The question ‘how to keep my personal account and business Facebook pages separate’ can be interpreted in two ways:
One: Is it possible to have a business page without a personal profile linked to it?
(Short answer: No.)
Two: How do I keep content from crossing over between my personal Facebook profile and any connected business page?
In this post, I’m going to try and address both variations of this question.
Can I Have a Business Page Without a Personal Profile?
No, Facebook does not allow you to create a business page without it being linked to a personal profile. Any business page needs an admin, who is a person who manages the page.
However, once you have it set up, you can assign roles and add other accounts as administrators.
So, yeah, the only way you could manage a business page without having created it through your own profile is if someone else made you the admin of his or her page.
Note that people do create a dummy personal profile to set up a business page. However, Facebook frowns upon this practice, and if it finds out you’ve done this, your account and page could be deactivated.
The good news is, even though your personal profile and business page look like they are inextricably connected, no one but you can see that connection. Facebook treats them like two separate entities.
How Do I Create a Business Page?
To create a business page on Facebook, you need to be logged in to your personal profile. Navigate over to facebook.com/business and click on ‘Create a Page’.
You will be taken to a screen where you can choose if it’s a page for a ‘Business or brand’ or a ‘Community or public figure’.
When you select Business or brand, it will prompt you to enter your company details – the company name and category.
Once you have entered the company information, you will be asked to upload a profile picture and a cover photo. It is good practice to use your logo as the profile picture. It helps with brand recognition and provides consistency to your online presence.
After these pictures are uploaded, you can fill in the details of your business in the company ‘About’ section, and that’s all you need to do to create a business page on Facebook!
How Do I Keep My Personal Profile Separate From the Business Page?
The good news is you don’t have to do anything extra to keep your personal profile and business page separate. Facebook treats them as separate entities by default.
Just because you created a business page does not mean the two profiles will show up as linked on the social media platform. Anything you post on your personal page will stay there and not show up on your business page, and vice versa.
When you’ve selected your personal profile, you will be posting, sharing, liking, and commenting as you, the person. If you are on your business page, that’s whom you’ll be posting as, and the laws that govern business page activities will apply to you.
How Do I Post On My Business Page?
Simply go on to your business page and start posting! When you are on your business page, you are automatically assumed to be the business, not the business page owner, and anything you post here will be ‘from’ the business.
If you are an admin on someone else’s business page, just head over to their page. At the top of the page, you’ll see this message: ‘Go to Business Manager to manage this page.’ Click on it, select the account you want to post as and post away.
How Do I Post As Myself On My Business Page?
When you’re on your business page, you will default to posting as your business. However, if you want to reply or comment as ‘yourself’, what do you do?
Just under the post, where you have the ‘Like’, ‘Comment’, and ‘Share’ options, you will find a little circle with your business page profile picture and a dropdown arrow next to it. If you click it, you can select the profile (or page) you want to comment or like from.
In fact, it’s a good idea to keep an eye out for this, no matter what page you’re on. You don’t want to be commenting from the wrong account!
Why Can’t I Comment On My Friends’ Wall Using My Facebook Business Page?
In order to protect people from spam from unscrupulous companies or pages, Facebook does not allow a business page to post on personal profiles.
The reason is quite obvious. Would you like it if any company could come and post on your personal profile willy-nilly?
That’s why a business can only react to a person’s comments, but it cannot initiate a conversation with them.
Additionally, when posting from your business page, you can only write on the walls of other businesses if your page has ‘liked’ them and they’ve enabled public posting.
Why Should I Like Other Business Pages?
Liking other business pages in the same industry as yours, or closely related, gives you access to a larger audience that might be interested in what you offer.
For example, if you’re a pet food supplier, you could connect with companies selling pet supplies, pet owners’ groups, or animal shelters. There is a good chance that people who have joined these groups either need or might be interested in what you have to offer.
However, joining these groups simply to promote your business is a very bad idea. Social media is supposed to be social before it is promotional. It is a place for conversations.
So, what should you do?
Join the conversations!
Respond to people’s questions, share your expertise, and build relationships… as your business.
Will this make people buy your products?
Maybe… Maybe not.
Will it make people trust you and your brand?
Most definitely!
Even if they don’t go out and buy your pet food right away, they will recognise your products when they see them in stores. Once you establish recognition, there is a good chance that people will (eventually) give you a try.
Liking other business pages also gives you access to the content they share.
Again, being in a related industry, a good portion of what they share will be relevant to you as well. It can give you inspiration for fresh content for your own business, as well as an opportunity to interact with the people engaging with the story.
Looking for someone to manage your social media marketing? Get in touch with us! We can help you promote your business on Facebook and help you design your social media strategy.
Well written article with the screenshots and all. Easy to read writing style and love the straight-forwardness without a truckload of commentary and links to promotions. Going to give you a follow. Thanks!
Thanks Leonard!
Thank you for the above, what im having trouble with is being up to find a way on my business page to like and follow other businesses can you advise me on how to do this without it defaulting to my personal page?
Thanks
Hi Joanne, glad you find it useful! To like and follow other business pages from your business page, go to the business page you want to like. and click the three dots (…) under the cover photo and you’ll see the ‘Like, Follow, Share. Hope that helps!
Thanks for the peace of mind achieved with this tutorial. 🙂
You’re welcome!
Very helpful! Everything I needed to know without the usual preamble and self-promotion of other ‘how-to’ articles. Thanks a bunch!
Thanks Kevin!
If I created a business page off of my personal facebook account and give someone an admin role to the business page, will they also have access to my personal facebook account?
Hi Jamie, no they wouldn’t. You can give them different levels of access as an admin that only relate to the page. They only way they would have access to your personal page is if you give them those login details. Hope that helps!
One of my real estate agents created a page, using my business name, without me knowing it. This agent has since, passed away. How can I now create a business page for my company?
That’s a tricky one. You would need to try and claim the page name via Facebook, or opt for a variation of the name of your business I believe.
My personal page was hacked and I had to create new. The problem is that the page that was hacked was linked to my business page. My old personal profile no longer exist, but I my business page is still present. I can seem to find a way to get into the business page. Please assist. Thanks
Hi Martell, you would need to contact Facebook directly to see if you can claim the business page with your new personal profile.
Yes, but…I have my personal page…then I have a page for our church. The problem I’m having is that if I want to do a live stream I can only do that from my personal page. There is no means for doing a live stream from the church page.
I believe this link will help https://www.facebook.com/business/help/167417030499767?id=1123223941353904
Hi, this page is very informative. I have a business page on FB but I’ve been asked to supply my URL & don’t want to give my personal name, but it appears to show my personal name rather than business name, is there away around this? Thankyou.
Your business page name shouldn’t have your personal name in it. e.g. ours is: http://www.facebook.com/One2create – have you tried the same format but with just your business page name?
If you did set up a business page using a fake personal account, and FB disabled it, is it possible to recover it and change it to use your correct name, or is it better to just start again?
Luckily that’s not happened to us, so i’m unsure of the process if they did disable it. For safety I would create a dummy account and give your personal account admin access.
This helped a lot. I was getting anxiety about my personal feed and photos showing up on my business page. Very, very helpful and informative.
Greatly helpful. Thanks
Nice post. It helped me. Thanks
Good way of explaining, and pleasant piece of writing to get facts concerning my
presentation subject matter, which i am going to deliver in institution of
higher education.
Are you aware of any ways to specify where you want business notifications to go? It would be more preferable for them to go to my business email. I wouldn’t want to see business related notifications of any kind in my personal stuff.
Hi Jay, thanks for your comment. You can turn business page notifications off on your personal profile page, then just set up notifications to be delivered by email or via the Pages app (which you can use to manage your business page). Hope that helps.
Normally I don’t read article on blogs, but I wish to say that this write-up very pressured
me to check out and do it! Your writing taste has been amazed me.
Thanks, quite great article.
Nice article and some great tips
Is it possible to have a privacy setting of “friends” in my personal page and “public” in my business page. Thanks in advance for your response.
Hi Barbara, only the people that can see you personal FB account are people you are connected with. Your business page is public, so anyone can view your content unless you restrict visibility.
An employee for my small business set up our Facebook page for the business. She is no longer with the business. Now when I post things on instagram and share it to my business page , it still says posted by ___________ (old employees name).. She is no longer affiliated with the business. How can I change this?
Hi Joni, that sounds like the personal Facebook account is still in her name? You can change this in the profile section.
I get very frustrated with my business fb. I have problems linking my fb page on Instagram. It only brings up my personal fb. How do I change it to link with my business. It would be so helpful for businesses if there were a phone number to actually talk to someone…similar to Shopify.
Hi Tracy, I would make sure your Instagram is set as a business account and then try and connect to it via your FB business page.
The Owner of our business page deleted her person account a few months ago. How can i get on to the business page now?
Hi Kylie, every business page has to have an admin user, so you would need to get the admin user to add the owner so she can administer the page.
Hi, thanks for the tips on keeping your business and personal FB pages separate! Do you have any advice on doing this while using Facebook groups? Some groups will only let you join with your personal profile and I’m really reluctant to do so, but I feel like not using groups will set me back on Facebook.
Hi Kate, unfortunately groups have the power to not allow pages into groups i’m afraid. A way round it could be to set up a separate personal account so you don’t have to use your current personal account.
