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.
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.
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. To find out how to ensure the security of other key portions of your
business, make sure you subscribe to our blog!