Facebook Username Complications
Have you claimed a personalized username for your business Facebook “Fan” Page? Did you get your first choice? We didn’t.
The Friends Corner Book Shop opened in November, coinciding with the opening of the new library building. Almost immediately, we started a Facebook Page that quickly grew to more than the required 25 Fans needed to claim a personalized username.
Bad news: The Facebook username “FriendsCornerBookShop” was unavailable, even though there’s no evidence anyone is using it, even now.
FrendsBookShop, CornerBookShop, FriendsCornerBooks and several other iterations of our book shop branded name also remain unavailable.
Why? My guess is that it is a combination of a number of things, including the fact that “Friends” is a Facebook term and likely more protected by Facebook than other words.
But “Why” doesn’t really matter, does it? You can’t get what’s not availalble.
Facebook gives you one chance to change your Facebook Page username. Our store front is new but our non-profit organization has been selling used books to support the library for decades. We expect to be in the store, well… forever. That username was going to live for as long as Facebook does. I didn’t want to blow it and then spend decades explaining an error.
We decided to temporarily suffer the long defaut Facebook Page username, even with the random string of numbers in the URL. At least until we could come up with something better. Not necessarily perfect, but at least something that made sense for our customers, volunteers, and the search engines.
Meanwhile, we never officially used that default username and resulting URL in marketing materials. Instead, we hid it behind hotlinked words like “Join our Facebook Page” or well-crafted custom bit.ly shorted URL’s. After all, look at it:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Lafayette-CA/Friends-Corner-Book-Shop-Lafayette-CA/185048993061
Long and complicated and…Ugly. Really.
Hard to remember URLs are tough for Marketing
Eventually, though, not having a custom Facebook Page URL was starting to be a problem, marketing-wise. That original “ugly” URL didn’t work well for things like:
- Signs in the Book Shop
- People who receive text-only emails
- Store business cards
- Word of Mouth Marketing
Bottom line: I got tired of telling people I met about the Facebook Page and then explaining they could either log-on through the Facebook Page stream on our website or go into Facebook and just search for “Friends Corner Book Shop.”
Talk about friction. I’m sure it cost us Fans not to have a simplified, easy to remember URL.
Our Facebook Username Solution
Last night, I gave up on a username with “Friends” in it, simplified the solutions, tested several options that included things like “BookShopFans” and “BookShopPage” and “BookShopTalk.” I had five finalists Facebook said were available before claiming the winner.
Looking for the Friends Corner Book Shop on Facebook? Life just got easier.
Simple rules the day. Again.
More than that, TheBookShop username makes sense for our business and the people who participate on our Facebook Page. Our new username is the way we actually refer to the store in conversation.
Rarely does someone say that they’re working at the Friends Corner Book Shop. When it’s someone’s turn to take a shift, you’ll more likely hear, “I’m working at The Book Shop today.”
Have you already claimed your custom Facebook Page URL? Did you get the user name you wanted?
If not, how are you figuring out the best alternative? Post your ideas, and let’s brainstorm together.
