Transfer Page Ownership Facebook

Take deep breath #1.

In this post, I will first differentiate the administrator roles in Facebook.  Secondly, I will Chat through a few scenarios that may have happened to you. Lastly, I will close with a solution to help you transfer page ownership on Facebook or rather re-claim ownership of your page.

Stay with me, this isn’t going to be a 5-minute solution, however, if you NEED to re-claim ownership on your page this is a solution.

Differentiating administrator roles

One of the most confusing aspects, when Business managers came into play, was the new hierarchy in the admin roles across Facebook. Differentiating these roles is crucial in minimising issues along the way.

The super administrator

The super administrator has claimed the Facebook page in the Facebook business manager. This means you’ve claimed ownership of the Facebook page you now have trumped all the page admins.  This also means that your business manager is now the ultimate admin of that page.

Regular administrator

If you are a regular administrator it means that you are an admin of the Facebook page but actions affecting the ownership are not possible. When the page was claimed by a business manager you were pushed to second in command.

There are 3 symptoms so to speak that may occur on the back end of your Facebook page which is a sure sign that another business manager has claimed page ownership of your Facebook page.

You don’t recognise the page owner

“Someone has claimed ownership of my Facebook page”

This first scenario often occurs when someone (or an inexperienced agency) accidentally ‘adds your page’ (i.e. claims your page) in their Facebook Business Manager, rather than ‘requesting access to your page’. Seems like such a small detail that inevitably leads us into this transfer page ownership process of your Facebook page I will describe below.

In short, ALWAYS ‘request access’ and NEVER ‘add a page‘, in less you, and only you own the page and will be advertising for this page. See the photo below for how you would add your page.

You aren’t able to connect your Instagram business

“Instagram connection failed not an administrator”

This second scenario will send you in a massive circle of disconnecting and reconnecting Instagram to your Facebook page. Perhaps you even try the old switch back to a personal Instagram page (losing all your business data) and switching back to a professional Instagram account. All troubleshooting steps will find the same pesky connection failed message. Talk about a frustrating circle.

This could be happening to you, either on desktop (above) or on mobile (edit profile, click on your page, confirm connection). You hit the final ‘confirm connection’ button, however, the system will not respond or give you the circle load and then send you back to the connection page.

By now you’re starting to get the memo that you’re not ACTUALLY the page admin.

Don’t fall victim to this vicious scenario, deep breath #2, we will get through this.

You don’t receive page requests or business manager emails

“Not getting facebook business manager requests”

The third scenario will be a telltale sign that you’re not actually the super administrator in control of the page.

Your agency may request access to your page via FBM, or they may request to partner with your page, however, you do not get a notification in Facebook or even an email to accept this request to manage the page.

They might try to cancel the request and re-add the page various times however the request is floating out in space never to be accepted. In FBM you may see the old ‘pending request’ and you might notice the owned by section ID is not recognisable.

The solution is below

At this stage you can try to rack your brain and contact the listed ‘Page Owner’, perhaps this is an old agency, past business partner, a millennial friend who set you up with a business manager way back.

If you CAN get in contact with your super administrator then it is quite simple to have them remove your page from their FBM with a few clicks. Once they’ve removed your page, ownership will go back to the Facebook page admins (which should be you/your client).

If it is NOT possible and let’s be honest, that’s probably why you’re here, then we’ll move through the steps below to transfer page ownership on Facebook.

Another DEEP breath. 

Step 1: Gather the necessary details & documents

When you want to transfer page ownership across Facebook you will need the following:

1. A copy of a valid government-issued photo ID of the individual signing the statement. You can find the different kinds of IDs Facebook accepts in the link below. https://www.facebook.com/help/159096464162185

2. A signed statement from the business owner which includes all of the below items: a. A description of your relationship to the Page (including your authority to request a change in the person(s) who manage the Page, as applicable), also include that you would like this Page removed from the Business Manager that it is owned in; b. The name of the current person(s) who manage the Page, as applicable;

c. The relationship of the above person(s) to the Page; An explanation of your request, and whether there has been a termination of the employment and/or business relationship with the named person(s), as applicable; d. All documentation supporting your request (Business License or certificate of incorporation under the business Page’s name to prove requester’s authority over the business);

e. The Facebook account and email address associated with the Facebook account that you wish to have added as the new admin of the Page;

f. A declaration that the information you have provided is true and accurate (e.g. “I certify that the information provided is true and accurate”) – your statement must include similar language.

Step 2: Initiate Facebook chat & submit the above details.

Visit: https://www.facebook.com/fmp/partner-toolkit/support/operational

For some reason the above link only works on mobile, I’ve not been able to access the chat on a desktop for some time. Once you’re on the page above on your mobile device you can scroll down and a blue ‘contact us’ bar should pop up. Once you click this you can either click chat or email. The chat function will pop out a message on Facebook Messenger. You can then explain to the representative that you’d like to submit your documents to transfer page ownership of your Facebook page.

The representative will ask you to submit your documents straight in the Messenger chat (so easy), and they will submit your request to their team internally.

Step 3: Await Approval

Time frames aren’t exact I’ve seen this done between 2 and 30 days. I always make sure to tell the representative to ‘escalate’ this request and they generally can.

Once your request has been approved you will then see the page owner will be updated and/or the page admins updated if you weren’t already there.