Fast forward to the present and you’ll see the complete opposite is in effect. There is an all-out blitz on social media by companies wanting more customer-brand interaction. It’s not just feedback they’re looking for, but actual interactions and interest. Brands want to become more a part of their customers’ lives by becoming more involved with their daily social media activities. And it really is no surprise businesses would want to jump on the social media bandwagon. Over 350 million people use Facebook and it is one of the most visited sites on the web. It would be a huge mistake for a business to overlook the marketing benefits it could gain by tapping into that giant audience.

A brand can’t simply create a fan page and expect results, though. The user-generated content will never appear and people will never follow a brand that has nothing interesting to get people involved. So, brands are constantly soliciting responses out of the social media users by posting announcements, questions, updates, sales, polls, games, and anything else you can think of. The game now is for the company to get you talking about them. Good or bad they’ll let you speak your mind and leave your mark (they’d much rather have the good). The control is no longer entirely in the hands of the brand as they have given in to democracy where any person can voice their opinions. Sure, they could just delete the negative comments, but that is frowned upon in the social media world and defeats the purpose of the system.

In a time when user-generated content is constantly updating and flowing onto our smart phones, PCs and TVs, brands have become aware of the power of social media and have just one thing on their mind: What do you to have to say?

The ThatsUs.com Facebook Fan Page

It seems that everyone and their mother has a profile on the popular social networking site, and if you don’t yet – you will soon. So, is it the company’s employees? A P.R. company? The boss’s son who just happens to be in college and obsessed with Facebook? All of these answers could be correct which leads me to ponder the question: should you have multiple profiles?

Some might think that there is an obvious answer here -  “No! Why would I?”. Well think about it this way: If you’re the boss’s son and you’ve been handed the responsibility of creating and updating a Facebook fan page for your dad’s company, you might have some content on your personal profile that shouldn’t be seen by potential clients. Just as future employers and universities check social networking profiles, so do customers and it’s important to keep in mind what you present to the public.  Unless you know the ins-and-outs of Facebook privacy settings I’d recommend re-checking that personal profile of yours first.

Ok, so let’s say that you are an employee of the company and you don’t have anything to hide – your profile is plain jane and all your photos are private so why concern yourself with another profile? To create that fan page you must, of course, be a fan of it which makes your photo and name available to anyone who stumbles across that page. This means you are now more accessible on Facebook and I’ll bet you’ll get quite a few friend requests and fan page suggestions afterward.

So do you think you need multiple Facebook profiles to manage a fan page? Or are you comfortable with simply having one? It’s a toss up, but as for me I’ll stick with just one profile – that’s enough Facebook for me to handle.