Comments on: Could FaceBook Ban You or Your Business?

By: Melinda

Melinda — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 04:53:49 +0000

@ Anon, thanks very much for sharing your companies experience and pointing out some of the ongoing issues. Ouch…. a very hard way to find out the rules.

By: Anon.

Anon. — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 15:39:32 +0000

This is a very important post. I work for a large brand (that will remain nameless) and we recently got our Facebook fan page banned, after it had been up over a year. We had over 400 loyal and engaged fans. We violated the TOS at a few points: we used to do “submit your best pic of our establishment and be featured on our company blog.”; we used to post links to our product specials; etc. I had no idea these were against the TOS. After our account was banned, I contacted the Facebook QC dept. to see if I could get the account reinstated. They said under no circumstances, and the reason they gave was that we were operating two accounts or “fake accounts.” The account wasn’t fake, it was merely that our PR agecncy created it and got it going, then handed it off to us to maintain. Again, I had no idea this could be viewed as a fake account or was in any way in violation of the TOS.

Such banning may not seem serious, but it can be a blow to a company’s branding and marketing efforts. For example, how can we refind and reengage those 400 customers and potential customers? And what will they think, when they try to find our fan page and it is no longer there? What impression will that leave in their minds? Will they suspect us of doing something illegal or unethical? And what if they start tweeting and bloggin abou how we got banned? Now you’ve got a PR problem and a reputation management problem to deal with. And, how do you exaplin to your marketing director, or whomever, that your FB fan page was banned becasue you didn’t take time to read the TOS and violated it?

The moral: It pays to take time to read the FB TOS; those guys are serious about it.

By: Melinda

Melinda — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 23:13:28 +0000

@ Joe, I see questions all the time on setting up FB accounts and Fan pages. And how much to reveal is a huge part of it. For me, I want to keep my private life separate – at least for the most part.

@ Marina, same here. Isn’t that the definition of character? Doing the right thing because it’s right, even when no one is watching? And I’m one of those mean mums who won’t let her kid do stuff just because everyone else is. Leads to some very interesting discussions!

@ Melissa, cool, I’ll go and have a look for those.

@ Amy, I’ve found out too many things the hard way through ignorance, fortunately this wasn’t one of them!

@ Marc, thanks for the links. Write my own application? Don’t you need to be a coder to do that?

@ Claudia, I’m not quite sure how your comment relates to this post except that it mentions facebook….. Wouldn’t be spamming me would you? No, of course you wouldn’t….

By: Claudia Guzman

Claudia Guzman — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 19:42:41 +0000

Great Social Media Networking tips! Privacy on Facebook is undermined by three principal factors: users disclose too much, Facebook does not take adequate steps to protect user privacy, and third parties are actively seeking out end-user information using Facebook.

By: Marc

Marc — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 13:19:46 +0000

Good post Mel.

If anyone is still new to the whole groups and pages thing and are feeling confused, try this article:
Facebook Groups v Pages

Here’s the page I found when I was looking to promote my business on Facebook:
Using Facebook for Business Networking

I did also search the Facebook applications directory for “competitions” and turned up 17 applications. Unfortunately it didn’t provide a URL for the page, it just went straight back to the Applications directory.

I’m not sure if any of those 17 applications are what you are after Mel, but the other option is to create your own
.-= Marc´s last post…Why You Shouldn’t Work for Your Friends, Family or Yourself =-.

By: Amy

Amy — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 03:14:19 +0000

Thanks so much for the great tips, Melinda. It’s lways nice to find out ‘the easy way’ instead of the hard way! Facebook is certainly a valuable tool, and none of us want to risk getting banned…

Thanks for saving us the agony!
.-= Amy´s last post…3 Keys to Empowered Parenting =-.

By: Melissa

Melissa — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 02:47:41 +0000

Great tips Melinda. For the competition apps, you can find them when you edit your page details. I stumbled across it the other day, but can't remember the link! .-= Melissa´s last post...Check your links and update your site =-.

By: Marina

Marina — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 00:42:57 +0000

Great article. I’m always a fan of “doing the right thing” and I find many people out there recommending “doing whatever it takes” because “everyone else is doing it”. In the US, the housing bubble burst happened mostly because of shady lending practices that took place because “everyone else was doing it”.

By: Joe

Joe — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 00:09:52 +0000

Thanks for these tips. I’ve been working with a few people who are new to Facebook and Fan Pages. There’s a lot of confusion about how to set things up and how to keep from revealing too much information.
.-= Joe´s last post…Exclude your own visits from Google Analytics =-.