Networking is a big part of our industry and Facebook is the current trend, so I wanted to start a discussion on that. Mainly, I wonder whether it's better to use a personal page and add friends, or set up a professional fan page where you must make them like it in order to "add" them. I see a lot of professionals use their personal page and many have already reached 5000 friends. I am kind of reluctant to start using mine that way, because I may distance my real friends if all I post is art related and there are total strangers liking and commenting on it. What I don't like about fan pages is that you can't like and comment on people's posts unless they are on your page. So joining groups like Team awesome is not possible as a fan page. You can't also get bigger audience, unless they decide to like your page. As a normal user you can add friends and be the active one. I know you can set the visibility of each post so that only certain people can see it, but I'm still not sure if I want that many people on my personal page.
So I'd like to ask people who have a fan page or personal page with a bigger number of friends (only 87 on mine) or likes: how is it? Is it manageable? If you use your personal page how are your art unrelated friends reacting? Are you allowed to have a personal life anymore?
In short, I'm wondering what's the best course of action. I find a personal page to be much more versatile, because we are individuals and not corporations and the fan pages seem to be tailored with that in mind. I would create a separate personal page for my art, but if FB detects that we are the same person (and they will) I will be forced to delete it.
What are your thoughts on that?
So I'd like to ask people who have a fan page or personal page with a bigger number of friends (only 87 on mine) or likes: how is it? Is it manageable? If you use your personal page how are your art unrelated friends reacting? Are you allowed to have a personal life anymore?
In short, I'm wondering what's the best course of action. I find a personal page to be much more versatile, because we are individuals and not corporations and the fan pages seem to be tailored with that in mind. I would create a separate personal page for my art, but if FB detects that we are the same person (and they will) I will be forced to delete it.
What are your thoughts on that?