Facebook for business: know the risks

Facebook is an essential tool for businesses of all sizes. It’s a great way to communicate with your customers with a personal feel that you can’t get from a corporate website. It can provide calls to action, ads and promotions, a messaging service and a showcase for products and services, with the potential to reach nearly three billion users across the platform – without them having to step outside of a familiar service.

At the same time, creating and operating a Facebook presence brings potential hazards you might not be aware of. Last year, for example, a bug in Facebook’s code temporarily exposed the accounts of the admins behind Facebook business pages. Private detail of the official Banksy page, as well as a host of global political figures, were posted online. Facebook quickly fixed that bug, but incidents like this raise the question of just how private and secure your business page actually is.

First, the good news: industry experts agree that Facebook is overall a net positive for businesses. “The privacy concerns that apply to individuals don’t really apply to