Facebook Admin Roles – Manager, Content Creator, Moderator, Advertiser, Insights Analyst
***UPDATE 5/24/13*** – I’m seeing a lot of comments below from people saying that when they try to add admins they get a message that reads: “We weren’t able to add all your new admins. You can only add your friends or people who already like this Page.” I’ve suggested to some that they make sure they are “viewing” Facebook as their individual user “profile” (human account), not as their business organization and then add admins. This seems to have be the solution but because many aren’t reading the comments I thought I’d bump this instruction up to the top. Again, switch to view FB from your profile rather than your page and then you should be able to add admins.
Summary: Facebook recently changed their business/organization page admin process, now allowing for 5 different levels of access. This update is great for security and limiting access for certain individuals. At the same time, Facebook has failed to address the clunky process of actually adding new admins.
Given how often things seem to change at Facebook, particularly when it comes to business pages, I’m always hesitant to write posts on new features because the information will likely be outdated within months. For this reason I delayed writing this post after Facebook first announced the creation of 5 different admin roles for pages, but after working on several pages in recent weeks before passing off control to clients, it’s clear that this information will be helpful for both our clients and anyone else who works with Facebook company/brand/organization pages.
Up until 2 months ago, Facebook pages were controlled simply by “admins” (personal “profile” accounts). There weren’t different levels of access. Any admin could remove any of the others and could control everything on the page the same way all other admins could. By adding admin “roles”, Facebook now allows for more security and control by defining exactly what each admin can do with the page. Check out this helpful table they put together to explain:
From limiting what employees can control (in case they leave the company on bad terms, etc.) to only allowing advertising specialists to access what they need in order to manage your ads, Facebook has clearly defined exactly what each type of admin is capable of. Among the most important differences among admin roles is the fact that only “managers” can add/remove other admins.
Adding Facebook Admins
Before I explain how you, as your Facebook page’s manager, can add new admins, I want to outline the current (as of 7/31/12) requirements. In the earlier days of Facebook “pages”, you could only make “friends” admins of your page. At some within the last year or so, Facebook began allowing you to make people who “like” your page (formerly known as “fans”) admins. As far as I can tell, Facebook allows you to make both “likes” and “friends” admins, but the process by which you add a “like” is a little chaotic.
Adding Friends as Facebook Admins
A couple of things before you get started. Obviously connect as “friends” with the person you want to make an admin before you do anything else. Additionally, it’s important that you make sure you haven’t chosen the option to “use Facebook as Your Company Name”, because “pages” can’t have “friends”. Look at the top of your screen and if you see that you are using FB as the “page”, switch back so you’re using your account as your human self.
Once you’re ready to add your new admins and assign roles, go to your company/organization Facebook page and click edit page near the top of your screen and click “Admin Roles” in the drop-down menu. That will take you to this screen where you can type any of your “friends’” names in the field (autocomplete will assist) and select which level of access you’d like to grant them
Review the table from earlier in this post to determine which level of access you’d like to grant to each individual user.
Adding People Who “Like” Your Page as Facebook Admins
You can add people who “like” your page in the same manner, but you’ll have to know the user’s Facebook login email address. You can’t however add someone if you know their email address, but they haven’t liked your page. The latter makes a little more sense than the former, but the entire situation is a bit of a mess. The main issue obviously being that it’s unlikely you’d have the email addresses of the people who “like” your page, so you won’t be able to add them as admins. Obviously the solution is to ask them to like your page (if they haven’t already) and then ask for their email address, but that seems like more effort than just becoming friends with the person in the first place.
What’s really frustrating about the “adding a like as an admin” process, though, is something that seems to be a relic of an old process that hasn’t been cleaned up. At some point, in the recent past (within the last year), you could access a list of all of the people who “like” your page and “add them as admins directly from that screen. The process still exists, but it’s useless because it breaks down right at the end (when you would enter the name/email address of the user). All of that said, I’ll still show you how the process works just in case someone at FB notices the issue and works the bugs out in the near future.
1. On your FB page, click “See all” in the “Insights” area:
2. Click to the “Likes” section from your Insights Overview page
3. Once in the “Likes” section, click the “See Likes” link on the right side of the page:
4. This should bring up an overlay that contains a scrollable list of all of the people who “like” your Facebook page:
As you can see, there is a “Make Admin” button next to each user’s name. Again clicking on these buttons to make a “like” an admin worked in the recent past, but if you follow through this process you’ll see that it simply takes you back to your admin roles screen where you’ll need to enter the name of a friend or email address of a “like” in order to make them an admin. My assumption is this is just sloppy transition left-overs like the Google Analytics “old version” item I wrote about yesterday. Issues which obviously don’t look great for two of the most successful companies in the modern world, but what are you going to do?
How Should You Add Admins to Your Page?
As explained above, Facebook’s entire process is a bit of a mess, but adding users who are your “friends” is probably the easy way. Even if you aren’t already friends with the person, the friend request/accept process is still quicker than trying to obtain the email address of someone who likes your page. In most cases, I’d recommend going the “friend” route.
Have you had any particularly interesting success stories (or horror stories!) with Facebook admin management? Please tell us about them in the comments below and feel free to post any questions you may have. And of course, email us today if you’d like any help managing your Facebook page or any of your other social media profiles.
I’m proud to say that we have never received the dreaded “Unnatural Links” warning message from Google Webmaster tools for ANY of our clients… unless you count former clients who left to pursue link buying 
Today we’re really excited to announce our renewed partnership with the
Follow / Fan Us