Having friends on Facebook is great, having fans is better. Facebook currently limits the number of friends you can have at 5000. Is the where you want to stop making business connections on Facebook?

While the number of friends you can have is limited, the number of fans is unlimited. Using Einstein Bros Bagels as an example you will see they have over 614,000 Fans.

With the number of friends being limited businesses are finding they have to set up a fan page then notify all of their current friends and for a while post information both the the Standard User Page and the Fan Page. Creating more work and confusion along the way.

With both pages you have the ability to control, edit or remove content posted by users. With a fan page it is much easier. If you are not posting images to your fan page this is a one step process. If you are posting images to your fan page and wish to disable comments on images you will have to request that the page be white-listed by Facebook. This process is still evolving, but can be done.

Most brands have found that leaving comments open for images is great. It encourages interactions from Fans and you have to be a fan to leave a comment. With that in mind if a person or former employee wanted to leave a negative comment they would first have to become a fan, then leave the comment. You will be able to identify them immediately and remove the post with no problem. One of the great things about Facebook is there is no such thing as an anonymous post.

If you leave comments open be sure to monitor your page. A great way to monitor things is to Like a post or picture from your Personal Facebook Page. This alerts you when someone makes a comment after you on the post. You edit the settings in your Facebook Account Settings under the Notifications tab.

With a Fan Page you have the options to create and manage advanced tabs for your page. You can create a custom welcome tab and have this page displayed as your landing page instead of your wall posts.

Another great thing for Fan Pages is using FBML to create custom content. This takes some getting used to, but it well worth the effort to create a custom Facebook Fan Page.