“Can you convert your Facebook profile into a page that already exists?”

This is a GREAT question! Many of you created “profiles” for your organization early on, then recognized your mistake, and created a page (“fan page”) for your organization.

Now that you can convert that old profile to a page, what do you do? You don’t want TWO pages out there to maintain!

If you already have a page created on Facebook, there’s no way to roll your profile into that page, or merge the two, unfortunately. If you convert your profile, then you’ll have two pages.

What you can do is convert your profile to a page, IF it’s the one that has more friends (they will be converted to fans). If
your fan page is much smaller than your profile, it would be best to just delete that page, then convert your profile to a page, and start from there.

Chances are, those people who were fans of your page were ALSO “friends” of your profile (so now they’re still “fans” of your new page). And if they weren’t, well–they’ll find you over time.

Whatever you choose to do, announce it for a week or so before you do it so people will be aware of the upcoming change.

To recap, you have two scenarios:

1: if your “profile” is a lot bigger than your page, and has a lot more “friends,” then just delete your existing page and convert your profile into your new page. All those “friends” will become “fans.” (note: be SURE to download your Facebook data first so it won’t all be lost when you convert your profile.)

Also, note that the friend to fan conversion takes an hour or so. So if you had 5,000 friends, and when you convert, you only have 10 fans, don’t panic. You’ll see the number go up as Facebook completes the conversions.

2. if your “page” is much bigger than your profile, but you still have some “friends” lagging over on the profile, post on your profile wall and send friends messages telling them that this profile is going to be deleted, and you need them to become a “fan” of the page instead (give them a link right to the page). Do this several times over the course of a week or a few days. Then just go ahead and delete the profile. Those folks who didn’t fan the new page are probably not that active, maybe they’re not even on Facebook anymore. So don’t worry about those people.

If you have any questions, post below in the comments section or on my Facebook page–we’re all here to help!

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48 Responses to “Can you convert your Facebook profile into a page that already exists?”

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