating the brand/business. This is a breach of Facebook’s terms and conditions. It happens for a variety of other reasons. For example, if someone checks into a place that doesn’t already have a page a new page is then created to represent the location.

The good news – If you are the official representative of a business, organisation or brand and someone has created a page, report it. If no one is managing the page, you can request to claim it. While you are reclaiming ownership/admin rights of the page, Facebook can also merge the fans of the other pages in one place if you ask nicely! 

You may be asking why would I want to do that… 

Think about it, if it's possible to gather fans of your target audience from the unofficial pages it already gets your official page off to a great start. Another scenario may be if you already have an official business/brand page but one of the unofficial pages has a higher number of fans that your page. This is a disadvantage to you, ranking your page at number 2 in search results. When searching people will naturally be drawn to the most popular page or page with the highest number of fans. In this situation you can again contact Facebook and ask them to merge the fans onto your official page. 

This process can be completed in a short period of time proving a number of rules and regulations that are in place. For example: 

• If the fan page has been set up as an “official page” it is possible to merge the fans as they are impersonating. If the page has a disclaimer saying it was set up by fans’ it is not possible.

• If the unofficial page is named after your business/brand’s name you have right to reclaim the fans. If the page is spelled differently or is not name exactly after your business/brand this is not possible.

I hope these pointers will come in useful to you and your business. If you have any doubts as to what you can and can’t do, the staff at Facebook will help guide you through the process!

That’s it for now,
John.