We actually had an outside auditor point out that there was a strange looking little Facebook page under our name in addition to our official page. It has one of our branch addresses on it and not much else. Our marketing officer watches our Facebook page and monitors Google alerts, but she had not seen it--when she goes to Facebook it takes her right to our official page. We are leaning toward deciding that Facebook is creating the extra page from inquiries. Has anyone else had this problem and how did you correct? We talked about 'claiming' the page and merging it, but since our Marketing Officer signs in as herself she's afraid it will impact her personal page. Thoughts?

Maybe the Marketing Officer should look into separating her personal profile from your official bank profile, and creating an "official" login name and email address unrelated to her own. That may allow you to more clearly see the relationship between your 'official' page and this phantom page.

We talked about 'claiming' the page and merging it, but since our Marketing Officer signs in as herself she's afraid it will impact her personal page. Thoughts?

I would say you do not have a very well defined social media policy and program if this is the case.

We have encountered this issue as well. It appears the page was automatically generate by Facebook. We do not have an offical Facebook page, nor do we want one, let alone an unofficial one. Does anyone have an recommendations on how to get the automatically generated page removed from Facebook?

Have you search the Facebook Forums - on Facebook not BOL? It has been talked about extensively.

A Facebook Page or Place may exist for a business even if the business didn't create it. This can occur for a variety of reasons. I think the most common reason is when a person checks into a location that doesn't already exist, they can create a new Page to represent the location. Many of these pages will be labeled as a "community page" meaning it doesn't officially represent the topic. I see this a lot with bank branches when employees or customers "check in" to a branch and end up create a new page for the location.

You have several options with these types of pages - 1.) you can request to claim the page, 2.) you can report the page and attempt to have it removed, 3.) you can merge the page with an existing page (after it is claimed).

Regarding personal accounts and Facebook pages - I believe it is a violation of Facebook's terms and conditions to create a false presence to manage an organization so I don't recommend created a fake account to mange the bank's page; however, if the bank's Facebook Page is in fact an official Page, then you can have multiple "Administrators" of that Page (managed under Settings > Page Roles). Various roles can then be assigned to one or more valid Facebook accounts to manage the bank's Facebook Page. Facebook Page Admins can log into their personal Facebook account and change what account (personal or Page) they are managing. This can be confusing and has caused people to post business items under their personal profile or personal posts as if it were the bank, so I recommend Administrators be trained. This is also a good reason to consider Social Media Management solutions.

I hope this helps some.

Thanks,
Russ