Have you ever asked a business how to find their Facebook page and they give you a link that looks like this?

Facebook.com/pages/my-crappy-business/137770856370207?ref=hl

…wtf?

My thoughts exactly…

This social media tutorial will cover how to secure your Facebook URL or vanity URL as I like to call it, though Facebook also calls it your username.

Tomatoes-Tamatoes, whatever you want to call it you need to set this up – after reading this post of course!

Now your vanity URL is your unique web address for your Facebook page and by default when you first create your Facebook page your URL will look something like this:

When first creating a Fan page Facebook will ask you what you’d like your Facebook URL to be, however for those businesses who have had their page for awhile the option to secure your vanity URL is not readily available and it can be sometime before you recognize you are killing your Fan page optimization. Here’s how:

Video Tutorial

Edit: Facebook now allows you a one time change of your set Vanity URL

Before you secure your Facebook URL you should take note of Facebook’s terms and conditions for claiming a URL that I’ve summarized below.

Things to remember:

• You can’t change the username of your page once you set it.
• You can’t transfer the ownership of a username to another party.
• You can’t violate anyone else’s trademark rights.
• If you are acquiring a username to sell it in the future (squatting), you will lose it.
• Usernames may be reclaimed for other unauthorized usages.

But how does this help my business?

Good question. Usernames allow you to easily promote your business brand or organizations presence on Facebook with a short page address. Your vanity URL can also be used in other marketing communications as well as company website, email signatures and business cards. Your secured Facebook URL will also hold some weight in search engines and Facebook search.

ProTip

Once you secure your Facebook URL MAKE SURE you update any links to your Fan page on your website that used your old default URL. You’ll want to update the link address with your new Facebook URL.

But that will do it for this social media tutorial on Facebook’s Recent Posts by Others. View more social media tips and tricks or leave a suggestion for my next tutorial in the comments below.

 What is your Facebook page vanity URL?