Facebook - how to separate personal and business life

Use your main FB account for personal usage and build fan pages for business. That's the best way to do both

create pages for your business from your personal profile. you then have full admin rights and that way you can automatically add 'fans' to your business page through your personal friends list

Same here. Create a fanpage for the business and do let me know as I like your product.

ok, thanks so much for the helpful advice.

I created a fan page for myself as a public figure. This will be the IM Sara Young (as opposed to the personal Sara Young)

Next question is - how do I like something as my business persona? Let's say I like a website. I want that to show up on my fan page and not my personal wall. How would I do that?

And AlwaysAwa - I'm sending you an PM.

You really do not have to though. I usually invite my friends to the products of my business and stuff. That way, I can get a bigger scope (they sometimes share it too!).

I just read an article about this not too long ago. It would be better for businesses to make fan pages instead. Not only is it more professional, it's also easier and less confusing to private individuals. Also, the number of people liking your page will also be good for marketing purposes.

Nice question and I am going to go with BuriedAlive's idea. I get confused all the time on people. Whether they are my clients or personal friends or im friends.

Hi Sara,


I believe BuriedAlive's description is correct.

You can have as many Fan pages as you like for your business ventures, events, etc... however you need a personal account to start them from and it appears that you are officially only allowed to have one of these accounts.

You may create an account for business only, however it appears that you should only do this if you don't already have a Facebook account.

Facebook considers your personal account as the one they will also do business with you from and they are more rigorously scrutinized. If you purchase anything from Facebook, like Facebook Ads, game credits, etc.. it will be done from your personal account.

If you run up a bill with them for something like Facebook Advertising, they don’t want you just opening another account and running up another bill (you may even get caught in the verification process).

This is an extract from the Facebook TOS

“Please be aware that managing multiple accounts is a serious violation of Facebook’s Terms of Use. If we determine that an individual has more than one account, we reserve the right to terminate all of their accounts”.

I don’t know anyone that has lost their account, but I know the pain it would cause me if I lost mine and the many fan pages attached to it. I always like to be cautious, because things are changing all the time and you don’t want to do something now that you will regret latter (maybe when you have a pile of fan pages).

If you have a personal account, go to the bottom of any Facebook page when logged in to Facebook and select Create a Page and follow the steps. It is very simple to setup, but a bit more challenging to customize if you want something that looks special.

Hope that helps.

Don't publicly like your page with your personal account. That will show up too.

create a business account with your business name

Building fan page is a way to go to separate your personal and business life, or even better: get a second facebook account for your only business.

I only use Facebook for friends and family, and use Linkedin and Skype for everyone else.

You can, as others have mentioned, use pages and become the acting member of that page instead of being yourself. This can allow you to connect with people through your page rather than your personal profile.

I'm not sure if you can like anything as your business or not, but you can definitely like stuff with the personal account ASSOCIATED with your fanpage. Not your real "personal" account, but the one you created to build your fanpage.

If you want to have a unique facebook page name url, btw, then you have to get 25+ likes in the first place. You can build that up using Fiverr or something else for $5 or cheaper. Having a unique URL there can help establish credibility and authority.

Sure they dont allow it.... I have several facebook accounts LOL.. I'm coming out with a huge facebook WSO next week.. Anyhow start a fan page import your business contacts over there because you can have unlimited pages so dedicate a page to business and a page to personal easy enough???

I honestly just have two accounts. I really do like them separate, I know exactly what you mean.

I think it's frustrating that they don't make it easier to have separate personal and professional profiles. The best advice on this page is to create a business profile, which I see you did.. Good Luck!

Here are some of the best practices you can follow:

- Use your personal profile for your personal stuff. If you have colleagues who you are also friends with, you can separate them into lists if you want to share specific things with them.
- Set up a business page for each business that has its own brand and which you want to build a following for.
- You can like other pages as your page by switching to the "use Facebook as page" setting under the little settings icon. However, those likes do not get counted as likes for the other pages. For the like to count, you have to do it while acting as your personal profile. Otherwise, it just shows up in your page as something you liked
- To get a vanity URL, you need to have 25 likes.
- You can't force your friends to like your page. At least, not as far as I know
- Personally, I would like my page as my personal profile unless it's something you don't want your friends to see
- you are only allowed to have one profile. Honestly, that's because this is a social network and part of having your business on Facebook is to show your personal side without actually sharing personal information. I agree that it can be a little tricky to control the separation.

Hope that answers most of the questions and I didn't miss one!

- Sharyn

Thank you all. I've been on the fence on even having a personal fb page. i don't want my family or friends having to deal with marketers trying to friend them.
I have a better understanding now and with a biz page I can keep things separate as it looks like the biz page admin does not show up to biz page visitors and i can be truly separate now.

I will say, use the privacy to separate what you share with your family and your work friends... do two different friends' lists and share with lists.

I believe that google+ solve this problem

You can run more than 1 account on facebook as long as you dont spam the hell out of them you will be fine.

I would personally create a seperate account or operate from an official facebook page for your business. It wont completely seperate the 2 areas but then again its going to be hard with a social networking site.

I know a lot of people who have 2 accounts. Many of them are teachers who want to keep their students from seeing them wasted on facebook.

You can use your personal page for personal things only.

For your business you can create a fan page. Every time you would like to be on Facebook for business purpose you can choose using it as page. There is a button on the top of your right hand site that says "Use facebook as page". If you do this every time you interact instead of your name it will display the name of your fan page.