@Jennifer - If you have both at this point, I would frankly keep both! I would make sure that another profile is also an admin of the page, just in case FB does something with the profile. But that profile can be very effective at active engagement (i.e., inviting to events, asking questions, tagging photos, etc) and should be considered very valuable.

You can also use this to actively direct residents to your fan page. In other words, you friend them through the profile, and then suggest the page to them. I realize this is not kosher by FB standards, so take my advice with a grain of salt, but this does work. To make this work, make a new friend list within the profile. When someone friends you, or you friend them, add them to this list. That way, you can track who you have suggested the fan page to and who you have not. You simply clear out that list whenever you invite them to the fan page every so often.

Thanks, Brent! P.S. I just added the widget again to the website... Cross your fingers it helps :)

Hi Brent! When we first set up a page on Facebook it was done as a personal page. We have kept the personal page up in addition to our somewhat newer fan page. All of our "friends" on our personal page are also on our "fan" page. How should we go about getting rid of the personal page and only keeping the fan page? Or should we? Thanks so much!

I'm glad I was able to help, Mindy!

Let me be honest ... I did not want to be the one who is responsible for social media, but here I am and I have found it to be a lot of fun! So, I actually followed people on my Twitter account to learn how to create the FB page because I didn't know how to do it as a Fan Page instead of a personal page. (Thanks, Charity Hisle!!!!) So, anyway, now that I took your webinar (really, I am not trying to suck up) I learned some new things about what to post. This property has a pretty savy, young demographic so I thought our FB page would really take off. I think it will get better. I will also add the button/widget to our actual website. The owner didn't want the widget (however you spell it) so I had to take it off.

Mindy,
I find that it often helps to take it step by step: 1) Is your awareness level high enough? (If you do an online newsletter, you can track clicks) 2) Is your "what's in it for me" high enough? 3) Do you have proper calls to action to actually click like?

Also, it could be a function of the herd mentality - if you don't have many fans, then it makes it hard to get more fans. So is there a way to temporarily drive more conversations to help showcase the interaction, in order to get the ball rolling?