If you are setting up an account on Facebook, you need to be aware of several issues.

An individual can only have one personal Facebook account. Using multiple accounts violates Facebook’s terms of use, and may result in having one or more of your Facebook accounts shut down.

If you want to have two separate identities, one as a business person and the other as a friend and family member who wants to stay in touch, you are out of luck. You can create a Facebook “personal” account for your business, but then you can’t have a separate personal account.

There’s a bit of a way around this: set up a business fan page, which is different from a Facebook account. An individual Facebook user can set up multiple fan pages, one or more of which can relate to business concerns.

Businesses need to be choosy in who sets up their business fan pages. The key administrator for a business page cannot be reassigned. Until Facebook fixes this, the original administrator is permanent.

Recently we had a client whose employee set up a business page. When the employee left the company, there was no way to transfer administration of the page to the business owner. Luckily, the employee had left on good terms, so the owner was able to create a new fan page and work with the former employee to invite the old fans to the new page.

For this reason we recommend that the business owner initiates the business page setup with Facebook. Then, and only then, should the owner assign an employee to be an additional administrator for the page.

Do you want help setting up a Facebook fan page for your business or organization? Lakenetwork.net is offering a FREE workshop Tuesday, September 7, from 8:30 to 10 a.m. at our office in Eastlake, Ohio. The class size will be limited to 4 participants. We will be offering this workshop more than once. Click here to sign up for the workshop or register for information about our workshop series.

To find out more about Lakenetwork, visit our Web site at lakenetwork.net where you will find our online portfolio and links to sites we’ve designed.