Creating a Facebook Business Page Unique Username (Facebook URL or vanity URL)

Rather than the long website addresses that Facebook randomly allocates your business page, such as…

http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Professional-Parents-Playgroup/118174941568387?ref=ts

…it is a much better marketing tool to have a shorter and easier address such as:

www.facebook.com/professionalparentsplaygroup

(update – please note I’ve now deleted this page but you can visit www.facebook.com/professionalparents instead)

I’d highly recommend making sure you get in and reserve your business name now on Facebook through this method.  It’s free, relatively easy and will ensure that once you reserve your name, it will not be available to other businesses.

For example, I was a little slow on this so have not been able to grab the Zestee URL for my marketing business, so instead have gone for the longer name of my business www.facebook.com/zesteeconcepts

This is also called a “vanity URL” as it’s a URL (website address) that “looks pretty”  and is certainly much more memorable that the first option and useful to use in marketing material.

So how do you do that?  First, you have to set up a Facebook Page

The next step is to hit the “magic number” of 25 people who “like” your page. The best way to build the “likers” on your page is to invite your friends.  You can also tag other compatible businesses or write on their walls to promote your own page, however this is a touchy area and it’s best to personally speak to those people/businesses first possible.  Again, will write another post on this soon!

Once you gain more than 25 on your site as below…

…then you can visit the link http://www.facebook.com/username/ to create your username. In this example below, it shows that my own personal user name has already been set (in the yellow section), and gives a drop down list of the business pages I manage.  Select the one you wish to set up the username for, and type this in the box on the right hand side.  Here I have typed in “professionalparentsplaygroup”. 

After clicking on “check availability” you will get this screen if your chosen name is available:

If it is not available, you will simply get a message saying so and will have to look at other options.  Click on confirm and you will receive a confirmation:

Done!

So instead of telling people to “search for Professional Parents Playgroup” or having to send them a very long link, I can simply send them to www.facebook.com/professionalparentsplaygroup and also use this on my marketing material if I wish.

Let me know how you go setting up yours!

Renee