Most likely you already have a personal Facebook account. And most likely you want your personal account to be in no way, shape or form connected to your business account. That would be smart. Why is this smart? Consider these scenarios– you set up a page under your personal account but then you want to sell your business. How do you hand over the Facebook page? Or worse yet, you create a page, have an employee like it, and you make them an admin so they can update the page. But then the employee leaves and decides to get in there an un-admin you from your own page! How can you get back in? Bad news — you can’t. Not unless your page was set up as a separate stand-alone business page.

But how do you set up a stand-alone Facebook Page for your business totally removed from your personal account?

Facebook would like you to think that this is not possible. Facebook would prefer that you do everything under your personal profile, not your business name. But hold tight. I am going to show you a work-around.

1) Set yourself up an email address that you will be using exclusively for Facebook. If you have your own domain name do it there. If you don’t know how, call up your ISP or webmaster and find out how. If you don’t have your own domain, set up an email address at gmail or yahoo. Make sure the email address is unique. Facebook will not let you use an address such as facebook@yourdomain.com or sales@yourdomain.com or webmaster@yourdomain.com — you get the idea.

2) Write this email address down, write the username and password to access it down and put it in a safe place. Don’t do anything else until you have done this. No hurry. I’ll wait . . . .. . . .

4) Do not proceed any further until you have the above steps accomplished and you are sure you can access this new email address.

Okay? Are we all on the same page? Still with me?

Now go to www.facebook.com — if you are logged in as your personal profile, LOG OUT.

See on the main Facebook page where it says “SIGN UP” — Do NOT sign up. Instead underneath that is a link that says “Create a Page for a celebrity, band, or business. Click on that link.

This will take you to the “Create a Page”  page. Fill in the appropriate information to create and Official Page. Not a Community Page

Facebook will now take you to a Create Facebook Page Account. It has a selection at the top that asks you to specify if you already have a Facebook Account. Yes, yes, I know you do for your personal account, but for your business, you DON’T!!! Check “I do not”

Then fill in all the information, using the NEW email account you set up in the first few steps. Remember, make sure that new email is set up and working and you have access to it BEFORE you do this! This is very important!

It asks for your birthday. Just go ahead and enter in your regular birthday. Or make one up. Just make sure your birthday makes you more than 18 years old.

Click Sign up Now! And you will get this screen.

Now, go to your email. You will have a new email from Facebook –

Click on the link. It will take you to your NEW Facebook Page!

But WAIT!!!!! WAIT WAIT WAIT WAIT!!! You are not out of the woods yet!!!! Remember how I told you that Facebook does not like you to have a stand-alone business page? How it wants you to connect the page to a profile? Facebook is going to keep asking and asking and asking you to convert this “page” into a “profile” Let’s make a deal right now — you have to pinky pinky pinky swear with sugar on top not to ever, ever, ever click on this link at the top that says “create your profile” –once you do that, all is lost. You will have converted your page into a profile and you will never, ever, ever, be able to change it back.

What I would recommend, to avoid potential pitfalls in the future of maybe accidentally clicking somewhere not so great and converting your page, is to logout of the page you just created. Step back. Log all the way out.

Now Log back into Facebook as your personal self.

Do a search at the top of Facebook for your new page.

Then “like” it as yourself.

Now Log back out again.

Log back in as your new page using the email and password you used to set up your page.

Now click “Go To Page” REMEMBER DON’T EVER CLICK ON CREATE PROFILE! YES I AM SHOUTING. IT IS THAT IMPORTANT!!!!

You will see yourself down there as your first “like”

See how cute you are!!!

Now click on “Make Admin.” You want to make your personal profile an admin of this page.

Logout again — and log back in as your personal profile. Still with me?

You will see that your new page made you an “admin” in your notifications.

I would HIGHLY recommend that from now on, as your personal profile is an admin of your business page, that you make all updates to this page through your personal profile. This will avoid the potential risk of you converting your page into a profile. Write that email address you used to set up the account, along with the password, and put it in a very safe place. Then write a note to yourself reminding yourself where you put it.

To get to your new page through your personal profile go to www.facebook.com/pages when you are logged in as yourself.

At the top you will see Pages I Admin. Click on that link. Your page will appear there.

Technically, now you won’t ever have to admin your page from the login we set up above. What it is, is an insurance policy. A back-door if you will. It gives you ownership of your page exclusive of your personal account.

