This article looks at the very narrow area concerning how to make your Facebook URL for your interior design business appear professional. Specifically how to create a proper ‘vanity URL’ for your business fan page.If you have already done that then here are some more useful additions to the business side of your Facebook page.
Many Interior Designers who sell to the general public see Facebook as just one way of lead generation – to some it is more important than others.
Ok here goes. This is a real life example where KOTHEA’s MD set up her personal username on Facebook incorrectly, there was already a Fan Page for KOTHEA. This article takes you through the steps we had to take to get the ‘vanity’ url correct both for the individual and for the company. Our MD inadvertently set her personal username (vanity URL) as ‘KOTHEA‘. So if anyone typed www.facebook.com/kothea it took them to her personal page rather than to the ‘proper’ company page. This situation got progressively messy as she started to use Facebook more for personal matters with business messages appearing in the same place as her personal ones. The result was that many of her friends kept seeing fabric related articles when they were not interior designers. Hopefully you get the picture!
So we start with the erroneous situation:
www.facebook.com/kothea as her personal name
and the rather unwieldly
http://www.facebook.com/pages/London-United-Kingdom/KOTHEA/129265851209
as the original name for the company as it was assigned by Facebook. Note for this all to work you must already have created a business page or FAN PAGE for your business.
What we want to do is threefold:
- Release the facebook.com/kothea name so that it can be re-assigned to the business page
- Change her vanity url/username name to something more like what it really is
- Assign the proper company name to be KOTHEA.
Before we get started in earnest there are five critically important points: firstly, the person making these changes must be an administer of the business page and logged in; secondly, you can only make changes to names once so be very, very careful; thirdly you must have at least 25 fans of your business page; fourthly, your business page must have been created as a Facebook PAGE not a group or anything else, it must be a page!; and finally Facebook sometimes requires that your personal account has been verified by mobile phone before any of these changes are allowed to be made.
If you are creating a page for the first time BE VERY CAREFUL some Facebook Fan Page setting CANNOT BE CHANGED (Jan 2010).
Here are the steps to go through:
- Check to make sure what settings have already been made
Type in this exactly: www.facebook.com/username ie do not put in your username put in the word ‘username’. You will get a message like the one below.
This confirms that KOTHEA is my MD’s username.
2. From the facebook menu go to SETTINGS and then to “ACCOUNT SETTINGS”. You will see something like the following where we now want to change the Username NOT the name.
3. Click on the word “change” the one next to USERNAME. ie the one above the word KOTHEA in my example. You are then prompted for a new username. It must be unique and there are various limitations to what you can have (sorry I don’t know all the restrictions but Facebook seems to disallow certain names even though they might be unique – for example i think only one ‘full stop’ is allowed). Be very sure what new username you want. Once you have checked its availability and confirmed your selection you will have something like the following, which shows your new username and you will have also freed up the old username:
4. Now go again to step 1 and type this exactly as I show here ie using EXACTLY what I have written: www.facebook.com/username
Where it says Page name choose your business page (the one you have already set up before reading this article!). Type in your desired Fan Page name in the box to the right of that and check the availability. If it is available (and it should be as you just released it) you can select and choose it and a message will appears as follows:
If your desired business name is not available then you have a problem. It is my understanding that Facebook will not allow people to use your business name if they have no connection with that business. So there is probably a way of getting that name back but I do not know how to do that. If there is a business with the same name in another country then I imagine you will never be able to get the control of the name 
16 December, 2009 at 9:22 pm
Thanks for the help! I would not have been able to figure this out on my own. Facebook administration is completely convoluted and there’s no way to contact them for help (at least not that I know of!) Thanks again.
18 December, 2009 at 1:30 am
[...] http://www.facebook.com/yourcompany. I’ve already published an article how to do this and it is <here>. Read it carefully as there are some disastrous mistakes you can make if you do not do it [...]
22 December, 2009 at 1:31 pm
http://www.facebook.com/ pages/ arkansaslotterynumbers/ 230916825906
Got a question. I created a business page and now have 63 fans. I misspelled the page name and want to change it. I created a new business page with the correct name. I don’t want to lose my fans. How can I can the name or transfer fans to new page.
I am creating a real website that will show a facebook “Become a Fan” Button and need that to show the correct name
Any ideas?
