Lollipop Local

My friend Shawn of Interactabel Social Media had a client who wanted to merge two Facebook Business Pages together but, after our rather arduous experiences of changing a Personal Profile to a Business Page, we were not very enthusiastic about even attempting the job – especially when a Google search revealed that many commentators specifically said it was impossible.

Remember the subtle difference there – you merge Facebook pages together but you Migrate a Personal Profile into a Business Page.

However, there was one report which shed some light on its feasibility – The Social Animal suggested that we authenticate the page first – linking it in Facebook’s eyes with the personal profile of an admin – and then attempt the merge.

And then this very easy solution from Just Ask Kim.

Why merge Facebook pages?

So, why do people even want to perform the merge of two pages?

1. It could be to merge an existing Facebook Business Page with a Facebook Places Page to take advantage of the check in activity.

2. Associates from the same company have set up two identical Facebook pages for the same product and the two need to be merged in order to stop confusing likers.

3. The Vanity URL has been mis-spelled and they want to put it right but Facebook rules preclude this. Therefore, the only thing they can do is to create a new page and try to merge the new with the old.

The transfer of fans from one business page to another is a tricky issue because it could so easily be open to misuse. As a result, Facebook have some very strict rules in place.

You have to be the admin of both pages.

If you are merging a Place and a Page, they have to have the same address – UPDATE: Make sure that you are in the Page which has the most information completed when you initiate the merge process as if you merge from the page with the least completed information, that is the info that you will keep. Only the likes and checkins will come over from the other page, not all the pictures and other information.

However, if you are merging two duplicate pages, you can only merge the less liked Page into the more liked Page. This means that, when you create your new Page, you have to grow it to more fans than the old one in order to effect the merge. The less liked page will then be removed from Facebook so an unmerge will not be possible.

If you are the admin of both pages, edit the page and select Resources from the left hand sidebar. If you fulfil all the criteria, you will be offered the Merge duplicate Pages option and given a list of pages that qualify.

Of course, with the mis-spelled URL, you can always attempt to contact the elusive FB support for Trademark issues and they *might* correct it for you.

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This entry was posted on Sunday, January 22nd, 2012 at 3:00 am and is filed under Facebook. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.