Multiple Personalities: Facebook Pages

Many Beyond The Defaults readers are also Facebook users, which means you’re hopefully following the Beyond The Defaults Facebook page. Pages are the way Facebook handles “non-personal” profiles – those for business, groups, clubs, school class sites and even things like BTD.

I won’t go into the “how’s and why’s” for creating a Facebook Page for your organization -  you can find that on the Facebook site. What I do want to talk about is how to manage “‘personas” while working with Facebook Pages.

Here’s the scenario:

• I have my own Facebook page.
• I’m an administrator for two other Facebook Pages (one of which is Beyond The Defaults).
• When I post to Beyond The Defaults, do I post as myself or as “Beyond The Defaults”?

When you create a Page, you’re designated as the Admin for the page (which makes sense). In addition, and by default, there’s a Posting Preference that gets set which forces all comments and posts to be shown as being authored by “Beyond The Defaults” – regardless if I’m logged as me (Sam).

So what if I want post as me? It’s a simple change to the page settings:

1. Go to the Facebook Page for which you’re the Admin.
2. You will need to edit the Page. If you’ve not been cut over to Timeline for Pages (and it’s coming soon), the Edit Page button is in the top right-hand portion of the page. If you’re working with Timeline (which will be the norm soon), open the Admin Panel, choose Manage – Edit Page.
   
3. Select Your Settings from the left sidebar.
4. Modify the Posting Preferences; so if you want to post as “you”, deselect the Posting Preferences option to “Always comment and post…”

Now, if you ever want to change personas mid-stream (meaning you’re logged in as you, and now you want or need to post as the Admin of your Facebook Page), you can do so on the fly:

1. On the far right hand side of the Facebook Header (top right of the screen), click the downward pointing arrow.
2. Choose the persona you want to use by selecting one of the Use Facebook As options:
   
3. Put in your post.
4. Switch back to whatever persona when you’re done, using Steps 1-2 above.

So for those of you with multiple Facebook personalities, or are thinking about creating that new Facebook page for your club or group, now you have an an easy way to keep your personalities straight. Without medication.

(Editors’ Note: If you are on Facebook, and you’re not following us there, shame on you.)