Have you ever noticed that sometimes your friends or colleagues become friends with a business or place rather than liking it? This is unfortunately due to the fact that not everyone knows how to use Facebook properly, which, given its ever increasing size and complexity can be forgiven. This guide is here to help you correct the mistake, keeping what you have, intact.

That said, this issue needs to be addressed else it can lead to some odd scenarios and, perhaps most devistatingly for the company or place involved, the deletion of their account; losing all their posts, friends and their entire Facebook presence. If you don't fix this yourself, Facebook will do it for you, and their quickest fix is to simply remove these fake people.

To quote Facebook's Disabled Accounts Page:
The account I created to promote my business, band or other organization is now disabled: Per our Statement of Rights and Responsibilities, Facebook profiles (timelines) must represent an individual. Users aren't permitted to maintain an account under the name of their organization, or use personal accounts to advertise or promote themselves professionally. If your profile (timeline) was listed under a non-individual name, or was used primarily for professional promotion, this is probably why it was removed.

How is a Page different from an Account?

So what is the difference between an Account and a Page? Well, an Account is what you log into Facebook with, this is what you, as a person, use. These are specifically for ACTUAL PEOPLE, not businesses, places or other non-individuals. You become Friends with other accounts.

A Page is what you create if you want to set up your business on Facebook, create a presence for a place or other things (like websites, etc). These are what people Like.

To quote Facebook:
Since profiles (timelines) are meant for individual people, they aren't suited to meet your business needs. Pages offer more robust features for organizations, businesses, brands, and public figures.

Making the Switch

Luckily you don't need to start over, you can simply convert the account that should be a page, into a page through Facebook itself (as you can imagine it is a common issue). Facebook can walk you through the current process of how to do this and at the same time further explain why you should do this.

You can access the Account to Page migration manager directly here if you want to skip the cruft. Make sure you're logged into the right account first!

Starting Fresh

If you would like to start from scratch and create your Page that way, you can simply go to Facebook's "Create a Page" section and follow the simple step-by-step process there. As you can see from the cover page, it is designed to be simple and cater for anything people may have the urge to create a page for.


So, now you know the difference and, if you're one of the people that have by accident created the wrong type of Facebook account, can easily make the switch to correct it and start working on getting those likes, not friends.