How Facebook corralled me into creating a fan page

For a long time now I’ve been comfortable posting my photography work to my personal Facebook page. I didn’t want to create a business page because a) it’d be one more thing for me to update and b) who isn’t a smidge annoyed by all the random messages they get from people they don’t know asking them to “like” work they’ve never seen?

But a few months ago, Facebook decided to toy around with functionality (again) and introduced its “Community Page” functionality. (Remember Facebook telling you how all that stuff you liked—the TV shows, the music, the way you liked to take long walks on the beach—would now be links? Yeahhhh….now it’s ringing a bell.) Like the 400 million other users out there, I blindly said “Okay whatever” to the request and moved on, ’cause, you know, I had Farmville requests to hide and friends to congratulate for being pregnant. But after a coworker at Ball State explained the whole concept a bit more to me, I realized this whole switcheroo meant Facebook was CREATING A FAN PAGE FOR ME.

Even more embarrassing than not having a presence for my business on Facebook? That I accidentally liked this pseudo page!

So I broke down and created my own fan page and while I may have grumbled a bit about it and I still have a lot of work to do to get it looking the way I want it, at least it’s there now and I’m not letting Facebook dictate my social media presence (or lack there of) any more. Why am I posting about this? Well, I guess because a) I want all my photographer friends (who don’t have pages for their businesses) to know about this switcheroo too and b) to be that annoying person I wanted to avoid being in the first place by now asking  “If you like me, will you “Like” me on Facebook and become a fan of my page?

And for all you photographers out there, how do YOU handle your Facebook presence? Do you still post blog entries to your personal pages? Just to your fan pages now? Help a girl out with some ideas!

See more of Gail’s work at www.gailwernerphoto.com. Become a fan of Gail’s work on Facebook. Follow Gail on Twitter.