Pages vs Personal Accounts on Facebook, Which do you prefer?

I was recently going through my friend's friend page (we all know we do it, just admit it, I've admitted mine!) and came across a strange name, a name I knew for a fact was not some one's name. Anyway, I clicked it out of curiosity and it was a company account, a company posing as an individual! In this day and age of Pages, Community pages and yes, I believe Groups are still available, I don't understand why you would create a personal account for a business!

Not long after I started blogging, I decided to create a facebook page called Tola SEO thinking it would be a good way to separate my personal account from my 'business' account, hence my not accepting strange friends on facebook. I also believed it would be a good way to avoid boring all my friends with talk after talk on SEO (which apparently I'm still doing!). This way if you were interested in SEO, you like the page and get updates on SEO and Social Media, with some personal info thrown into it from time to time.

I've been using my facebook page for about 2-3 months now and though I'm still trying to find my way around it, I've seen so many things which it does better than a personal account page. For that, I'm quite happy with my decision to create one. Here are some of the benefits of having a separate facebook page for business:

1. I think it is a lot more professional when you have a facebook page which you promote on your company/personal website, rather than a personal account page. Your business partners and customers, and friends like your page and get instant access to the page, unlike a personal account where they have to wait to get accepted by you. 
2. You reduce the people you bombard with your news; its only people who 'like' your page that get your updates, not people who have agreed to be your friend as is the case with personal accounts. People who like your page have a better idea of what they are signing up for.
3. There's more interaction with pages than personal account. Your fans can post and upload things like pictures and videos on your page wall (this can be restricted) for other fans to see and interact with as a community, if you've gotten to that stage in your business. 
4. Your updates and posts get more visibility on fan pages. This is because facebook sees your updates more as news to your community so they 'hang around' a little longer on the facebook top news pages, thereby giving more fans a better chance of seeing the update.
5. You get to pull blog feed from your website and it automatically updates itself on the page wall. This is one of my personal favourites because I don't have to manually post the link myself on the page. Although, it is sometimes slow to upload the post, but give it a few days and it gets the job done. 
6. There's also the benefit of linking your twitter account (and all other business affiliate sites) to your facebook page. I would only do this if the twitter account is a business account as well, that way you don't end up doing TMI with your business partners or something worse. Hence, I decided to link my page to my twitter account but not the other way round. Whatever I post on my facebook page is seen on my twitter but my twitter updates aren't seen on my page. It's safer for me that way.
7. Last one, and what I believe is one of the most important if you want to make good progress on the Internet. Analytics, sweet, juicy data or what facebook likes to call Insight. Here's a screenshot of my facebook page insight. Need I say more? Analysing the data on the insight page is for another post.

One major issue I've noticed with fan pages is they don't send notifications. So, if you see me liking my own posts on the page, I'm trying to keep track of comments which might come along, or else I just might miss something. A notification should be sent to the admin at least, I hope it's something they are working on.

If you already have a facebook page and you're looking for ways to enhance your page to get more sign ups, then read this article on 9 ways to enhance your fan page, I found it very enlightening, even though I haven't gone through all the suggestions myself.

When it's all said and done, I think I'll always prefer a facebook page for business and a personal account, for personal use, the way it was meant to be. But what about you? Are you using a facebook page or a personal account? Which do you find better for your business and personal life? Please share your thoughts and opinion on having a facebook page and/or personal account.