Written by ContentPowered.com
For quite a while now, Twitter users have paid a lot of attention to verification. The verified user icon is a sought-after badge of honor, what with how hard it is to get. To an extent, it’s a visible symbol of your fame and brand recognition. It’s no surprise that when Facebook set up their own verification for popular public figures and brands, it would be swiftly dog piled with applicants.
What Does Verification Get You?
On Facebook, verifying your Page or Profile earns you a little blue circle with a white checkmark on the main about section of your account. It’s visible next to your display name and serves as a badge to tell users that your account was verified and you are who you claim to be. For examples, check out:
- https://www.facebook.com/Amazon
- https://www.facebook.com/TimTebow
- https://www.facebook.com/barackobama
All of them have the verified badge next to their account names. Furthermore, they also have the verified account badge next to their name in the search results, when you’re running a search for an account.
According to Facebook, verification is available to celebrities, journalists, government officials, popular brands, popular businesses and other high profile people and entities. The goal of verification, just as it is on Twitter, is to help users know that the account they follow is the person who they claim to be.
How to Verify a Facebook Page
Verification is an automatic process on Facebook’s end. That means you can’t initiate the process at all. There’s no verification form. There’s no option in the customer support or feedback forms to initiate a verification process. You can’t ask for verification at all. Facebook just needs to notice you, and your profile needs to meet certain unexplained criteria to be verified. If your account is reviewed and you don’t meet those criteria, you won’t earn verification. In fact, you very likely won’t even know you were passed over. The entire process is far from transparent.
As Facebook says, not all authentic profiles are verified. Facebook is saving the verification juice for only the most high profile entities, be they businesses or celebrities. For example;
- https://www.facebook.com/moz
- https://www.facebook.com/Steam
- https://www.facebook.com/meijer
All of these profiles are entities with fairly high exposure, at least in their regions, and none of them are verified.
Are You Safe Not Verifying?
As a short answer, yes, you’re fine not verifying. Facebook was late to the verification game, so users aren’t quite as trained to rely on verified users above all else. They’re used to seeing their favorite celebrities and entities without verification. Verification increases trust, but it’s not strictly necessary to be trusted at all.
Of course, the verification process exists to help combat impersonation online. If your business is suffering from impersonating accounts, you have another option. Simply visit the fake account and report it as impersonating your business. Facebook will examine the two and will remove the fake.
It’s also possible that reporting an impersonator puts you on a short list for verification. There’s no confirmation that this is true at all, but with a process as obtuse as Facebook’s verification internally, it can’t hurt.
Increasing the Chances of Verification
Many of the actions you can take to increase the likelihood of your account earning a verification badge are the same sort of actions you take to grow your profile.
Fill out your profile completely.
Make sure your page is an official representative of your business, not a fan page. An active profile is a good profile. A fully fleshed out profile is a great profile. Your About section should be filled with information that’s not just copied from your website’s About page. It should include links to other social profiles – more on that momentarily – and information that isn’t found anywhere else. Make it compelling. You may also consider uploading a few pictures of your business, that a scammer wouldn’t have access to in the first place.
Include links to other social media profiles you own, particularly Twitter if you have verification there. If Twitter considers you important enough to verify, it may influence whatever people or algorithms make the decision internally in Facebook. Of course, verifying on Twitter is a reward all its own. Having other established profiles helps keep users sure of which account is your s as well. It’s highly unlikely that someone looking to impersonate your business is going to be so dedicated and thorough that they created Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Instagram and any other accounts.
Link to your Facebook page from your primary website in a visible manner. A visible social media link in the footer of your homepage should be sufficient, though you should also have social sharing buttons on your blog articles. You can also include your Facebook link in your newsletter and any other communications you send out. This does two things; it gives your users a visible, ever-ready link to click to network with you, and it makes sure your users never have a reason to guess between your profile and an imposter.
If you have a physical location, fill out that information as well. If you have more than one, use your headquarters. Location information is something that a fake profile might not think to add, or might not want to add. It’s also something it might get wrong. If you have multiple regional locations, such as when you’re a large company or have a presence in multiple countries, you may consider having different social media profiles for each region. You see this most often with English/Spanish profiles, though it also happens quite frequently in multinational European companies.
And, of course, be proactive with reporting anyone trying to impersonate your business online. They may not be able to do direct harm to your business, but they can cause a slow leak in trust, particularly if they manage to rack up higher social numbers than your main profile. You, of course, don’t want to pay for likes or followers; they have no reason not to.
After all of that, the only thing you can do is wait and hope Facebook decides your page is worthy of verification. Don’t get your hopes up; it’s rare. Still, it can happen.
