By Princess Jones
When Facebook introduced business pages so many years ago, who knew that maintaining your business presence on the fledgling social platform would be so important in 2017? Today, business pages facilitate user check-ins, reviews, communication from potential customers, and advertising. Your Facebook business page has become a huge part of many businesses’ marketing plans.
So, what happens if you lose access to your Facebook business page? If you use admin privileges to control your page, you would be well within your rights to freak out. Facebook doesn’t make it easy to figure out what to do when you’ve been locked out, either. It turns out there are only two ways to fix this.
Start with Prevention
Before we get started, I need to emphasize that losing access to your business page is not a position you want to be in. If you still have access right now, you need to do whatever you can to keep it that way.
The most common way that people lose access is that they are removed from the page by another admin. Avoid adding other users as admins to your page. Admins have the same privileges as owners. So, they can remove you from the page whenever they want. There are other appropriate page roles you can use for contractors or employees. And those roles don’t require you to give up admin privileges.
Another common way to lose access is if you lose access to your personal Facebook page for some reason. To avoid that, make sure you’re using double authentication and have enabled backup security precautions.
If There Are No Other Admins
But let’s say it’s too late to be preventative. The best-case scenario is that you have accidentally removed yourself as an admin and now your page has no admins. This can happen if you click the wrong button in Roles section in the Page Settings. It also might happen if you deactivate your personal Facebook account and there are no other admins on the page.
When a business page no longer has any admins, you’ll see an “Unofficial Page” label under the cover image. Click “Is this your business?” The next page will ask you to merge the page with an official verified business page or to provide information to claim this page. To merge pages, the two pages must have matching information. To claim and verify the page, you’ll need to provide a phone number or business ownership documents.
If There Are Other Admins
Another scenario is that you have other admins on your page and this has been done as a mistake. Message one of them and explain that you’ve been removed accidentally. They can just add you back by going to the Page Settings and entering your email address under the Roles section.
So, what if you were removed on purpose? Well, things get a little more complicated.
Facebook’s policy on this situation is that if another admin removes you from a page, they will not get involved. You can contact Facebook support but the general consensus is that it won’t get you very far. In most cases, Facebook suggests that you create a new business page and start over.