Quite often, we at Cyber PR® have musicians who approach us with the same questions: “I don’t have a Facebook fan page, but I DO have a personal profile and everyone tells me I need to get a fan page. Why do I need a fan page if I already have hundreds of friends on my personal page?” This is a very common scenario for independent musicians and unfortunately a personal profile just won’t cut it as an asset in your overall arsenal of marketing tools. While I’m sure we could come up with dozens of reasons to avoid using a personal profile as a marketing tool rather than a fan page, there are 3 critical comments to a fan page that I’d like to shine a light on:
Analytics
Analytics are important to any effective marketing strategy. A Facebook fan page offers you free analytics called ‘Facebook Insights’ that give you a deep dive look at who your most engaged fans are, where they live, when they engage with you most and, most importantly, what types of content (i.e. music, videos, images, questions, etc.) they find more relevant. 
Without analytics, using Facebook as a part of marketing strategy will be as effective as trying to shoot a target in the dark. Each piece of content you post without the ability to analyze it’s effectiveness is another shot at a target you can’t see… leaving you hopeless and unable to see if you have actually hit your target. Using Facebook insights through the fan page is like turning the lights on and putting your target 5 feet in front of you.
The Dreaded ‘Friend’ Limit
When Facebook was created in 2005, Myspace was in full swing and the entire eco-system surrounded the idea of ‘friending’ as many people as you could to make your numbers look big… Because of this, Facebook put a ‘friend’ cap into place so that at any time, you can only have 5000 friends on your personal profile. 
Don’t get me wrong, having 5000 REAL friends (or fans) is fantastic, but if you are using your profile page as your marketing tool, then 5000 is it… you will never get the chance to increase this number once the cap is hit. One the other hand, there is no cap for the number of fans (‘likes’) that you can have on a Facebook fan page. This means that hitting 5000 can be a great stepping stone for you to hit in your career path rather than the ceiling.
Your Friends & Family Are Not (Necessarily) Your Fans
While it is always great to have the support of your friends and family, it is important to understand that just because they are your friends and family, does not necessarily mean they will also be your fans. And quite frankly, this is okay. Your marketing efforts should be focused in on a target market so that you can find (or create) content that caters specifically to this group of people, rather than creating broad, generic content that you hope everyone will enjoy. It is often the case the your friends and family WON’T fit into your target market, and if you are using your Facebook personal profile as your marketing tool, you are sweeping all friends and family into these efforts. Have you ever noticed that your status updates seem to disappear or get lost as soon as you post them? Building your engagement is a key component to creating a presence on Facebook that get’s seen often. The higher engaged your following is, the more likely it will be that Facebook ensures that it appears in people’s news feed. By using the Facebook fan page rather than the personal profile, you can ensure that your content is catering to the right audience, helping you to consistently deliver content worth engaging with.
What are YOUR Reasons For Using a Facebook Fan Page?
We think the above should be reason enough to reconsider using a personal profile rather than a fan page, but we’d love to hear your thoughts. Let us know why YOU decided a fan page was better than a personal profile in the form of a comment below!