Facebook places for Local businesses: A Complete Guide

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Want to have your own business show up within Facebook Places? For companies that have a physical location it makes sense to have a Facebook Place in order to track the people who are stopping by your store, restaurant, office or venue.

Everyone wants to know, “How do I add my business to Facebook Places.” And why wouldn’t they, Facebook Places has become much more appealing for businesses large and small. Let’s take a moment to talk about what Facebook Places are, then we will go over how to add your business to Facebook Places and more..

According to Facebook, “Places is a Facebook mobile application that allows you to see where your friends are and share your physical location. You can check in to nearby Places to tell your friends where you are, tag your friends in the Places you visit, and view comments your friends have made about the Places you visit. Use Places to experience Facebook in a completely new way by connecting with your friends in the real world.”

So Facebook Places allow you to see where your friends are. You can also share your location. This has massive implications for businesses who would like people to check in at their place. Because of this, businesses are chomping at the bit to add their listing on Facebook Places. If you are looking to add your business to Facebook Places, this is what you need to do.

Create Or Claim Your Place – Step 1

Search for your business name via the facebook search bar, if the your business is exist, Click on it. If it not exists or nobody has checked in to your restaurant or shop, you can quickly create it by loading up the Facebook app for smart phone such as Iphone, blackberry or Facebook for touch devices, then click on “Add” or the “+” sign depending on what you are using.

Claim The Place As Yours – Step 2

You’ll need to log in to Facebook and search for the Place that you’ve created or check in to.

1. Once you find your business’s place, click the link at the bottom left of that says “Is this your business?”
2. You will be directed to a claiming flow. They will ask you to verify that you are the owner through a phone verification process, or you may be asked for document verification.

Facebook’s Guide to Facebook Places

Take a look through or download Facebook‘s guide to Places. You will find the whole process on how to claim your place.

Merge Your facebook Place & business Page – Step 3

The final step is to merge the Place and the Page once you’ve completed the verification process. The result is a combined Page which effectively serves as a local business page. The design is substantially different from existing Facebook Pages.

Facebook is offering the ability to MERGE your Place Page with your Business Page – assuming that you have an obvious connection between the two. In other words, if you have multiple locations with multiple Place Pages, you can’t merge all of them into one Page.

For some small businesses, this new merged Page might be ideal. On other hand, many business owners are extremely dissatisfied and confused by the merge.

Advantages To Merged Page:

For some businesses with a physical location, a merged Page may prove to be more advantageous.

The benefits of a merged Page include:

• You have one central location to manage your Facebook fans and activity.
• You can appeal to those early adopters who are all into location based services and love to check-in (or you can educate them how to do so!).
• You will have a totally new facebook page look, see Ellen page example above. This can be a disadvantage too

Disadvantages Of Merged Page:

• Just like the new Profile layout, all your tabs disappear along the top and are now links down the left hand column.
• You cannot set a default landing tab – so all that work and money you put into having a beautiful custom landing tab has gone to waste.
• The central focus is the Bing map plus links that were previously on your Info tab.
• Even for Facebook users who have liked the page, it’s not easy or obvious where to write on the wall. The page lands on “Profile” by default and users have to click “Wall” to be able to make a post.

How to merge Facebook page with facebook place

Now you can go back and visit the Place, Scroll to the lower left and you’ll see the new link to “Merge with existing Page.”

Your Admin view of your Page will also display check-in information in addition to visit information.

How to unmerge Facebook place from Business page?

Facebook has now added the option to unmerage your facebook Place Page and facebook Fan Page. Scroll to the lower left and you’ll see the new link to “Unmerge all Merged Places.”

Facebook’s Guide to Facebook Places

Take a look through or download Facebook‘s guide to Places. You will find the whole process on how to claim your place and why you should merge.

In three easy steps you’ve claimed your facebook place and merged it with your Facebook Page. Now, what do you think is the best way to approach facebook Places for people and businesses?

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Tagged as: facebook for local business, facebook page, facebook places, local businesses, merge facebook place

Article by Faissal Alhaithami

Entrepreneur, Social Media Specialist @Kataraqatar, gladly the founder of Fansbridge. Trainer and Keynote Speaker and the Author of Facebook marketing for smart people.

Faissal has written 53 awesome articles for us at Fans bridge blog

Twitter: @alhaithami | Facebook | Google+