Facebook Account Deactivation – Can It Be Avoided?

I just got off the phone with yet another Facebook friend who had his account deactivated by Facebook with no warning. In the past ten days or so, several more people in my community contacted me asking if I knew how to get their Facebook accounts reactivated.

Of all the social networks, Facebook certainly appears to have the most rigorous Terms of Use – certainly when it comes to enforcing those terms. Facebook has all kinds of complex algorithms and ‘bots set up to trawl the platform. On the one hand, I especially appreciate Facebook because of these tight Terms of Use:

• You can only have one (personal) Account and it has to be in your real name.
• There are no fake or duplicate accounts allowed.
• You can’t have a (personal) account in the name of a business. Fortunately you can set up Facebook Pages to represent your business on Facebook.

Because of these particular terms, we can pretty much rest assured that in say, 95% of cases, when you’re friending and interacting with someone on Facebook – it really is that person.

But, on the other hand, Facebook’s tight terms often flag perfectly legit accounts and, unfortunately, terminate those profiles – frequently with no warning at all.

I compare this to having your spam filters on your regular email too high where you end up inadvertently directing a bunch of bona fide email to your junk folder. It seems Facebook’s filters are a tad too tight!

Here are some possible reasons your account may be deactivated:

1. You send “too many” friend requests in one day/session.
2. You make “too many” wall posts in one day/session – especially with verbatim content and with links.
3. You copy and paste the same friend request message “too many” times.
4. You send too many identical emails to individual friends and/or friend lists*.
5. You message your Group members “too many” times.
6. You message your Event invitees “too many” times.

Are you noticing a theme here?! Yes, it’s all about limitations … BUT, Facebook have not published these types of limitations anywhere! The one exception which is in the Terms of Use is that you can’t join more than 200 Groups.

Along with going over the “too many” limitations, here are another couple of possible reasons your account could be deactivated:

1. You’ve reached the 5,000 friend limitation and your pending friend requests are building up beyond a certain point. This happened just recently to a popular internet marketer and she was forced to start all over again. (If you’re in this situation, be sure to keep your requests managed. I came up with this solution: ConnectWithMari.com).
2. Facebook suspects you of impersonating someone else. This happened to Virtual Assistant, Erin Blaskie, and it was absolutely not true. Erin ended up seeing the lighter side of the situation and made a fun video for YouTube: I Was Banned From Facebook – Game Show Parody

It’s possible you won’t have your account deactivated for the above reasons, but you may find yourself being blocked from certain specific activities, e.g. you may be temporarily blocked from messaging your Event invitees and/or writing on your friends’ Walls.

Recommended action steps

1. Take your time to build up a strategic network of friends on Facebook.Focus on quality, not quantity. Your social circle will grow naturally over time anyway. Think of it this way: there are currently 125 million active members on Facebook (predicted to be 500 million by 2011) and you can “only” be friends with 5,000 of those members!
2. Send no more than approximately 20 new friend requests at any one time.  This number may be very conservative. Also, be sure to mix up the friend request messages.
3. Use your own opt-in email system.
   
   When using the Facebook Events app, be sure to have your friends opt-in to your own email list so you can broadcast the dial-in information from your own systems.
4. Build out your Facebook Page.I’ve yet to hear of a Page being deactivated – Pages get indexed and help with your and Facebook’s search engine ranking.
5. Include Facebook in your overall marketing strategy.  You may also be using blogging, article marketing, press releases, teleseminars, webinars, radio interviews, your own BlogTalkRadio show, HubPages, Squidoo lenses, TV interviews, Google Adwords, live seminars, sample consultations, and much, much more.
6. Don’t put all your social networking “eggs” in one basket.Build up a following on Twitter. And, use FriendFeed, Plaxo, LinkedIn, etc.
7. Remember there was life before Facebook. And there would be life after Facebook if ever anything happened to the platform or company. I believe they are a giant and are here to stay, however, it’s important to put their power in perspective.

Here’s a thought for Facebook’s monetization plan:

Would you pay for a more unrestricted Facebook account? For the ability to add unlimited friends? And create Groups of unlimited size? Facebook have g
iven themselves three years to come up with a lucrative revenue model. I appreciate implementing paid levels vs. free levels of membership has all kinds of programming implications. But I’ll bet a certain percentage of members would go for the unrestricted paid access in a heartbeat. I’d pay $10-$30/month – how about you?

[Psst – you heard it here first: stay tuned for an incredible new social network + membership site + ecommerce platform launching in early 2009!!]

Mari Smith

Often referred to as “the Queen of Facebook,” Mari Smith is widely known as the Premier Facebook Marketing Expert and a top Social Media Thought Leader. Forbes describes Mari as, “… the preeminent Facebook expert. Even Facebook asks for her help.” IBM named Mari as one of seven women that are shaping digital marketing. Mari is an in-demand keynote speaker, corporate social media strategist, dynamic live webcast host, and popular brand ambassador. She is coauthor of Facebook Marketing: An Hour A Day, and author of The New Relationship Marketing.

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