Easy Facebook URL, Set a Username for your Facebook Profile or Fan Page

If your Facebook profile or fan page still has that long ugly url, then it’s time to change and catch up with the times.  I know many of you have already assigned a username to your page, but it you haven’t, a vanity url can make it enormously easier to tell people how to find you on Facebook.

Traditionally, Facebook URLs were long and hideous, looking like:

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1851207375#!/pages/Panama-City-Beach-FL/Shimmering-Seas-Jewelry/169040404158?ref=ts.

Whoa, you could never tell someone that in hopes of getting them to come to your page.  If you could ever memorize it, you’d never want to actually verbalize it to someone.  It’s time to make a change.

Setting up a vanity url (aka a username) is super easy. Here’s how.

Sign into Facebook.com

Go to www.Facebook.com/Username

From here, it will give you the option to set a username for your personal profile.  For example, I set mine to “koertge”.  So, if I want someone to go to my personal Facebook profile page, then I can tell people the url: www.Facebook.com/Koertge

Right below the place to set a username for your personal profile it will read: “Set a username for your Pages.” with the “Set a username” portion being a live link.  Click on it.

If you administer multiple Fan pages, it will give you a drop down to choose which page you want to set the username for.  If you administer to one page, it will be displayed here.  Click on the page you want to assign a username to.

Once you select the page, you will be able to input the name you want for the page in a blank field.  Keep in mind, just because you can dream up the name, doesn’t mean that it will be available.  Someone else may have picked your name already.  But, you should pick a name that is as close to what people would identify as being your business as possible.

1. For example: Too Creative is /toocreativemedia (toocreative was taken, doh!), PCBDaily is /pcbdaily, The Beach Show is /thebeachshow.  Get the idea?

Once you find a name that works for you that is available, all you have to do is set it, and you’re done!

Now, whenever you want to tell someone your Facebook Fan page URL, all you have to do is say “Yea, I’m cool, just go to www.Facebook.com/MyBusiness.”

Ok, that was fun, right?  Well, there are some caveats.  Firstly, you can’t set a username for your Facebook Fan Page until you have at least 25 fans.  So, if you are hurting for a few fans, it’s always a great idea to suggest your page to your fans.  You can usually get a boost that way.

Secondly, once you set a username for your Fan page, you can’t change it.  So, choose it wisely.

How to change your username.

I know, I just said you can’t change your username.  Well, you can’t, not on your Facebook Fan page; not yet anyway.  But you can, however, change your username on your personal profile, just once.  This happened with a consulting client of mine.  They accidentally assigned the username they wanted for their Fan page to their personal profile.  So, when they typed in their desired vanity url, the visitor was taken to the personal profile page of the president of the company.  Not good. This is how you change that:

Again, be sure you are logged into Facebook

Click on the “Account” drop down in the upper right-hand corner and click on “Account Settings” from the drop down selection.

Two options down from the top, you’ll see “Username”, click on the “Change” link on the right-hand side of that row.

Type in the new username in the empty field and click “Check Availability”.

If the new username is available, a popup window will come up asking you to confirm the change, if it’s what you want, click confirm and you’re done!

Doing this will free up the username that you wanted to use so you can apply it to your Fan page.  Once you’ve done this, all you have to do it go back to the first set of instructions and follow through.

If you are wanting to gain new fans to your Facebook Fan page, having a vanity URL is one of the most effective ways to make it easy to tell people about it.  If you have a storefront or you are in contact with your customers on a regular basis, you have to make it easy for them to remember how to get to your Facebook page.  Otherwise, they’ll never make it.  Facebook is a great way to continue to build that ongoing relationship with your customers so when you want them to buy something from you, they’ll already be your “friends” and will be willing to listen to your “sales” message.

Tagged as: how to set a facebook username, vanity url on facebook