If you haven’t created your Facebook vanity URL for your brand/company page you’re making it more difficult to find and interact with your business. Here’s how to do it in a few easy steps.
One of the most important things that you can do for your business is to establish a number of social media outposts where you can connect and interact with your clients, customers, friends and fans. Perhaps the most obvious is Facebook. They make it very easy to get up and running, but one lesser-known feature is the ability to create a custom (or vanity) URL to make it easier for those who are interested in your business to find you.
Surprisingly, however, this isn’t something that a lot of smaller businesses do. If I had to posit a guess why, I’d say that it’s because they either aren’t aware of it or think it’s difficult to do. Fortunately, it’s not that tough to do and it can be done in under 5-minutes.
When you first start your company/brand page, Facebook gives you a url that looks something like this:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Altitude-Marketing/140812642621382
Wow! That’s not very memorable or user-friendly! However, once you have reached 25 “likes” you are able to claim your own unique Facebook URL. Using our company name as the example, our Facebook vanity URL would now be (and is):
http://www.facebook.com/altitudemarketing
Now that’s more like it. It’s considerably more user-friendly and much easier to remember! So how do you get started? It’s a pretty easy process: choose your user name and then claim it. The details are below:
Choosing Your Username
According to Facebook Terms & Conditions
“Usernames were created to make it easier for Facebook users to identify their profile and share with others. As a public figure, business or brand with a Page on Facebook, your username should be straightforward and easy to remember.”
Facebook encourages you to consider the following when creating a user name for Pages:
- Create a user name that is as close to your business/brand name as possible (e.g. AltitudeMarketing, EcoTechMarine, Adaptik).
- If you own the rights to a given name, obtain it as your user name so that others cannot obtain it.
- User names can only contain alphanumeric characters (A-Z, 0-9) or a period (“.”).
- Choose a user name you will be happy with for the long term. You will not be able to edit or transfer this user name once you set it.
- Your user name must adhere to Facebook’s Statement of Rights and Responsibilities.
There are a few things to consider before creating your user name.
- You need a minimum of 25 “likes” on your page before you are able to create your vanity URL.
- Once you have created it can’t be changed
- Consider how your fans, customers and potential customers are searching for you. Do you want to use your business name or the main keywords user are searching for e.g. Altitude Marketing vs Lehigh Valley Marketing.
- Since Facebook is indexed by search engines more quickly (generally speaking) than most websites, your fan page could appear in the search results more quickly than your website so don’t be surprised if it does
- Make sure you follow their terms & conditions to ensure that you can keep your user name
Claiming Your Username
Once you are logged into Facebook follow these six simple steps:
- Go to www.facebook.com/username
- Select “Select a Username” for your page
- This brings up a drop down menu, select the page you want to create the username for.
- If your page has the needed 25 fans it will open a box that allows you to select a user name.
- Enter your desired username and click on “check availablilty”
- If it’s available, you will be shown some final terms – if you are happy with your choice click “confirm” or select “cancel” to try another one.
For more information on user names, check out the following resources from Facebook:
- User Names – General Information: http://www.facebook.com/help/?page=897
- User Names – Facebook Pages: http://www.facebook.com/help/?page=900
- Usernames: Intellectual Property Rightsholders: http://www.facebook.com/help/?page=899
Obtaining a vanity URL for your Facebook page makes it much easier for your friends, fans, clients and customers to find you and tends to give you a nice SEO benefit. If you follow the steps above it’s pretty easy to do as well! What are some things you are doing to use Facebook to help build your business and make it easier for people to find you?
