MFI Facebook Account - Any ideas?

Will you all give us some feedback on our Facebook account? Here is the issue: I have a personal Facebook account that has just under 1,000 friends that are almost exclusively multifamily. Since that is a fairly large audience, we route links to all of our blog posts through this account automatically, as a lot of my friends on that account use it to get updates for the site.

We went ahead and set up a Fan Page for Multifamily Insiders itself, but we're hesitant to use it because 1) All of our "audience" is already through my account, and 2) Are people more likely to read something through a personal account compared to a Fan Page? We always talk about how powerful peer to peer recommendations are, so my thought was that articles coming from a person rather than the entity "Multifamily Insiders" would get a better response.

Any ideas on which direction we should take? For those of you who get MFI updates through Facebook, would you click on a link from a Multifamily Insiders account as quickly as you would from a personal account?

Thanks for the feedback!

I'm leaning toward you creating a Fan Page. You can put a box on your personal account to drive people to fan the fan page.

I think it would provide you with the opportunity to have a community-controlled page rather than your personal page which is controlled by you. Besides, you could then start sorting your lists and start using FB for your personal life as well as your business life. :o)

Thanks Charity! Although I already have a separate personal page, so that's not really an issue for me. My main concern is the best distribution method for blog links, honestly. Not everybody uses Twitter or RSS, so this is a way to reach all our Facebook-related members.

I had the same problem for my account versus my properties account so I deleted my personnel account(opened a new one for only family and friends)and sent a message on my property account for networking, community and residents this has actually helped a lot plus every time I comment it pushes the property more.
I use my fan page to promote and my property page for communications I have found more folks are willing to be fans than friend when it comes to promotions.

Hope this helps

Brent - I vote with Charity.

I know I am more inclined to read through things that come from a personal page. I would go that route if I were you!

I could write a book on this, so I'll make it short.

Brent I think you should use YOUR profile only for things you have written.

I think you should publicize the MFI fan page for the following reasons:
-Promoting MFI (which is a business) through a profile is a Facebook term of service violation.
-Pages communicate by “updates” which show up the same as a profile as far as fans are concerned
-Fans are given the option to opt-in as a fan without giving access to their personal profile (leasing agents may not want to friend someone in the industry) - being a fan is 1 sided.
-Fan pages allow application add ons which make it easy to integrate other marketing efforts (RSS feeds, flick photos, events)
-Admins of pages can see visitor statistics – post quality and interactions for the week.
-Facebook ads may be purchased (pretty cheap) to promote fan pages
-Pages allow more flexibility with content creation - usual wall, discussion board, video and photo uploads.

Great comments everybody, and please keep them coming! After we get some more feedback, I'll consolidate everything and see what appears to be the best route to take.

Thanks!

(and just to make sure we include all comments, Mike Whaling wrote this through Twitter: " @brentwilliams2 I vote fan page for @mfinsiders ... keep it open."

Happy New Year 2021!!!

Are you working tomorrow?