As purveyors of the world wide web, we get to see all parts of the web – the good, the bad, the ugly. We also see areas for improvement and notice when things need attention. One of our more recent finds was the amount of blank Facebook Fan Pages.

Since the introduction of Facebook Places, that allow facebook users to “check-in” to a physical location via the Facebook app on their smartphone, many more “places” now seem to exist on Facebook. This can be a good and bad thing for your facility. The first thing this does is create a virtual “place” or Page on Facebook for your facility – whether you like it or not. Facebook has made it possible for users to check-in to place that don’t have any existence at all on Facebook yet. This seems like a very smart thing for Facebook to do (in order to get more people to “claim” these pages that become created), however if you don’t want a Facebook page for your facility, then you will have to do some work in order to remove it from Facebook.

The good thing is you probably want a Facebook page for your golf course. We don’t see too many golf courses that don’t already have a Facebook fan page, however there are still quite a few that don’t have one at all.

So what can you do if your “Page” on Facebook has already been created because someone has checked in at your physical location? You can claim that page as your own and start gathering fans! Facebook will make you verify that you are actually an employee at that facility, but make sure you do this before someone else tries something malicious like posting negative content to that page before you can take control of it.

What if you don’t do anything at all about a Facebook page that has been created without your knowledge? Well, some people will probably keep “checking-in” to your location and hopefully nothing else. But why not promote your golf course on the most visited website in the world?