Who Owns the Business Facebook Page

A page with nobody's name on it

A business Facebook page looks as though it belongs to the business. It carries the name, the logo and the recommendations, and no person's name appears anywhere on it.

Behind it, the page is run by people. Every page is managed through personal Facebook profiles that have been given a role on it.

So the real question is whose profiles. On many small business pages the list includes somebody who left years ago, a student who helped one summer, or a marketing company the business stopped using in 2015.

None of them is likely to cause trouble. Any one of them could, and some could lock the business out of its own page.

How page roles work

• Admin, which can do everything, including adding and removing other admins.
• Editor, which can post, edit the page and reply to messages.
• Moderator, which can answer comments and messages.
• Advertiser, which can create ads and see the figures.
• Analyst, which can only see the figures.

The first is the one that matters. Any admin can remove any other admin, including the person who created the page, so every admin effectively holds the whole page.

Checking who has access

In the page's settings, the Page Roles section lists everyone with a role, and only an admin can change it.

Go through it name by name, asking of each whether they still work at the business or with it, and whether the profile belongs to a real person.

If the page is connected to Business Manager, the people and agencies with access through it are listed there as well, so check that too.

The single admin

The most common arrangement on small business pages is one admin: whoever set the page up.

That makes the whole page depend on one personal account. If that person leaves on bad terms, loses access to their profile, or has it disabled by Facebook, the page goes with it.

Even without a falling-out, only that one person can give anybody else a role, so every change of staff waits for them.

Getting a page back with no admin is possible through Facebook's help forms, but it is slow and uncertain, and the business has to show the page is its own.

Admins who left

Former employees are the usual stale admins. Most never think about the page again, and nothing happens.

But they keep full control until somebody removes them, and the security of their own account is out of your hands. If their profile is broken into, so is your page.

If somebody who left is the only admin, ask them to add two people from the business before anything else changes. That conversation is far easier now than after a falling-out.

The agency that set it up

Many pages were set up by a marketing company or web developer, often through a staff member's personal profile at that company.

An agency doing current work should have access. The problem is the one the business stopped using years ago, still listed as an admin through somebody who may have left the agency too.

The tidy arrangement is for the business to own the page and grant the agency access, rather than the other way round. Business Manager is built for exactly that.

Business Manager, for anyone running ads

Business Manager is Facebook's free tool for holding pages and ad accounts in the business's name, with people given access as the business decides.

For a business that advertises, it matters more than for one that only posts. The ad account, its billing history and the pixel that records what visitors do on your website all belong to whoever created them.

If an agency created them in its own Business Manager, they leave with the agency. Created in yours, with the agency added as a partner, they stay with the business when the work ends.

It also gives the business one place to remove somebody's access, instead of hunting through each page and ad account in turn.

A worked example

A hair salon's page was set up in 2013 by one of its stylists, on her own profile, because she was the one who used Facebook.

She left in 2016 to rent a chair elsewhere and remained the page's only admin. The owner had been given the editor role years before, which let her post and edit the page but not decide who else could.

Nobody noticed until last autumn, when the salon hired a new manager and the owner could not give her access to the page. Only an admin can.

The former stylist was still friendly and reachable. She made the owner and the new manager admins within the hour, and was removed at her own suggestion.

Had she been unreachable, the salon would have been asking Facebook to hand over a page it had never formally controlled.

Two admins from inside the business

The minimum is two admins who work at the business, usually the owner and a manager, each with two-step login turned on for their own Facebook account.

Do not invent a profile for the business to act as admin. Facebook requires a real person behind every profile, and made-up ones tend to be disabled, sometimes taking the page with them.

Everyone else, including an agency doing current work, can have a lesser role or access through Business Manager, for as long as they need it.

The counter-case

Not every page needs the full treatment.

A page the business barely uses, with no ads and few followers, carries less risk. Checking the roles and adding a second admin is still worth five minutes; Business Manager can wait.

A sole proprietor cannot have two admins from inside the business. A trusted partner or family member, or the company that looks after their website, can be the second.

For everyone else: two admins from the business, nobody who has left, and the ads in the business's own name.

The check

1. Open Page Roles in the page's settings.
2. List every name and its role.
3. Ask whether each person still works with you.
4. Add a second admin from inside the business.
5. Remove anyone who has left.
6. Turn on two-step login for every admin.
7. Move ad accounts into Business Manager.

Step four is the one that protects the business. Until two people inside it are admins, the page depends on one person's account, and every other fix depends on that person being available.

The page belongs on the same list as every other account, covered in every login your website depends on.

Frequently asked questions

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.