Please help if you can
Thank you
22 December, 2009 at 6:15 pm
Change the name of the original business page as per the article. that will keep your fans.
if you have already changed once then that is not an option and you will have to get your fans to become fans of the new page themselves. There is no other way unfortunately. They have to become fans. They have control of their fan status not you.
Regarding your last question: Why have a ‘real’ website as well? You could consider redirecting your http://www.mywebsite.com to facebook.com/mywebsite and then you only have to manage your content in one place ie on your facebook page. Just a thought…
23 December, 2009 at 1:55 am
This was extremely helpful – without it I would have never set up my vanity url correctly. Thank you SMG!
Sharon Hiebing
Creating Wealth through Caring & Connecting
http://www.facebook.com/wealthships
27 December, 2009 at 3:06 pm
Thank you for your very helpful and clear advice!! You’re a life saver.
30 December, 2009 at 11:18 pm
You are a genius!! Many thanks to you! I am almost certain I would have never figured this out on my own. Thanks!!
1 January, 2010 at 7:23 pm
I’ve been called many things in my life but never a genius!! Thank you.
2 January, 2010 at 7:54 pm
i don’t have 25 fans yet. i can’t figure out how to find my fan page’s url so i can promote a link to it on my website. help!!!
2 January, 2010 at 8:20 pm
Hi Amy
1. You have to get 25 fans in order to get a vanity url. There is no way around that (it used to be 1000!!)
2. Go to your fan page.
3. Re-read the article…it says what the format of the fan page url (long form) should look like. It ends in lots of numbers. That is the url that you want to link to from your web site. KOTHEA’s is (long form): http://www.facebook.com/pages/London-United-Kingdom/KOTHEA/129265851209 yours will be similar take off the bits after the long number, then test what you have left to see if it works. The long form will NEVER change it will always exist. Your vanity url (when facebook allow you to have one) merely points to that long form.
Maybe I’m not understanding exactly what you are trying to achieve? Am happy to help.
3 January, 2010 at 6:21 am
I have 98 fans on my FB business page. I went to facebook.com/username and clicked the “set a username for your Pages” button. I typed in the username and was told it is available. I clicked confirm and nothing happened. I do this over and over and it won’t work. The cancel button works just fine. What the heck am I doing wrong? Thanks!
3 January, 2010 at 12:25 pm
hi terri, it sounds like you are doing it right. I can’t tell for sure unless i see exactly what you are doing. maybe you could email me some screen shots info@kothea.com ? or you could make me a friend and admin user of your site and i can try to do it? if you know someone else technical you can use software like crossloop for them to control your pc remotely and do it in front of your eyes.
just some options.
3 January, 2010 at 9:41 pm
This was resolved and Terri WAS doing it right. Maybe something may have been ‘wrong’ with the PC she was working on as it worked on a different PC!
12 January, 2010 at 6:08 am
When I check my setting and click where it says user name it gives me a message requiring me to provide a phone number for them to send a confirmation text message. Had to have Sprint place a complete block on my phone for texting do to hackers trying to steal my ID. What other option is there?
12 January, 2010 at 2:34 pm
Hmmm. The message you are getting is asking you to confirm the security on your account. So I suggest you do that first.
However having said that, it should not have stopped you from doing what the article intends to achieve.
What you can do as a workaround is to make a friend an admin of your company page and then get them to do whatever you were earlier trying to achieve.
Hope this helps.
14 January, 2010 at 1:22 am
[...] If you do write a blog use it to promote your blog. Like I do with this WordPress blog which posts automatically to http://twitter.com/kothea and then onto other places like our Facebook account http://facebook.com/kothea or our FriendFeed account. (If you want a cool Facebook url like mine here’s how) [...]
15 January, 2010 at 6:00 pm
Thanks for your helpful article! I have followed your steps exactly to change our nonprofit FB URL with no luck. When I click on the facebook.com/username link provided in your article, I get a message telling me that I must apply for a personal FB account. I have a personal account and am the designated administrator of our nonprofit page, so I don’t understand why I’m getting this message. Our page has the required number of fans, too. What am I doing wrong? I appreciate any help you can provide!
15 January, 2010 at 11:08 pm
Hi sorry it is not working. Try
1. Ensure you are logged into your facebook account as ‘you’, otherwise it will not work. Recheck you are an administrator. Try it again
2. Let me know you facebook url I will have a look
Let us know if this works. If so I will amend the article as the login bit is not included.
