Is Your Facebook URL Hot or Cold?

It gives me chills whenever I see a Facebook page URL that looks like this…

www.facebook.com/pages/word-word/135165454564654

…filled with hyphens and backslashes and numbers. In fact, the other day I even received a printed post card with a facebook address that looked similar. Tell me that you would actually take the trouble to type that in… NO? I didn’t think so.

Why chills? Because it is such an easy fix, and for marketing purposes, an essential one. Generally, Facebook allows for a customized URL after only 25 “LIKES”, and sometimes sooner. So here is how you check and change that ugly URL from above to one more like www.facebook.com/wordword.

1. You must be an administrator of the page to change the URL.
2. From your Facebook profile, Go to the PAGE you wish to edit, without USING FACEBOOK AS PAGE. If you do it the latter way, you will have to revert back to your profile anyway, so either way…
3. Click on the EDIT PAGE button on the top right of your screen and choose UPDATE INFO
4. Insuring that you are on the BASIC INFORMATION TAB, you should see a CHANGE USERNAME option about 3 lines down. Click there.
5. Be very careful when choosing your new URL as you can only do it once. A good idea is to simply use the name of your business, book, group, band, etc without spaces like we did with TheIndieTimes. You will be able to check availability as sometimes a clever name is already taken.
6. Then it is time to get creative like some of our friends. The Israeli Band Acollective used www.facebook.com/joinacollective. Another favorite band My Mathematical Band from Toronto, Ontario, Canada used www.facebook.com/mymathmind. Consider adding an “I am” or a “We are” or even “this is” to the beginning of your name if the URL is already taken.
7. Remember that web addresses are the digital real estate of your marketing plan, so it does matter! It is so much easier to drive traffic to your site if the radio DJ, blogger, reporter, etc., can just say “facebook dot com forward slash the indie times.”

Questions? Email me at Michele@theindietimes.com

Michele Jennae: Editor-in-Chief and contributor, The Indie Times;
Host of The Michele Jennae Show on HotMix106.com and blogstress at www.michelejennae.com

Posted by Michele Jennae on July 31, 2012. Filed under Business,Indie News,Michele Jennae,Social Media,Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry