We work with countless politicians, businesses and non-profits that have started regular Facebook pages for their organizations. One of the major downsides to this is Facebook’s 5000 friend limit. I can’t count the number of elect officials alone I’ve come across with stagnant Facebook pages because they’ve reached this limit.
In addition to the 5000 friend limit, regular Facebook pages limit organizations because they don’t allow for custom Facebook apps or tabs, they don’t allow people to instantly access content and they don’t give organizations a way to mass message all of their Facebook supporters. The good news is that Facebook has created a simple way to convert your regular Facebook page into a fan page, keeping all of your “friends” as “likes” (which are unlimited) and giving you access to all of the benefits of a fan page.
Here are the directions from Facebook:
When you convert your personal account to a Facebook Page, we’ll transfer your current profile picture and add all your friends and subscribers as people who like your Page. We’ll also make your account’s username the Facebook web address for your Page.
No other content will be carried over to your new Page, so be sure to save any important content before beginning the conversion.
To avoid losing important content, we recommend taking these steps before you convert your personal account:
1. Download your profile (timeline) information. You can download a file that contains all of your sent and received messages and all of the photos and videos you’ve uploaded to Facebook.
2. Appoint a new group admin to any groups you manage. The account you’re converting will lose these admin rights during the conversion process.
When you’re ready to convert your maxed out page to a fan page simply click here and let Facebook walk you through the process.
Also, there’s no need to worry if you have an existing fan page because there’s a way to merge two pages.
