You may not be on Facebook and you may not have an interest in ever setting up a page. This doesn’t mean, however, that your farm doesn’t have a Facebook page.
Right now, your farm could have a Facebook page that people are posting to or asking questions on without you being there.
Community Pages, created by Facebook in 2010, were designed to be dedicated to a topic or an experience to help users connect with each other over shared interests. Community Pages don’t have owners and are sometimes called “unofficial” pages.
What does this mean?
Well, if you’ve ever given a tour or had an event at your farm in which people shared their experience, Facebook used the location and potentially any hashtags to create an unofficial Community Page for your farm.
These pages exist without owners gathering posts, videos, and photos about their experience.
What does this mean to your farm?
Even if you’ve never set foot inside of Facebook, your farm might already have an unofficial page. You may think it’s unlikely, but I would argue the opposite.
I’ve helped hundreds of farmers discover and take control of their farm’s Facebook page.
You know when the worst time is to discover you have an unofficial Facebook Community page? When you are in a crisis or having a serious issue. You don’t want to add social media problems on top of this.
What can you do about this?
Search for your farm on Facebook. It might not be the exact name of your farm, so be broad in your search terms. You can search Google as well, but it’s not as effective.
What happens when you find an unofficial Community page about your farm?
First, confirm that it is an unofficial Community page. If it is an Official Facebook page, you need to contact the owners of the page through private message to see who is controlling it.
If it’s an unofficial page, then follow these instructions. You can tell it is an “unofficial” community because it will say it in small text on the right hand side of the page.
- Click on “Is this your business?” link.
- If you have a Facebook page already, then you can merge the two pages together. If you don’t have a page, you will need to claim it.
- You can claim the page with a business phone number or proper ownership documents (utility bills).
Just because you don’t find an unofficial Facebook Community page about your farm now doesn’t mean you are out of the woods. A page can be created any time you have a tour or an event or even when an employee “checks into” the farm. It’s better to create an official Facebook farm page and post the content that you want people to find when looking for your farm.
If you need help creating a Facebook farm page, you can reach out to your local checkoff at www.dairy.org/local-checkoff or read my previous post “A Beginner’s Guide to Setting Up A Facebook Farm Page.” You can also reach out to me at don.schindler@dairy.org.
If you are a dairy farmer and would like to know more about your national checkoff, you can join our Dairy Checkoff Facebook Farmer Group or visit dairy.org.
