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On the left is my Sevilla Tapas Facebook page.
On the right is my Sevilla Tapas Facebook Fan page.
Can you tell the difference? No? Well, neither can I.
And I also have no idea about how to manage either of these pages. Seriously. I set up the Sevilla Tapas Facebook account because it’s supposed to be important for people trying to get their biz stuff “out there” using social media … then I saw that most businesses also had Fan Pages, so I got one of those. But I have no idea what the difference is between the two, and whether I should actually have two (or even one!) of these pages … and I especially don’t understand why I can’t access my f*cking Fan Page from my freakin FP Page. Or why I can’t dump the FP and just stick with the Fan Page. It’s both frustrating and infuriating.
So if there is anyone out there who can give me a basic explanation (please type slowly and clearly) about what the difference between these two types of pages is and how the hell I should be using them … well, that would be great.
Meanwhile, I am convinced that Facebook is a bad joke and is not worth my time or energy – and that the joke’s on me for continuing to try to make any sense of it. And I suspect that everyone else on Facebook feels the same but just doesn’t want to admit it.
casa azahar 
hey there, how are you? 🙂
okay, on to your fb dilemma. if sevilla tapas is a biz, better delete the fb page and keep the fb fan page. fb pages are meant for actual people while fan pages are for business or personalities who do have real fans. they look the same but has slightly different functions. for instance, when someone becomes a fan of sevilla tapas it will be published in his profile feed and also listed in his profile info. the last i checked, using a normal fb page for a biz might get that account suspended.
to access the fan page from your own personal fb account, you need to make yourself an admin. so make the ‘azahar’ fb account a fan of sevilla tapas. then at sevilla tapas fan page, find yourself as one of the fans and there’s a button that says ‘make admin’. click that and now you can access azahar and sevilla tapas from the azahar fb account.
basically just use the fan page like you would your own fb account. update the status, put some photos, invite your friends to be fans…
i set up the fb fan page account for the company i work for. 🙂 any other questions feel free to ask and i’ll answer if i know.
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Hey sulz, long time no see! 🙂
Really? Now you see, I thought you had to have a normal FB page first, in order to then have a Fan Page. Having both does seem redundant and the Fan Page is actually what I want. I wonder if I can meld them (transfer FB page posts over to the Fan Page in the same date line) because there are a lot of photo links there.
Also, I got the cool URL for the FB page (http://www.facebook.com/sevilla.tapas) and the Fan Page has ended up with a stupid URL with a whack of numbers in it. Can I swap them?
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you could manually copy and paste the posts from the fb page to the fb fan page but the timestamp won’t be the same of course. if you delete the fb page i would think that whatever photos/videos/etc you upload through that page will not be viewable anymore.
yeah i don’t know how to get a nice snappy url for the fan page too. instead of giving that long-winded url i’ve seen some companies write something like ‘look us up on Facebook by searching XXX’ or they would put an image of the fb search button (at the top right corner) with the company’s name in the search box, to mimic someone searching their fan page.
to complicate matters, there is another type of account called a group. and then there are events too! but you should just stick to fan page. you can pretty much do most things there and there’s also stats which may be useful for you.
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A lot of people get trapped on fb playing the silly games. I go on, read the updates of the people who update, keep my own updates active, and maybe see who’s on I might want to chat with. I update via twitter normally, but if you have comments on your updates, they get seen more. So, if you’re a business, with a fan page, update with a link or something, then comment on it, and it’s view-ability gets bumped up (or so it seems!).
Am I fan? I’ll go check!
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Since both my kids are on fb I use it to check where they were last Saturday night 😉
I use it for keeping in touch with old friends, and I like the photo album aspect. And scrabble. And bejewelled. I’m not so sure how you would best use as a business, though.
If I’m informed when some of my friends become a fan of something I guess that spreads the name.
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Well, these two biz FB pages are only used to promote Sevilla Tapas, so this isn’t a rant about FB per se (yeah I know, unusual for me 😉 ), but rather just trying to figure out the difference between a Page and a Fan Page.
If I click on Home on the Fan Page it takes me back to the FB Page, and then I can’t see how to get back to the Fan Page from there.
Can a Fan Page stand on its own? If so, how do I get rid of the other page without losing the content?
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Hi,
This is actually what I have been doing for clients since Friday…
It is a fan page that you want, because it is picked up by the search engines. Also, you dont client “fans” trying to “friend” your personal profile, since although you “own” the fan page, it is not linked to your personal profile.
