Let me know if this sounds familiar to you… Years ago, you had an employee create a Facebook Page and may be even an Instagram page for your venue. Now, a marketing agency is requesting access to manage your Facebook Page to post on your behalf, or a new digital savvy Marketing Manager has come on board.
The requests to manage the Page are being sent to the “Page Owner,” but for some reason, no one in your venue is receiving the requests. On top of this, you now discover that you don’t have high enough permissions to grant the agency or new Marketing Manager access to manage your page at all?!
All too late, you realise that your venue pages are “owned” by the ex-employee who created them all those years ago and is long gone! Now, you must deal with the headache of regaining ownership of your company’s Facebook and Instagram pages to give your new team access!
This is a far too familiar story for me at the moment, just this week another business who has lost access to their page got in touch with me. They sadly cannot get it back and now the disgruntled ex-employee (who was unceremoniously removed from the business for less than appropriate work practices) is the owner of their page, and is ignoring all requests (or simply not receiving on an old email address) for ownership transfer, leaving the business with some unpleasant choices;
- Continue trying to get in touch with the previous employee who owns the page, possibly considering legal action to gain a response,
- Spend weeks or possibly months trying to request ownership with Facebook concierge, a long and painful exercise, but doable, or
- Start all over again and lose their 6,547 page followers on Facebook and 2,598 followers on Instagram!
Option 3 is the very last scenario you want to engage in, as even though you can start again, someone out there has control over a page that has your branding, your credibility, and the high level of trust that your followers have in your brand. Are you willing to sacrifice that? Will you be comfortable with someone else posting content to your brand page? More concerning, what legal ramifications could this have on your organisation if the page owner turns nasty?
Why Is It So Important That You Own Your Company’s Social Media Accounts?
Usually, pages and business accounts on social media platforms have a variety of assigned user roles. These “Page Roles” have differing levels of access to manage the page. The most powerful of these roles is the “Page Owner.”
The owner of the page has full control over every aspect of the page including granting access to other users to manage the page, publish and make changes to or even delete the page. Whoever first creates your Facebook page or Business Manager is automatically set as the “owner” of the account.
Problems can arise when a company no longer has communication with this person. In the marketing world, we see this all the time when a company decides to bring in an agency to help run its social media accounts or a new employee or manager starts. The agency or new manager tries to get access to the Facebook Page, but the “owner” of the page isn’t available (or is unwilling) to grant access.
Who Should the Owners of Your Facebook Page be?
The owner of your Facebook Page should be set to a permanent member of your company (i.e. the owner of the business, senior management, a board member, or similar). This will link the Page or Business Account to that person’s personal Facebook profile.
Facebook (now Meta) requires a business Page to link to a personal profile to ensure bots are not creating spam accounts, and Pages are linked to a real person. While the business Facebook Page will need a personal Facebook profile to create the page initially, once other Admins are added to the Page, their personal login information or profile will not be shared publicly or linked otherwise.
FYI – Now is the time to think ahead! If your Facebook Page or Business Manager is currently owned by a low-level employee, you should be transferring ownership NOW, before that employee leaves. Transferring ownership is a much simpler process when both parties are involved.
How Do You Know Who the Owner of Your Facebook Page is?
There are now two types of Facebook Pages: “Classic Pages” and “New Page Experience.”
For Classic Pages, the easiest way to find out the “owner” of your Facebook Page is by navigating to “Page Roles.” This is found under “Page Settings.” Here, you can see every user with permissions to manage your Page. If your Page is linked to a Business Manager, you will also see that listed.
If your Page has been created more recently, your Page may be within Meta’s new update: the “New Pages Experience.” In this case, navigate to your profile picture in the top right corner, then click on “Settings & privacy.” From here, you can find “New Pages Experience” that will show you people given “Facebook access” (full control of your Page), “Task access” (partial control of your Page), and “Business accounts with access” (such as agency partners through Business Manager).
As you can see, it’s very important that any venue has complete access to their company’s social media pages. To ensure this, a key stakeholder should be set as “owner” on every one of their social media accounts and pages. When used correctly, social media can be an incredible tool to grow your business. Set yourself up for success from the start by resolving any ownership issues with your Facebook Page now!
Interested in securing your social media channels and having us help you take your venue’s social media presence to the next level? Contact me now to see how we can help grow your digital presence!
