How to Change your Facebook Profile Page to a Business Page

There are three primary pages on Facebook: Your Profile, a Page for a business or artist or non-profit, and Groups. Your profile page is the base of your representation on Facebook and is required to create either of the other two types. Pages allow an unlimited number of people to follow you whether they are friends or not, while Profiles are limited to 5000 people.

You can convert your profile to a page, but you can only do it once.

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Facebook has made it easier to create a business page that leverages some of the value and assets from your Profile.

The story of a business creating a Profile, accumulating a large following of friends, and getting stuck once they realized they needed to update to a Facebook business page is all too common. Now it is easier to manage with a migration.

Here are the easy steps to migrate a Facebook profile to Facebook page:

1. First thing to do is backup your current profile.  This is VERY IMPORTANT!  Facebook will download all your wall posts, friends, pictures, events, profile info, etc. and zip it up into a large file.  The process takes Facebook about 1 hour to run, depending on the wealth of data you have stored on your Facebook account.  To run a backup, click on account -> settings -> download your information.
2. Once you have received an email from Facebook with your .zip file of stored information, follow this link to the main migration page.
3. Select your business type from the six possible options and fill out the short information prompts (company type, address, phone number) and hit “Get Started.”
4. You will then be directed to your new business page. You will notice that your profile image will be imported from your previous profile but your fan total will be listed as “0”.  Don’t worry, when you refresh your page, you will see the number quickly rise to your pre-existing fan/friend base.

The important thing to note is that hardly any of your prior information will be transferred over to the new business page.  Your wall will be blank, your information tab will be very bare, and you will not have any photos or albums.  This is where the Facebook backup comes into play. Simply reload your images and info (from the zip file) to the appropriate tabs. Your defined Facebook url (ex. www.Facebook.com/samplepage) will remain intact through the transfer, which is huge for businesses that may be linking to the Facebook page through existing paid online advertising campaigns, blog posts, websites,  etc.

Learn how Milestone can help you with your Facebook Page as part of an integrated omnichannel solution.

New Milestone whitepaper: Why Facebook Is Important for Marketing