Facebook is constantly changing and adding features as well as new page types. This has created a mess for people who adopted Facebook early as a business avenue as there are now several pages for many companies and brands.
The recent addition of pages for business (which is the best option for most businesses) created a situation in which you may have current pages – either a regular facebook page or a community page (one that Facebook created for your brand, but contains only data from Wikipedia) that has followers and likes that you want to transfer to the new business page.
Types of Pages on Facebook:
- Personal – you know, for you and your affinity for stuffed animals (we’re not judging here)
- Local Business or Place – great for restaurants, cleaners, local businesses
- Company, Organization or Institution – for bigger companies, schools, etc with a broader presence
- Brand or Product – big brands or products that have a significant social effort behind
- Artist, Band or Public Figure – Includes political figures
- Entertainment – TV shows, movies and the like
- Cause or Community – niche communities like Breast Cancer survivors and specific cause related campaigns
- Community pages – created by Facebook because they found your brand on Wikipedia and wanted to have you on Facebook
Here are the steps to merging the old pages into your new Business Page with caveats:
- While logged in to your new business page as the admin for that page > select edit page > select resources > select merge pages. This only works if the pages are the same name currently.
- Here is a form for requesting the merge as well: http://www.facebook.com/help/contact.php?show_form=page_migrations_external
- We’ve had issues with the target merge page not being “authentic” > the best way we’ve found to solve this problem is to add a Facebook Badge, Like Button or Login Button on the domain.
Merging pages is not as simple as it should be but is worth the effort to consolidate likes and friends.
- Contact Facebook with your issue – the more people contacting, the more they will try and fix: http://www.facebook.com/help/?page=220217228006012
I’ll keep looking for additional options on this as it is a topic growing in importance as Facebook becomes an extension of your personal and business brand. Please let me know if these tactics work for you!
Hi, I’m trying to merge a wikipedia page that has over 32,000 fans on it with our official that has over 19,000 fans. I’ve tried everything I could, I was trying to use the merge page you had linked there, but it did the “authentic” thing, which doesn’t make sense to me. The merge option doesn’t even show up under resources on the page I admin.
I wanted to ask, what did you mean when you say to add a badge or like button to the domain? How do I do that?
Thanks
John.
Hi John,
It’s confusing for sure, Facebook hasn’t made this process easy. By adding a like button from the new profile to the domain is one way I’ve seen Facebook “authenticate” a connection. Is the new page the same name as the older Wikipedia community page?
Thanks for getting back to me. Yeah, it’s the same name. So I add the “like” button code in the edit page section for the name?
I’m having the same problem with my pages. I’d like to merge page 1 (1,500 likes) with page 2 (4,000 likes), but it won’t let me do it… only the other way around. Has anyone figured out how to do this?
Please help.
m
Hi,
I have two pages that I need to merge. How do I retain the name of the page that is not primary?
The non-primary page does not have the merge option and not too many looks.
thank you.
Hi Bary, I don’t think it’s possible to retain the page name of the one that is not the primary. You may try your admin credentials and email support, but they haven’t been super helpful.
I manage the brand page for Big Y World Class Markets and I would LOVE to MERGE it with the “Wiki Organization” Page. I have tried requesting the merge daily, multiple times a day. I have added links, and even edited the wiki. Nothing seems to work.
Hi Roger, I wish I had more info to help you. Facebook and merging pages has never been an easy thing and I haven’t looked at this process in a while.