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Did you know that whoever creates the Facebook fan page cannot be deleted? So if that's one of your employees and then that employee leaves the company, they still have control over your Facebook fan page.  Further, even if they invite other folks to be admins, they still cannot be deleted.

It's true that these other admins can delete other general admins.  But the person who created the page cannot be deleted by the other admins. Think about that for a minute.

Recently, I found that I was no longer admin on one of our client's pages. And even though other team members had worked on that page, the person who had initially went through the 2 minute process to start the page wasn't with the company anymore.  Out of neglect or carelessness, he deleted all the other admins, which also means that nobody else can see who the creator is.

We contacted Facebook about this issue, even with a note from the client and verification that we are the entity.  Their response, Daisy from User Operations:

For legal reasons, we're not able to give other users access to unauthorized Facebook Pages or administrator information. Sorry for any inconvenience.

However, if you believe that this Page infringes your intellectual property rights, then please let us know. We can then look into removing this Page from the site.

Thanks for contacting Facebook,

 

That means that you have to delete the page and start from scratch, losing all the fans you've built up, content you've created, and general history (since SEO on Facebook is of increasing importance).

The right answer to this is to have the page created by a dummy account that belongs to your company. That way, you have continuity no matter what people come or go.  If you are an advertiser, you want to create that dummy account for yourself, as opposed to having the agency create the page.  Can you imagine how awkward it would be to want to get control back of the page in case you wanted to switch to another agency?

Facebook is aware of this problem, as we've notified them.  But they are not able to do anything about it yet.  Therefore, protect yourself before your fan base grows so large that this may become an issue.  If you already have a substantial fan base and it's under someone's personal name, you may even consider getting them to sign an agreement stating that your brand owns the page in perpetuity and that in no way can they do anything with your page without your permission, whether employed with the company or not.

This is akin to someone owning your regular website and being able to hit "delete" at their whim.  Love to hear how many folks are NOT creating their Facebook pages under a dummy account that can then invite admins.  This is a ticking time bomb and could be a massive source of pain for you if you don't do it.

Dennis Yu is CEO of BlitzLocal, a boutique agency that does Facebook advertising and pages. 

Additional Information: www.blitzlocal.com