From what I understand, if you put in a valid address in the info when you created your page, it will automatically turn it into a PLACE. Advantage – They can “check in” which is great for a store front/office. AND they have the option of offering Deals/Offers.  So I think each business needs to decide what they want to do before merging.  Hearing mixed reviews. 

Its a problem most businesses have. Most of my clients understand the value of a fan page and know that most interaction or content engagement would occur there. 

At the same time, they understand the benefits a ‘places’ page would bring especially if you have followers or fans with huge social capital. However, they were worried about 1) having two pages to manage, and 2) a customer having specific needs might end up on the wrong page and unaware of the other

I’m not sure how far facebook as come in fixing this but most people were concerned with losing some of their fan page functionality with merging both pages.

A suggestion perhaps could be to run the same posts/contests on both pages, and monitor the responses from both. That way analytics can be compared and then a proper strategy path would be clearer. This might be time consuming, but i guess communicating the message to customers or clients from the initial fan base, as well as having the functionality of the newly created fan page would be great. The information derived from monitoring could also prove valuable. 

Hope this helps

@leecg I have not played around that much with creating a Place after a Page has been created but I just did a little experiment where I changed one of my Pages to Local Business and it immediately looked like a Place Page combined with a Page.  But I could not find the place on my phone even though the Page looked like it had checkin capability.  There may be a lag time were it doesn’t show up or you may have to do it the was you did before like @alexandrevicente said and also create it on your phone.  But I suspect it may just be a lag before it shows up.

Also, when I did change the category I had all the standard Place page goodies like Deals and Recommendations.  So that’s good.  I changed it back and the checkins were gone as well as the Deals – so it may be something you want to experiment with.

@leecg I’ve just discovered that if you put in a street address, even if your business isn’t in the local business category, the business shows up as a place. I know that complicated things just a little bit more.

Hi Guys,

I’m dealing with a client who has this issue and had no idea it was such a problem. I found this article - http://www.dellanave.com/blog/2011/06/14/merging-your-facebook-place-page-with-fan-page/

Is this info still correct?

Nick

@positiveimHey Nick,

That info is outdated already. What you need to do is claim the secondary page by means of saying you own the place and entering the same address as the primary page. After that, you just go into the primary page’s settings, Resources and there you’ll have the option to merge the secondary into the primary page.

Lemme know if you need help with any of the steps.

P.S. – Keep in mind the only thing that will be kept from the secondary page will be that page’s fans. Everything else (photos, posts, etc) will go down the bin

@alexandrevicente

Awesome – thanks a lot!