29 January, 2010 at 7:55 pm
No luck! Even logged into my personal FB account, I am still getting the prompt from FB that I must create a personal account before I can proceed.
Can I email you my personal FB URL offline? I do appreciate your offer to help with this!
30 January, 2010 at 1:32 pm
let’s try to sort it offline.
5 February, 2010 at 12:24 am
Sorted! Needed to be an admin user.
25 January, 2010 at 5:33 pm
K
Found your blogging thru Linkedin (NCIDQ group). Enjoying articles, like 2010 predictions. I haven’t gotten so far as creating a facebook page–yet. Do I understand you correctly that that is the first step in being able to “get” or do the above stuff, like about urls?
Interesting that you suggest no business website necessary, rather only a facebook page website. The reason I mention this is that as a owner and sole employee of my company, I created a website with iLife so that I could change photos/content myself. But of course, that requires me to spend $99 per year to publish through Mac.
It seems obvious now…. that I would control a facebook page. Couldn’t I just direct folks to my website, from facebook (personal or page)? Where do the 25 fans come in?
Well, I have more questions than I thought. No rush on response, really, but tips on a setting up an effective (good) facebook page would be appreciated.
-Joanne
25 January, 2010 at 5:47 pm
hi Joanne
1. the vanity url is a facebook thing. You need an account AND then a business/fan page in order to proceed further (more articles to follow on this)
2. no website is necessary. facebook may well suffice for small designers. if you have yourwebsite.com then you can ‘map’ that to your facebook fan page if you so wish. you cold also get a wordpress blog (like this one) and map the various addresses. That is free as well.
3. You need 25 fans to get the vanity url.
4. I will write something about more advanced pages on facebook shortly.
26 January, 2010 at 8:06 pm
I just changed my fan page name to xphotography… it accepted and all… BUT now it won’t work… HELP!!
27 January, 2010 at 10:34 am
it works now…just looked.
3 February, 2010 at 6:57 pm
Thank You
Thank You
Thank You!!!
Your detailed instructions on releasing my user name from personal Facebook page and then claiming it again for my Facebook Fan page made a scary process simple and painless.
It worked the first time I tried it.
Thanks Again
Charlie
5 February, 2010 at 12:15 am
Pleasure
4 February, 2010 at 6:25 pm
Thank you for these instructions! I’ve been wanting to change the username for our business page, but wasn’t sure how. I was able to enter our business name for our username (it is available), however, when I click “CONFIRM” to change it, all I see is a dialog box that says “LOADING…”. I’ve let this dialog box remain on screen for over 20 minutes, and it doesn’t finish. I tried setting the username again, with the same results. I also logged out of our business Facebook account, logged back in, tried it again, and it does the same thing. I have also tried setting the username on a different computer – same problem. Has anyone else seen this issue? If so, what did you do to resolve it? Thanks for an input!
5 February, 2010 at 12:16 am
I would try making someone else an admin to the business page and doing through them.
5 February, 2010 at 1:15 am
Thank you for the response. I thought this might be the answer. I set up a separate administrator, but can’t seem to figure out how to get to the Settings page for the business page when logged in as this administrator. Any ideas?
I also wanted to thank you for this blog! It has been VERY helpful!!!!
5 February, 2010 at 3:38 pm
FB is not good for admin is it?
I’ve put the solution to this at the bottom of the article so please look there. That way it will help future readers without them having to go through all these comments.
19 February, 2010 at 2:06 am
Thank you soooo much! This was very helpful. =)
27 February, 2010 at 3:49 pm
Hi!
I just want to say thank you very much because of your blog I was able to do what the discussions say in Facebook that you can’t…and that’s switch my username over to my page and select a new username for my profile! I see many people have the same problem like me they thought they were setting up a username for their page not their profile. So anyways all is well thanks to you!!!
Reggie
facebook.com/AppDelete
6 March, 2010 at 8:39 am
Hello!
I created my fan page in October. My fan page has my city name in the title, I now realize that there is another city with the same name in another state and i am getting members from that state so I wanted to change to add my states name to the title but when I do the steps you provided, I do not get the option to change the name, there is not a box to type in?
6 March, 2010 at 9:23 am
hi the instructions definately work. You need to provide more info and/or look at the conditions of the URL name change imposed by FB. What is the url – that will give me more info to work on?