What is a Vanity URL?

I have been connecting with a lot of people via Linkedin and Facebook recently that are either unaware of  “What is a Vanity URL” , “How do I get a Vanity URL” or “How to create a Vanity URL”  for their Facebook fanpage.

I hope this will explain it for you 

When creating a Business fan page in Facebook, your link to your business page will be something like this:

facebook.com/The-Name-Of-Your-Page/131080500280235

Once you have reached 25 “likes” on your fan page, Facebook allows you to change the above long link to:

facebook.com/TheNameOfYourBusiness

Keep in mind that when you are creating your Vanity URL – The name of your page may already be in use by someone else, Facebook will let you know if your Business name is available for a Vanity URL or not.

How to create a Vanity URL

• Go to your Business Fan page
• Click on “EDIT PAGE” – (located top right hand corner)
• Click on “BASIC INFORMATION” tab (located on the left under “manage permissions”) or see pic above
• Select your Username (Vanity URL)
• If your Username (Vanity URL) is available click “SAVE CHANGES” at the bottom of the page.
• If it’s not available choose another that is similar to what you want.
• You will now see the below text next to Username, I have used mine only as an example.

Username:	You can now direct people to www.facebook.com/AllysBusinessPage.  Learn more.

That’s it!! – It’s done!! You now have a Vanity URL for your Facebook Fan Page.

A few more tips for promoting your Business fan page

Rather than typing in your Vanity URL or long link on someone else’s business page, try this example below:

“Hi, you have a wonderful and very interesting page! I found you through Linkedin, Here is my Business Page Social Network Sites I hope to connect with you there as well.”

With the above example where I have written Social Network in my post, I first type the @ symbol then type Social, then Social Network Sites appeared in a drop down box for me to select – thus making “Social Network Sites” a clickable link going directly to Social Network Sites Business Page without typing in the link.

This keeps everyone’s Business Pages looking neat and tidy instead of looking like a spam fest!

Thank you to all those who have asked me the question “What is a Vanity URL”? I hope this has explained it for you.

Please pass this on to Business’s and friends who maybe wanting the same questions answered 

Marketing with Social Media Sites

The 4 most popular Social Media Sites for Business's in Australia to be interacting on at the present time are:

Marketing with Social Media Sites has become the latest trend. The US has been utilizing marketing with social media sites for quite a few years and now Australian business's are are jumping on board. Within the next 6mths there will be a huge increase of Australian business's marketing with social media sites.

Facebook - There has been a huge increase in Business's adding their Facebook Fanpage link on their Television Commercials throughout Australia in the past month. Whether it is a brand, product or service - marketing on social media sites has increased sales and profits of many Australian business's.

Twitter - Australian business's have also increased awareness of their business via Twitter. TV commercials, radio commercials and print advertising all including "follow us on twitter".

Linkedin - There is now over 2 million members from Australia on Linkedin.  LinkedIn operates the world’s largest professional network on the Internet with more than 100 million members in over 200 countries and territories. CEO's from every business in every country are registered on Linkedin.

YouTube - YouTube is the most popular video sharing site for Australians, in the past it has predominantly been used on a personal basis but over the last 6 mths business's are using YouTube more and more for marketing with social media. Whether they have a professional video made for their business or a slide show video of their products and services.

Facebook The Facts

About Facebook

Founded in February 2004, Facebook is a social utility that helps people communicate more efficiently with their friends, family and coworkers. The company develops technologies that facilitate the sharing of information through the social graph, the digital mapping of people's real-world social connections. Anyone can sign up for Facebook and interact with the people they know in a trusted environment.

Product

Facebook, the product, is made up of core site functions and applications. Fundamental features to the experience on Facebook are a person’s Home page and Profile. The Home page includes News Feed, a personalized feed of his or her friends updates. The Profile displays information about the individual he or she has chosen to share, including interests, education and work background and contact information. Facebook also includes core applications – Photos, Events, Videos, Groups, and Pages – that let people connect and share in rich and engaging ways. Additionally, people can communicate with one another through Chat, personal messages, Wall posts, Pokes, or Status Updates.

Technology

Facebook is one of the most-trafficked sites in the world and has had to build infrastructure to support this rapid growth. The company is the largest user in the world of memcached, an open source caching system, and has one of the largest MySQL database clusters anywhere. The site is largely written in PHP though the engineering team developed a way to programmatically transform PHP source code into C++ to gain performance benefits. Facebook has built a lightweight but powerful multi-language RPC framework that seamlessly and easily ties together infrastructure services written in any language, running on any platform. The company has created a custom-built search engine serving millions of queries a day, completely distributed and entirely in-memory, with real-time updates. Facebook relies heavily on open source software and releases large pieces of its own software infrastructure as open source. See http://facebook.com/engineering and http://facebook.com/opensource.

Platform

Facebook Platform is a development platform that enables companies and engineers to deeply integrate with the Facebook website and gain access to millions of users through the social graph. Facebook is a part of millions of people’s lives all around the world providing unparalleled distribution potential for applications and the opportunity to build a business that is highly relevant to people’s lives. More information can be found at <http://developers.facebook.com>.

Privacy, Safety and Security

Facebook has always focused on giving people control over their experience so they can express themselves freely while knowing that their information is being shared in the way they intend. Facebook's privacy policy is TRUSTe certified, and Facebook provides simple and powerful tools that allow people to control what information they share and with whom they share it. More information can be found at http://www.facebook.com/privacy/explanation.php. From its beginning, Facebook has worked to provide a safe and trusted environment by, for example, requiring that people use their real names. Facebook also works with online safety experts around the world and has established a global Safety Advisory Board that it consults with on safety issues. More information can be found at http://www.facebook.com/fbsafety and http://www.facebook.com/security.

Funding

Round one: $500,000 from Peter Thiel, Summer 2004; Round two: $12.7 million from Accel Partners, April 2005; Round three: $27.5 million from Greylock Partners leading the round, Meritech Capital Partners participating, and Accel Partners and Peter Thiel increasing their investment in the company.

Board

Members: Mark Zuckerberg, Marc Andreessen, Jim Breyer, Don Graham and Peter Thiel; Observer: David Sze; Observer: Paul Madera

Employees

2,000+

Users

Over 500 million active (users who have returned to the site in the last 30 days)

Offices

Headquartered in Palo Alto, Calif. U.S. offices: Atlanta; Birmingham, Michigan; Chicago; Dallas; Detroit; New York; Venice Beach, Calif.; Washington, DC; Austin International offices: Dublin; Hamburg; Hong Kong; Hyderabad; London; Madrid; Milan; Paris; Selangor; Singapore; Stockholm; Sydney; Tokyo; Toronto;