Thursday, April 7, 2011

How to Get Your Own Facebook Custom Username

Getting a custom username for your Facebook fanpage is an essential part of branding your business, website, company, or online persona.  When you first sign up for a Facebook fan page, you'll be assigned a generic web URL that may look something like this:

http://facebook.com/page/Everyone-Loves-Cloth-Diapered-Baby-Bums/108406969213206

Now, that is quite a mouthful!  There is absolutely NO WAY people will remember that URL and be able to type it in if they are trying to seek you from a regular spot on the web (outside of Facebook's search function).  This also becomes quite a lengthy link to paste in message boards, blog links, or over Twitter. I'm sure you'd also agree it's quite an eyesore!

Setting up a shortened, custom URL is easy to do.  It will take you five minutes or less to complete the entire process, and the only requirement is that your Facebook fanpage has '25 likes' before you get started.

My sister, Amy, who has recently set up a blog and Facebook page for her new endeavor, "Wholesome Abode", asked me to help her set up her custom Facebook URL, and graciously allowed me to make the process into a quick little tutorial for all of you as well!

Let's get started--log into Facebook in another browser tab and follow along to have your own custom Facebook URL in under 5 minutes!

STEP 1:
Using Facebook "as your page", click the "EDIT PAGE" button in the top right hand corner


STEP 2:
Select the "Basic Information" tab on the left hand sidebar


STEP 3:
Click on the link to "Create a username for this page"


STEP 4:
Click "Continue as YOURSELF" when prompted


STEP 5:
At this point you can assign custom usernames to your own personal profile OR to any of your fanpages.

1. Find your page's name in the "Page Name" dropdown menu.
2. In the box, type the desired page name you'd like your page to have.

TIP: If your page name has numerous words, capitalize the letter at the beginning of each word so that the words don't blur together. It is case sensitive, so lowercase and uppercase letters will appear permanently exactly as you enter them. Only alphanumeric (A-Z, 0-9) characters and periods (.) are allowed.  Keep your name as short and relevant to your business name as possible.

3. Click "Check Availability"


STEP 6:
If the username is available, you'll have to read this screen and click "Confirm" when you're ready. There's no going back after this, so make sure you didn't make any typos and are not violating any trademarks!

If the username is unavailable, you'll have the chance to enter a new one and try again






STEP 7:
Success!  Click Okay to apply the changes.


You did it!  Check out your tidy new custom URL!

4 comments:

  1. Would anyone using the old link be redirected to the page or would I have to go back and redo all my links?

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  2. Great question! They will automatically be redirected to your new URL, so old links will still work just fine :)

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  3. Thanks for this info! I just changed my blog page!

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  4. Thanks! This was so easy to follow.

    ReplyDelete