Claim your name on Facebook
Facebook has announced that, beginning Saturday June 13th at 12:01am, it will allow users to claim a “vanity URL”. This means that instead of having a personal profile at a URL like [http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/profile.php?id=1183876909&ref=profile], I will be able to have http://www.facebook.com/AnnKingman.
Is this a big deal for you? For your personal profile, probably not, unless you are a heavy user of Facebook and want an easy way to direct people to your profile. But for your business, it could be.
If you already have a Facebook Page for your business, you may be able to claim a URL for that as well. If your page has 1,000 fans or more (as of May 31st, 2009), you can claim your name. So your page would be something like www.facebook.com/mybookstore. That is easier to put in your advertising, on your bookmarks, and in your email newsletters.
If you don’t have 1,000 fans yet, don’t despair. Facebook has said that they will allow you to claim your URL after June 28th, 2009. In the meantime, if your business name is trademarked, you can protect it by filling out a form, and then claim it on June 28th.
A great article that explains all of this is at CNET: A users’ guide to personalizing your Facebook
David E says:
June 12th, 2009 at 2:26 pm
Very useful! I hadn’t realized you had to have 1,000 fans to claim a business’ name. I’ll cross that off my list of things to do tomorrow.
David E
Magers & Quinn Booksellers
keeping it oldschool: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Minneapolis-MN/Magers-Quinn-Booksellers/52126436236
Sherry Rivers says:
July 30th, 2009 at 2:03 am
Sorry for being off topic, but I am just starting my website/blog. Why did you choose Wordpress over blogger or any other blog program? I am trying to figure out the best way, since I am not a techy.
Ann Kingman says:
July 30th, 2009 at 6:59 am
Hi Sherry,
That’s a good question.
We have our Books on the Nightstand blog on Blogger, and it has been fine — simple to use, easy to set up, very little maintenance. However, there are a few things on Blogger that can’t be done easily, like creating separate pages, that Wordpress can do.
More importantly, I felt that if I was going to get questions like ‘which blog platform should I use?’, I had to have a familiarity with self-hosted Wordpress, and so that’s why I chose to use it for Booksellers Blog.
If you are not very technical and don’t have a webmaster or someone at the store, don’t feel pressured to go with self-hosted Wordpress. Blogger or the free Wordpress.com work just fine. I like them both, and each has their weaknesses, but they will both work for you if you don’t plan on doing a lot of tweaking of your blog.
Hope this is helpful.
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Ezra Candanoza says:
March 5th, 2010 at 3:27 pm
Thanks for the great post. Is this a wordpress website? I like that platform, very good.
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