Vanity Username for Your Facebook Fan Page

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  As mentioned in a previous post, Facebook is the current king of traffic on the internet. The sheer numbers of visitors they receive every day is staggering, and is the reason why all businesses should add a Facebook fan page.

  The easiest way to describe a Fan page is that it’s a website or blog for your business within Facebook. One of the most important aspects of a Fan page is that it separates your personal account from your professional persona. For example, your clients won’t see all the pictures of your children that you upload in the news stream. Instead they can see links to new blog posts on your primary website as the links are posted in your Fan pages’ stream.

  Unfortunately when you start your business’s Fan page, it comes with a long address that’s impossible to remember. The address for BaileyHill Media’s fan page is: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Austin-TX/BaileyHill-Media/133309610030953. Thanks Facebook, could you have made it any harder to share my fan page? Why not add a few more digits to the number at the end, 15 is kind of short don’t you think?

  Luckily Facebook added “Vanity Usernames” in mid 2009. This process will let you change your FB page address to something easy to remember and share. Your page must have 25 fans before you can register the vanity name, so ask all your friends & acquaintances in the direction of your fan page. Even better, ask your clients to “Like” your page. I asked my networking group to “Like” BaileyHill Media’s page, and sent them a link via email.

  Once you’ve got 25 fans, go to http://www.facebook.com/usernames and follow the link to set a username for your page beneath the main form. On the next page you’ll be able to submit your desired name, Facebook will tell you if it’s available or not.

  Facebook makes choosing a username a serious activity since it can’t be changed once it’s set. Make sure that you’re happy with your choice and that it represents your business or organization well.  They even remind you one last time before you pull the trigger.

  

  And.. that’s it. It’s a fairly painless process but like much of Facebook, it’s not easy to find the right page to process the request.

  If you like this post, why not become a fan of ours on Facebook? http://facebook.com/baileyhillmedia.web.design - If you send me a link, I’ll happily return the favor.

  Image credit: Facebook by Franco Bouly

  
  
  July 13th, 2010 | Alex Hill | View Comments | Tags: facebook

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Alex Hill