How To Avoid Facebook Disabling Your Page for Business Networking

Through the Web 2.0 explosion, a lot of emphasis has been placed on utilizing Facebook for making contacts and possibly generating business. However, this social networking site actively discourages the use of personal pages for business social networking practices. Facebook writes that: “Facebook profiles are intended to represent an individual person and should not be used for business purposes”.

There are other social networking sites that are more supportive of networking for the purpose of business building, but they have much fewer participants.

To support its non-business promotion policy for personal pages, Facebook actively polices member activities and will disable pages of members that act in ways that appear to be counter to this policy. Despite that fact, some well-meaning people are providing advice on the use of Facebook that could actually result in pages being suspended. Having personally experienced the suspension of a Facebook page, it seemed worthwhile to set the record straight.

Following is advice gleaned from other sources and comments based on my actual experience.
1. “Obviously you’re on Facebook to network, and in order to do that you must create a friend list. You don’t want to do this too aggressively – maybe 40-50 friend request per day.”

It is not just the number of friend requests you make, but how many are made in a short period of time. Facebook wrote: “Your account was disabled because Facebook determined that you were going too fast when sending friend requests, despite being warned to slow down, or because your friend requests were being rejected at a high rate.”

Facebook will give warnings if they determine too many requests are made in too short a period of time. Making three or four friend requests in immediate succession may result in a warning. Therefore, spread out friend requests throughout the day. Several warnings may result in disabling of a personal page.

2. “Add a personal message in your friend requests. This slows the process down some so you’re not as noticeable. I like to copy and paste messages, and add the person’s name. Oh, and ask them to respond on your profile page.”

Adding such a message does not slow down the process sufficiently to avoid warnings and then page disabling.

3. “Where to find friends. I primarily work on MLM networking, so you would think the first place to visit is any group with an interest in network marketing. Wrong! Find other entrepreneurial sites and fan pages. Less saturation there, and many of them are fellow networkers.”

Facebook looks at how many friend requests are ignored/rejected. So, you need to establish a connection with those you contact in a way that resonates with them. If you’re involved with MLM, other networkers might be more receptive to your invitation.

Alternatively, you might want to take the time to visit the Facebook page of someone you want to invite to be a friend and find common points of interest that can be written about in your invite.

4. “Video tagging. Not many people know how to use videos on Facebook, but they are the most powerful means of creating a bond. If a picture is worth a thousand words, what’s a video worth? 30 seconds to introduce yourself and your personality makes you stand out in the crowd of people just typing messages. You want to be noticed, videos will do that.”

Video tagging may not be the best way to send a video. Tagging is meant to indicate who is featured in the video. Some Facebook members become upset in receiving a video where you welcome them and tag them. Members may file a complaint with Facebook about being tagged, even though this is not a policy violation, and there are ways that recipients can control whether tagging of their name appears on their page.

It may be better to send the video by the Facebook message function.

By being aware of these potential pitfalls and taking the proper precautions, you can take full advantage of the networking opportunities available through Facebook, whether for fun or profit.

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