How to Use Facebook’s “Merge Duplicate Pages” Feature to Gain Fans

The following is an excerpt of a complete article available in our Facebook Marketing Bible.

Your official Facebook Page may not be getting all the fans it deserves because users are accidentally Liking unofficial community Pages with the same name. These missing fans cost you news feed impressions and clicks and ad targeting opportunities. Fortunately, Facebook now offers the “Merge duplicate pages” tool to allow you to roll fans from duplicate community Pages into your official Page.

In the full version of this article found in the Facebook Marketing Bible, we discuss why using the tool is important, how to use it to gain new fans, how to eliminate other duplicate pages, and how to properly greet the new fans of your Page to prime them for future engagement. Below is an excerpt.

You want users to Like your official Page, not any of their unofficial community Pages, because you can only market to your official Page’s fans. To eliminate unofficial Pages, you should merge with any duplicate community Pages with the same name as their official Page, and report all differently named community Pages as duplicates.

Go to your Page and click “Edit Page”, then click the “Resources” tab, and then select “Merge duplicate pages”. You’ll then see a list of any duplicate community Pages that are eligible to be rolled into your Page. To qualify, the community Page must at least have an identical name to the official Page. If you don’t see any eligible Pages, check back in a few weeks as Facebook may expand eligibility to similar but not identical Pages.

The merge tool only works for community Pages with exactly the same name as the official Page. Therefore, you may not find the duplicates you were hoping to merge with in the tool. Admins have two sensible options in this situation:

Report the Pages as DuplicatesWait and hope that Facebook will allow non-identical duplicate Pages to be merged in the future.

New fans quietly added to an official Page may be confused as to why they’re suddenly seeing new content in their news feed. If admins are posting frequently and don’t greet users, they may receive spam reports which can reduce the visibility of their posts in the news feed.

To avoid this and get users excited about being part of your fan community, consider publishing a welcome message that lets them know you care about their Facebook user experience and explains the value your Page can offer them.

By following these steps, you can boost your Page’s Like count with new fans that are eager for your content. This in turn increases the value of your Page’s other marketing efforts.

A complete walk-through of the tool, a discussion of when it’s best to report non-identical Pages as duplicates, and more sample greeting messages can be found in the full version of this article available in the Facebook Marketing Bible, Inside Network’s complete guide to marketing and advertising through Facebook. 

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Facebook Allows Duplicate Community Pages to Be Merged Into Official Pages

Facebook has added a new “Merge” option to the Resources tab of the Page editor. It allows Page admins to apply to roll duplicate community Pages into an identically named official Page they control, adding the fans and check-ins of the community Pages to the official Page. Facebook has privately done this kind of merger in the past for prominent celebrities and businesses, but the option has never before been publicly available.

The merge tool will allow official Page admins to gain the ability to publish content to and target with ads users who’ve accidentally Liked an unofficial version of their Page, helping some Pages instantly grow to their rightful size.

For background, Facebook has two kinds of Pages: official, and community. Official Pages are those purposefully created by a user to represent a business, public figure, or piece of content they own, and they have the ability to publish content to those that Like them. Community Pages are created when users create a new Place to check in, or add something without an existing Page to their Likes, work places, or education history. Community Pages have no admins or ability to publish content to the news feed.

Sometimes users accidentally create or Like community Pages for things that have an official Page. These duplicate community Pages clutter the search experience and confuse users trying to Like the official Page of something they care about. This led Facebook to at one point offer a merge tool for duplicate Places, but bugs and misunderstanding of how to use the tool led to issues so Facebook removed it. Recently, Facebook launched the Places Editor to get users to flag duplicate Pages.

Previously, when prominent official Pages found they were missing thousands or even millions of fans that were scattered on various community Pages, Facebook has agreed to merge the Pages. In one situation, this led soccer player Lionel Messi to gain seven million fans in seven hours. This was only available to admins who had an direct line of communication with Facebook, though, such as big advertisers and celebrities.

Now, any Page admin can apply to have Pages merged through the “Merge duplicate pages” tool in the Page editor’s Resources tab. Instructions for the tool can be found in the Help Center documentation, confirming that this isn’t just a limited test.

If there are any eligible community Pages with identical names to the official Page being edited, admins can select them and initiate the merge. Admins can apply merge up to five community Pages at a time, and can submit multiple merge requests. Facebook will then take a few days to verify the application and ensure the Pages are in fact duplicates.

If approved, Facebook will take the fans and check-ins from the community pages and add them to the admin’s official Page. No other content from the community Pages is carried over, the official Page’s content will remain unchanged, and the newfound fans of the official Page are not notified of the change. The Help Center states that “merging is irreversible”, so admins should be sure they know what they’re doing.

The option should excite Page admins, as they may have the opportunity to quickly add people who truly care about their Page to their Like count. It should improve the Facebook experience for Page admins who’ll no longer have to ask “why can’t I market to these people who were clearly trying to Like my Page”.

Mergers will lead to more news feed impressions and clicks of a Pages links, helping the drive a return on investment on their Facebook marketing. All Page admins should check to see if there are any community Pages eligible for them to merge.

Update: Some admins are reporting that even though there are duplicate community Page versions of their official Page, they aren’t showing up as elegible for a merge in the tool. Facebook may be expanding eligibility slowly as it monitors the initial usage of the new product. If you don’t see any eligible Pages now, check back in a few weeks as Facebook may expand eligibility to similar but not identical Pages.

For Facebook Page marketing and advertising strategies, visit the Facebook Marketing Bible.

[Thanks to Eti Suruzon for the tip]

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