Your Facebook Page Checklist Part 1: Vanity URLS

This is the first in a series of Facebook tips that will make up a checklist for you and your company to get the most out of a Facebook fan page.

A Facebook vanity URL is a custom address for your Facebook page. When you first create your Facebook page, you’re given a default address like this: http://www.facebook.com/pages/MyCrowdca/194124965846 and as you can see, it’s not exactly something people are likely to remember or recognize, there is very little branding power and all those numbers and extras are definitely not good for the SEO value.

But that’s O.K. because Facebook allows you to, once you reach 100 followers, choose your own vanity URL or what they call a username. All you have to do, is be logged into Facebook and go here: http://www.facebook.com/username/. Once there, click, “Set a username for your Pages”, and from the following drop-down menu, choose the page for which you would like to set a vanity URL. Taking care to remember that once you select it, it cannot be changed, enter in the username you desire.

I just did this, as my last post can attest, and I hit a bug. Facebook kept telling me that, “Usernames must be at east 5 characters long” even though the username I chose was MyCrowd, which is clearly longer than 5 characters. What I did, after reading around, was just clear the text box, click check availability with the text box empty, and then enter the username I wanted again and click Check Availability again. This worked the first time I tried it, but some people are reporting that they needed to fiddle around with it a little longer. In any case, persistence is key and I’m sure Facebook will have the bug cleared up in no time.

Some tips for choosing a good username/vanity URL:

1. Don’t go general. Facebook is starting to shut down pages with too general a domain name. You are bound by the Facebook terms of use you agreed to when you created your Facebook page, to represent only your brand or business on your Facebook page. In other words, you can’t choose “bikes” or “soup” as your vanity URL. If you happen to sell soup, you’re better off choosing your business name: sarahssoups or something similar.

2. Make it simple. The shorter it is, the more likely people will remember it.

3. Brand it. Your business name is more powerful than any keyword. Use it.

After you’ve chosen your vanity URL, share it with everyone and update all the locations where you have a link to your Facebook page. The username I chose for my company is, of course, MyCrowd, which makes our new vanity URL http://www.facebook.com/MyCrowd

Just take a look at the difference and you’ll see why this is an important step to getting the most out of your Facebook page:

Before: http://www.facebook.com/pages/MyCrowdca/194124965846

After: http://www.facebook.com/MyCrowd

That concludes the first tip in our Facebook Page Checklist. If you liked it, please click the Facebook share button at the top of this post and share with friends. Be sure to check back tomorrow for the next in this series. If you would like to have it sent to you via email so you don’t have to remember to come back, just enter your email address in the sidebar to the right, where it says, “Get New Posts in Your Inbox”.

social media, facebook, consulting