Now, post a link on your personal profile and get all your friends to “like” your new page. Promise them candy or your undying devotion or something fun. Once you get 25 “likes” you can create your own unique username.  Yes, yes, I’ll help you with that too. But another day. My fingers are tired from typing.

And when you are ready to look REALLY professional, call me and we’ll set up come custom graphics for your new business page. Like these:

When you set up a new website, you are making a very large investment in a very important part of your new web experience. What am I talking about? Your domain name:  .com, .net, .org — name for your site.

I can’t stress to you how important it is that you set up your domain name properly from the get-go. It is crucial that it is set up in a way that you will ultimately have access to your domain name no matter what happens.

Here’s  the usual scenario:

Very important, very busy business owner is too busy to find out about how to purchase one of these domain name things so they delegate it to “Someone Else” within the company. “Someone Else” purchases the domain name for them. But what does “Someone Else” use for contact information? THEIR personal email — not the email that goes directly to the business owner.

By and by “Someone Else” leaves the company for one reason or another. Hopefully it was an amicable split — because guess who is the only one now who has access to YOUR domain name? Yep: “Someone Else.”

And “Someone Else” doesn’t work for you any more! Bummer.

Here is another scenario:

You took the time to purchase your domain name yourself and used your own email. Yay! You did this part right. But then, down the line, you switch ISP’s and your email changes. You forget that your domain name is registered under your OLD email which you no longer have access to. Bummer again! Remember, if you switch emails, update your domain name before you make the switch so you can verify the change through your old email — that’s where the verification email will go.

The really big downside to both of these situations is this:

You are not getting renewal information if your domain name can’t find you! ICANN doesn’t care who owns a domain name. So if yours expires and someone else purchases it you will be out of luck. Think of all that money you spent in developing your website and marketing your website and having brochures, and business cards printed with your domain name that now belongs to someone else! And if you tattooed your domain name across your forehead Oh boy! Now your tattoo.com points to someone else’s site. Most likely a site belonging to scab who now wants to sell Viagra using your old domain name. And short of offering that scab a bunch of cash for your old domain name (and believe me, it won’t be cheap) you have lost that domain name forever.

Be careful. Protect your investment.

Why indeed? Let me tell you why — because blogs are like internet gold, that’s why. What? What am I talking about “internet gold”? What could I possibly mean? Well, hang tight. I’m going to tell you.

Blogs are the secret to getting to the top of the search engine rankings. And that, as we have discussed before, is the way to a successful website.

But how do they work, these blogs? And why is a blog so important to ranking?

Think of it this way. A blog is a frequently updated, naturally search-engine friendly addition to your website. Blogs are text-rich, link-rich and have very little extraneous HTML. It’s like candy for search engines. They love it.

Check this out. If I write a blog post about Rapid City — anything about Rapid City, South Dakota and start blogging away about this or that thing that is happening in Rapid City and how happy we are in Rapid City and how Rapid City is the best city to live in ever — how many times have I written about Rapid City? How many times have I spelled out R-a-p-i-d C-i-t-y? And how many chances have I given a search engine to find me using the search terms Rapid City? What if I did a blog post a month or a week or twice a week and talk a little about Rapid City? All of those posts get indexed in my blog forever. How many times have I mentioned Rapid City then? It’s like compounding interest for my blog. Pretty soon I have my place cemented at the top of Google’s searches for Rapid City. Lucky me. Smart me.

Wait a minute, you say. If I have a blog what am I going to talk about? What could I possibly have to say that would be interesting? Really, it doesn’t matter. What have I written about so far in this blog? You know about marketing your site, how to resize images, SEO optimization, Friday Fun links to Matt Harding and how to configure your kid’s laptop. Sure all those posts have useful information for you (except maybe Matt Harding) But that isn’t really the point of the blog. Does the content have to be useful, entertaining, engaging? Well, it helps. I am sure people are coming to this site to find out a few things about the specific information I offer. But all that is a bonus for my readers.

The truth is, content wise, it really doesn’t matter– as long as I keep blogging I can talk about underwater basket weaving for all Google cares. I’ll end up being ranked #1 for underwater basket weaving in Rapid City — I mean, come on, how cool is that?

Seriously, what is going to happen is that when they search for a web developer in Rapid City, I am going to be right up there at the top. And that, my friends, is really internet gold.

Updated to add: You’re gonna love this — go to www.google.com and type in underwater basket weaving Rapid City.