The problem is that you cannot move over your group contacts to your fan page. You used to be able to, but no any more 😦 so that is why most people just stick with their group and/or create a fan page as well = double the work = meltdown.
The best thing is to just swallow the pill quickly, move over to the fan page, sooner rather than later, contact your group members to let them know about the fan page and then shut down the group page.
Hope that helps
Nicky @nicchick
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Hey, thanks Nicky.
Thing is, I don’t mind about moving my group contacts to my fan page – in my case they are more or less the same. But how do I de-activate my FB page and keep the Fan Page active?
And is that what I have at http://www.facebook.com/sevilla.tapas … a group page? I thought it was just a normal FB page, whatever that is.
The mind reels…
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By the time I actually get around to using FB and Twitter, I will have a pretty good handle on how to do it thanks you to and all your questions plus the answers people have been giving you on line!
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Sorry I can’t be much help to you regarding your facebook querries. I have long since shut down my facebook book account and will not look back. I’m not a fan of the new facebook & when they changed it, I decided to call it quits.
That’s a bummer about the dude who high-jacked your store’s website. I honestly don’t understand how people think. Good luck with facebook!!
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the only use of facebook is to stalk ex’s, IMHO. Or at least, that’s the only use I ever seem to come across on it.
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So last night my buddy Gaelen sent me a longish email with the title “Facebook, the sucking quicksand poos of all time” (heh) that included several links to tutorials for setting up Facebook … and that really does make me want to just chuck it all.
Seriously, if someone needs to hire someone like Nicky or wade through a whack of “How To Make A Facebook Fanpage” guides just to set up a half-assed social media page – and especially if that someone is ME (not to boast, but I’m usually the one showing other people how to set up blogs, etc) – then I say that Facebook totally fails at being “social”. Set ups for social media tools should be simple and intuitive, like they are with Twitter, Posterous, Friendfeed, etc. You shouldn’t need a freakin guidebook or tutorial to show you how to use the damn thing.
So I’m betting that most people out there with Fan Pages don’t know what the hell they are doing with them. Including me. So I may just drop the whole mess.
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i agree is FB is hard work! And (most) everyone gets it wrong by setting up the group instead of the fan page. Why? Because you have to do the oddest thing by logging out in order to set up the fan page? Bizarre course of action.
I have just spent ages trying to sort out my own personal FB privacy settings, delimiting what business contacts (and sometimes even family!) can see. I totally cocked it up. Everyone thought they had been blacklisted. Its a nightmare.
Honestly Shawn I would say perservere with it. Once you have manually migrated the contacts to the Fan Page you have to shut down the group.
As with everything in the Facebook cult err, sorry I mean site, it is impossible to leave or completely remove your online footprint. I think by removing the members, including yourself, the group shuts itself down since it doesnt have an administrator, but I am not 100% certain on that.
Keep me posted how you get on.
Nicky @nicchick
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Spending sooooo much time and energy on some shitbag social media service that I DON’T EVEN LIKE is what irks so much, Nicky.
I really think the joke is on us. Facebook has somehow managed to make people believe it is something important and necessary. Their privacy policies also stink.
I think I may just leave a Facebook front page telling people where else they can find Sevilla Tapas.
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I sent the guides.
I only really read the stuff on Rhys’s blog. 😉
There IS supposed to be a way to get yourself a cool short URL for the fan page, like you have for the group page, but I can’t find that link.
And as I titled my email, I also most days consider facebook a #fail. It’s intuitive only in comparison to the original no-hard-drive two-floppy-diskettes PCs of the 80s. Or Russian grammar. Or pharma research (I can say that, I work in pharma research!)
So sorry the guides were overwhelming, Shawn.
BTW, I owe you bigtime for nudging me into Twitter almost a year ago, and then nudging me into WordPress.
Filed my business papers yesterday. 😉
Good luck with the store-site building!
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Oh, don’t get me wrong, Gaelen. I really appreciated you sending me the links to the various guides and tutorials, but it was this that made me realise we are all being had.
Maybe Facebook worked well when it was what it was set up for – a place for college kids and adolescents to hook up and hang out. But they are clearly not up to the job of being a serious social media client.
I think I am going to use one of those tutorials to set up a Facebook Fan Page Front Page that directs people elsewhere. Either that or I will just continue to let my FB pages run as link dumps from Twitter and Posterous, which takes no further effort on my part.
I am done!
ps
the store-site building is going great!
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