I have a business page and I can like other pages but whenever I join a group it always defaults to my personal profile. Am i doing something wrong?
Hi Robert, when you click ‘Join Group’ (just below the cover photo) you can select whether you’d like to join as your personal profile or your Page. If the option isn’t there the group doesn’t allow pages to join.
Hi Elly – thanks so much for a well-articulated article. Quick question: is there anyway to have my business as the default? Admittedly, I have accidentally posted business stuff on my personal FB vs my business page.
Hi Mimi, unfortunately not. The best way to manage your page is via the new Business Suite App or via Business Manager.
I have a new page that appeared without my knowledge in my business name. I don’t know where it originated. When I try to share my real business page that I set up to my profile page, I cannot do that any more. I only have one option–to the new “bogus?” business page for sharing.
Hi Claudia, that sounds strange, I would raise that with Facebook directly.
Admiring the time and effort you put into your website and detailed information you provide. It’s awesome to come across a blog every once in a while that isn’t the same out
of date rehashed material. Great read! I’ve saved your site and I’m including your RSS feeds to my Google account.
Thanks for your comment!
I have long used business manager and spend over 1,000,000 $, and now they lock my, i can’t do anything with resistance case waited more than 2 weeks, which is too much
Oh no, hope you get access back soon!
Thank you Elly for such detailed, easy to understand and inviting to read till the end article. I just created a business acount as a shop. I started to add items to it, but didn’t want tobe published yet. Few hours later I learned that in fact everything that I added has showed on my account. Right now I just disabled my accounts. But my question is. how can I keep editing my business account without being published?
Hi, all you need to do is head to your business page, click Settings, then scroll down until you reach Page updates, then untick “Automatically publish posts when information is updated on this Page.” Remember to click Save Changes! 😉
If I have a person who will be posting on my Business Page, is there a way to keep them from seeing my personal page info and messenger?
Hi Wendy, you can give them admin access to the page via their own Facebook profile. That way they won’t have access to yours.
Very Cool Pages, thank you 🙂
Thanks!
Hello,
I want to tell you that I’m visiting this site for some time and you write very
good content. I shared your last article on tumblr and got a lot of positive feedbacks.
Keep up the great work!
Great, thank you!
Hi Elly,
This article is really useful. I didn’t realize that you can like the similar business pages in your domain. Thanks for that.
No problem at all!
Ellen, where can I find some one to create a really good business page for me?
Hi, we can. I’ll pass your email over to our new business sales team.
What happens when you post in your own FB business profile, does the post appear in your personal or business account ? If in your personal name, then people can just click on your name and see your personal profile ?
Thank you
You can only post from a business profile on your business page. If you comment on a business post with your personal profile then users will be able to see your personal profile.
Thank you Elly for a precise and yet informative post. I like especially your statement, “Social media is supposed to be social before it is promotional. It is a place for conversations.” I don’t like hearing it but I like knowing it. Now I have to figure out how to make my presence effective without shouting from a platform.
Albert
No problem, good luck!
Hi Elly,
If I set up a page for the company by which I’m employed, can I link it to someone else’s profile if I plan to leave the company?
Hi, yes you can add multiple admin users via Business Manager
Hi, if I have been added as an admin on someone else’s Facebook page can the page owner see my personal messenger via Business Suite?
No they can’t.
Where is this?
“To create a business page on Facebook, you need to be logged in to your personal profile. Navigate over to facebook.com/business and click on ‘Create a Page’.”
Hi, top right hand corner ‘Create an Ad’ click the drop down to select ‘Create a Page’
Elly, thank you! What if a business page was created by a previous business owner and the business now has a new owner; how do you get rid of the personal connection to the previous owner?
Hi, you would need to remove them via Business Manager.
Hi Elly, thanks for this article.
If I set up my business page and publish it, will it show on my personal friends’ feed that I have set up this business page? I’m hoping it doesn’t.
Thanks,
Tom
Hi Tom, no. They will only see if if they like the page, find it themselves, or via someone they know (e.g. you) engages with the content.
Hello Elly, thanks so much for the awesome article. I really learnt a lot about FB business. Everything is straight forward and crystal clear.
Thank you!
I am wanting to remove social media from my personal life. I truly detest it for me personally but realize it is important for business. what are some options so I can personally disconnect. I am also looking to hire a social media company.
Hi we can certainly help with the social media management, i’ll pass your detail onto the new business team.
Hi Elly, if outsourcing to a sm management company, how do they access your business page? Do they ultimately have access to my personal account as well?
Hi, no I wouldn’t give the agency access to your personal account! You can, instead, give them access as a partner via Business Manager. The agency should know how to request this.