There is no denying that social media is one of the most powerful communication tools of our time, especially for businesses trying to communicate with their clients and customers. However, while you will want to have an account for your business on social media, you might not want a presence of your own.
Today, we’ll discuss this quandary, and how you can resolve it.
Most social media sites let you create an account to represent your business. However, Facebook and LinkedIn both require you to have a personal account before you can create a business page.
Just because you don’t want your own account shouldn’t mean that you have to forego supporting your business with these platforms. Therefore, we’re giving you the steps you need to hide your personal accounts from any other users, enabling you to maintain your own business’ presence.
Facebook as a Business Tool
The first step is to create a personal profile. Unfortunately, Facebook does not allow Pages to be created by anyone without a personal profile. Once you have done so (and don’t feel obligated to provide any more data than absolutely necessary), the blue bar at the top of the page will feature a Create menu item. From its options, select Page. From there, you should select the Business or Brand option and fill in the requested information.
To hide the personal profile page, you created in order to make a business page, access your Settings via the drop-down arrow at the top-right of the window. From there, navigate to the Privacy sub-menu.
If you really want to lock down the account, set Who can see your future posts to Only me.
You can also limit past posts.
- Under the How People Find and Contact You area, select Friends of Friends for Who can send you friend requests.
- Set Who can see your friends list to Only Me.
- Set Who can look you up using the email address you provided to Friends.
- Set Who can look you up using the phone number you provided to Friends.
- Uncheck the box on Do you want search engines outside of Facebook to link to your profile.
- Then, click on the Timeline and Tagging option on the left.
- Set Who can post on your timeline to Only me.
From there on, your Facebook account will only be seen by people you’ve added or accepted as Facebook friends.
LinkedIn as a Business Tool
Like Facebook, you need to have an account to create your official business page on LinkedIn. Once you have set up an account, it is simple enough to create a business page by following the prompts provided after clicking Create a Company Page + in the nine-dot menu.
In order to hide your account, access your Settings & Privacy. Under Privacy, you will see an assortment of options, allowing very granular control over the information LinkedIn is able to share.
Social media can lend your company some invaluable visibility, even if you don’t want that kind of visibility for yourself.
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