Facebook has proposed it will soon ban users from “using their personal profiles for their own commercial gain," while selling status updates to advertisers as explicitly being singled out as a violation, according to an article on Techrunch.

It’s important to note that there is a distinction between a “personal profile” and a “fan page.” Supposedly Facebook is trying to prohibit sponsored updates only on your personal profile where you maintain “friends.” But you can do as you please on a fan page.

For those of you who’ve built a large following on your personal profile and often promote products or services, you stand to lose out on leveraging the influence you have on this group if you don’t transfer these people to a fan page.

Here are the actions I suggest you take in the next few days:

1)  Keep your profile page alive and communicate on it for personal reasons.

2)  Create a fan page for your brand. It has the same attributes as your profile page—fans can comment on your updates, post to the wall, and receive your updates in their news feeds—but has some advantages. First, you can have unlimited fans as opposed to a limit of only 5,000 friends on your profile. Second, fans don’t need pre-approval by you. Finally, you can advertise your fan page across Facebook, whereas profile pages cannot be promoted. Advertising on Facebook is easy and effective.

3)       send a message to your friends to show them your new fan page and urge them to become “fans.” This way you’ll maintain those relationships and have substantial eyeballs that advertisers and sponsors are seeking.

To inspire you, check out these top fan pages on Facebook.

If Facebook’s proposal doesn’t get the green light, then the worst case scenario is that you’ll have two places in which to promote your sponsored messages.

(Image source: gatorboosters.org)