Geschreven op vrijdag 2 april 2010 door Joke De Nul.

In the comments on our previous post ‘Facebook: Group or Page?’ Wouter asked us how you can determine the administrator of a Facebook Page. Unlike a Facebook Group, where the name of the admin is clearly mentioned in the sidebar, the name of a Page admin is not to be found on the Page itself. Facebook even acknowledges this in it’s Help Section: ‘If you're a group admin, your name will appear on that group, while Pages will never display their admins' names.’

So... impossible? Not entirely. While there is no official and watertight way of knowing who a Page’s admin is, by making a logical deduction you can be fairly sure on a Page’s administrator.

But first of all, why would this information be relevant to your interests? Well, if a person outside of your company has made a Page about your brand of company, this might be valuable knowledge to take further action.

Find Fan Number One

A Facebook Page always has a creator: a person who has a personal profile, has created the Page and invited his or her friends to become a fan of their Page. Not inviting friends makes it very hard to build a successful page with meaningful conversations or interactions. Pages rarely grow successful organically if they have no fan base to start with. Therefore, logically, the first fan will be a friend of the admin, most likely the admin himself or herself.

How to find Fan Number One: 
Go to a Facebook Page, on the left-hand side of the Page you see a box Fans, click on See All and a box pops up showing you a list of all fans, in reverse chronological order. Scroll down and/or click on Next to go back to the first page in that box. The first fan will most likely be the Page’s admin or a person in the admin’s friend list.

So now what?

According to Facebook’s Terms "only official representatives of an organization, business, celebrity, or band, (...) can create a Page (...) to represent (an) organization on Facebook.” This implies that a Page is legally owned by the organization it promotes on that very Page and if a Page is not administered by that legal representative, that Page can be reported and Facebook can take action, most likely remove the Page.

Hold your horses: the Page about your brand might already have a large fanbase, making valuable comments, having useful interactions about your product or business. So it might be interesting to take over the Page instead of having it deleted. By determining who the creator and head administrator is, you can contact this person, ask to be added as an admin and add content to your own Page and thus engage with your fans. The creator can make you admin by promoting you from fan to admin, or by adding your email address in the admin panel.

However, you should know that the creator of a Page can never be removed from the Page as admin, not by other admins, not by his or her own doing. The only way to remove a creator is to delete the Page entirely.

This leads us to a number of questions: if a Page is made within a company for that company, who should be the creator and thus ‘non-removable’ admin? What if that person leaves the company? Is it better to take over a Page and let the creator see your stats or to remove that Page and go back to square one?

Conclusion

The best scenario is starting a Facebook Page for your brand, company or product yourself. Also, be sure to appoint the right person or people to represent your brand online. A very good starting point would be Social Media Strategy and a Social Media Policy.