As great a tool as Facebook is, one thing that Mark Zuckerberg and company don’t do well is explain to users which of their services best suit their needs. For comedians, this leads to a lot of confusion about whether you should have a Facebook Fan Page, a Facebook Group, or just use your personal Facebook profile page to promote your projects. I believe there’s a clear answer to this confusion and it’s that you should be using a Fan Page – here’s a couple reasons why…

Facebook Fan Pages Allow For Unlimited Fans

I know lots of comedians who use their personal profile pages as their primary Facebook presence and that’s usually fine..until they discover that you’re only allowed to have a maximum of 5,000 “friends” on your personal profile. And Facebook Groups are only allowed to have 1,000 members. This may not seem like a problem if you’re just starting out, but it ultimately will become a big problem and is the number one reason why you need to create a Fan Page in addition to your personal profile.

When you eventually hit the 5,000 friend limit on your personal profile, you’ll have no choice but to start another page and then you’ll have multiple pages to update and a lot of confusion. You’re much better off driving people to connect with you on your Fan Page from the start.

You Can Run Ads Targeted To Fans Of Your Page

I’ve written before about how helpful Facebook ads can be, but one of the things that I haven’t yet mentioned (though it’s coming in a future post) is the value of running ads targeted only to fans of your Facebook Fan Page. For example, if you’ve got a new album out you may want to run an ad targeted to your existing fans. Or if you’re playing a live show in a particular city, you may want to run an ad targeted to your fans in that city.

In order to do these things, you have to have a Fan Page – you can’t target Facebook ads based on your personal profile page or Facebook Groups. Again, you may not think that running ads targeted to your fans if something you’ll ever do, but you never know and you’ll probably want to have that option at some point.

Your Status Updates Go To (Almost) Everybody’s Feeds

If you’re using a Facebook Group, you don’t have the ability to post status updates that appear in your fans’ news feeds. While I’ve written before that status updates on Facebook Fan Pages are far from perfect, it’s nonetheless helpful to be able to reach a lot of people with one quick update as opposed to a group page where you have to individually message people and/or hope they just happen to return to your Group page.

Need some help setting up an effective Facebook Fan Page or getting more fans? Email me to find out how else I can help you.