How to Assign a Facebook Username to Your Facebook Page

If you have a Facebook business page and have not set up your facebook username, now is the time to do that.  Why you ask?  So you can easily promote your page and folks can easily find your page.    You may be thinking that all someone needs to do is search for your page on facebook and there you are, right?  Not necessarily.    Many times this will work, but some times it does not.  Sometimes there are multiple pages returned with the same name.  For example, try searching on facebook for my Son’s band, Face For Radio.  I see five pages returned all with the same name!  Facebook also returns search results that it “thinks” are most relevant based on your interests, likes, friends and previously viewed pages etc..  This search function may not return the page you want, even if the page name is typed in exactly.  Finally, promoting your facebook page properly means using your facebook url in all of your printed and electronic media such as business cards, advertisements, letterheads, e-mails, posts etc.

Have ever seen the  facebook url that is assigned to you by default?   It looks something like this:

facebook.com/pages/Custom-Copper-Products/313782248652131

This is not something you want to give your customers as a means to find you on facebook.  Just picture them sitting there trying to type that into their browser without making a mistake.  A couple failed attempts could be enough to make them give up.  Also, whenever you have the chance to create a link to your facebook page you’ll never remember this long string of characters, but with a facebook username you’ll have an easy to remember link.  My facebook username is openarmsmarketing, and my generated url is:

facebook.com/openarmsmarketing

It is clean and easy to remember and if I am on a forum or somewhere else that I want to create a link, I can simply use,  http://facebook.com/openarmsmarketing as my URL.

To set up your facebook username,  go to http://facebook.com/username while you are logged into facebook.  The following screen will appear:

Your page must have at least 25 likes or fans or it will be considered ineligible  and you will not be able to go any further.  This is a sort of verification process that keeps folks from building pages and then squatting names.  Select the page you want to assign a username and then enter your desired name, which in most cases will probably be your page name.  Check the availability and if it is taken choose something else that is relevant.  At this time, I have not had any problems getting the name I want for the facebook pages I manage.  This of course will get more difficult as more and more folks create a facebook username.  Once you get your facebook username assigned it will be in the following format: facebook.com/[your-username]  Please be aware that you can change your facebook username, but this can only be changed once, so be sure you get it right at least by the second time! One last thing… this article is aimed at business pages, but facebook usernames can be assigned to personal pages as well.