Merge Facebook profiles for SEO?

[EugeneF]

We are considering merging facebook profiles for our three stores.  If we do this, users will not be able to "check in" at a location, but wouldn't it be better to have 4,000 fans on one profile than to have 2,500, 1,000, and 500 fans on the three profiles?  The main site for these stores is also an ecommerce site.

[BrianJGomez]

I would highly recommend against doing this....the model that Facebook wants multiple location businesses is have a Facebook Place account (which allows checkins) for each brick and mortar location and then a Facebook Page for the actual brand.

Even though it may seem appealing to get all those users and combine them, I would petition them on each of the individual Places pages to 'Like' THE Official Facebook page. Perhaps even incentivize them to do so with a fan gate or something like that.

If you do decide combine the stores into one page there are some downsides:

1. Not adhering to Facebook best practices for businesses which who knows what this could mean down the road but it's pretty clear that FB is serious about people following BP especially with regard to businesses.

2. Facebook has the ability to create local deals based on checkins, you obviously will lose this and the ability to do this going forward.

3. If you lump your locations together and someone tries to check in on their iPhone, they won't see your business but they'll have the ability to 'Add' it so they can check in. So basically the location you just merged will now exist again only you won't have control over it.