This article is about how to create a second Facebook personal profile that is separate from your regular personal account.
We assume you have a regular Facebook personal account that you use to connect with friends and family.
You would like to set up a Facebook profile for other purposes. This profile should look like any regular profile. Read on to learn how to achieve this.
Table of Contents
Steps To Create A Second Facebook Profile
Here are the main steps. The rest of this article has detailed instructions.
- Create a separate email address
- Log out of your regular Facebook account
- Sign up for a new profile using the separate email address
- Make the profile look like a regular Facebook user
Before I describe each step in detail, I’ll cover some reasons why people set up a second profile. Then I’ll address some risks to this approach.
Reasons To Create A Second Facebook Profile
There are several legitimate reasons to create a second Facebook profile. By legitimate, I mean that the user doesn’t want to use the account for spam or illegal purposes.
Let’s take a look at some common reasons that Facebook hasn’t cracked down on.
Using Facebook to discuss personal or health issues
There are many private groups on Facebook whose members discuss and help each other with personal, psychological, and/or health issues.
Understandably, people reaching out to join these groups may want to use an alias account that can’t be tied to the profile that has their full name and personal details.
I believe that Facebook is well aware that many people use alias accounts to join some groups on the platform.
And I’ve never heard of anyone losing their account because of this. After all, the alias account is interacting on the platform by posting and commenting as a member in a moderated group. That’s not a spam account!
Separating a business page from your personal account
Facebook lets us create business pages to support our websites or offline businesses. However, you have to use a personal account to create business pages!
Do you really want to create a business page associated with all the holiday pics and humorous posts on your personal profile?
Many people don’t! We have a separate article that goes step by step through setting up a Facebook business page with an alternative profile account.
Can I Create A Second Facebook Account?
Facebook would prefer that we use a single account that connects all our online activity in every part of our lives.
The great advantage to their business is the current and historic data that they can tie to a single individual.
You can easily set up a separate personal account following the steps in this article. However, you must be aware that there are risks in doing so.
According to your contract with Facebook, if they decide that you are violating their terms and conditions then they have the right to shut down all your personal accounts.
You might not just lose your new account. You are also at risk of losing your regular personal account.
However, reports suggest that Facebook usually targets accounts that are involved in spam or inappropriate activity on the platform. Other accounts that “look” normal even if there is low activity are left alone.
Therefore, we advise that you take extra steps when setting up the new account to ensure that it doesn’t look like a dummy or spam account. These steps are described in the last step in this article.
Step 1: Creating A Separate Email
The key to setting up a separate Facebook personal account is to have a different email address than your regular account.
You can easily set up a new free email account using Gmail or many other service providers. Just be sure to keep a note of your account and password.
You will have to access the email account in order to validate a new Facebook account. You may also need to access the email address months later for further security steps.
Step 2: Log Out Of Your Regular Account
As well as logging out of the Facebook website, I advise that you log out of any Facebook apps.
Optional Step: Increase Your Privacy
As an optional step, you can use a VPN to hide your regular IP Address.
If you don’t have access to a VPN, you can use an incognito browser window.
You can also use a different browser than what you usually use. However, Facebook can be temperamental with some of the newer browsers. I tried to sign up with Microsoft Edge and kept getting errors. So, I switched to Firefox.
But I wouldn’t worry too much about any of this. You can skip this step and move on to Step 3.
Step 3: Set Up A Second Personal Profile
Go to the Facebook home page and click the sign-up button.
Enter the separate email address you created in step 1.
Step 4: Validate your email
This is why you don’t use the kind of burner email that you sign up for offers with and then forget the password.
Facebook sends a link to your email to validate the initial setup.
You also may need to log into this email account months later if you are changing some other security settings.
Step 5: Make This Account Look Real
I don’t want this new account to look like a dummy account to Facebook.
So, I like to add more details to the profile. This is optional.
However, it only takes a couple of minutes and I think it’s a good idea to avoid throwing up a red flag to Facebook with a bare-bones profile.
Profile details
I advise that you add the settings below.
- University
- Home town (nearest city)
- Other places lived (add one or more big towns with some dates)
If you’re from a big city and went to a big university, then use those details.
If you’re from SmallTownVille and attended Small Tech College, I suggest you pick the nearest big city and university.
Social signals
If your new Facebook profile is to support a new website, then you can add extra social signals in the Contact and Basic Info section.
- Website link
- LinkedIn link (if you also set up a LinkedIn persona to match the Facebook persona)
Another place to stash a link to your website is your Bio section.
I like to put “Founder of www.xyz.com” in there.
Profile picture and cover photo
Have you gone to the trouble of generating a fake headshot using ThisPersonDoesNotExist.com? Then upload it as your profile picture.
I don’t always bother. Instead, I might use Canva to create a 720×720 image with a big fancy letter for the initial of the user name.
I also use Canva to create a cover photo for the profile. There’s a specific template for this.