I wanted to share a recent Facebook calamity in the hopes of preventing others enduring a similar experience.

Facebook (or Meta) has a couple of new features: New Pages Experience and the addition of Business Portfolios. These are being rolled out now. The New Pages Experience so far just moves everything around so you have to hunt for settings and options. At least that’s my experience.

Business Portfolios sound great—gathering all your pages in one place for easier management. However, Facebook created a Business Portfolio for me (UGH) and named it Local Means Business, not Local Business Institute. It automatically put our LBI page in the portfolio. OK, no harm done.

When I went to post on the LBI Facebook page, I got a popup that said I was invited to be an admin on Local Means Business and I could accept or decline. My scammer/hacker antenna shot up. We haven’t used Local Means Business in years. So I declined, thinking it was a phishing attack. It wasn’t. I lost control of our Facebook page because it deleted me as an admin.

BEWARE!

If you haven’t seen this yet, you will at some point. Even if this had said Local Business Institute, I would have been concerned because I’m already an admin. Either close the popup every time you see it or accept it. I did regain admin status on our page but it took 5 hours of information searches, 6 videos, a panicked call to two pros (of which I am not) and finally an email to a former partner who set up the page originally. If you don’t know this (I didn’t), whoever created your Facebook page retains ownership and access even if they are not listed as an admin.

I hope you all read this and say “You didn’t know that!.” But if it helps even one person avoid this particular Facebook nightmare, I’ve done my job. Happy posting!