Facebook Name Change, Definitely Change the Default Facebook Page Name

Excellent, now you have a created a Facebook page to promote your local business, company, organization, event, product, service or whatever the case may be.

Now you want to tell others you know about your Facebook page because we all know that a tree that falls in the forest does not make any noise. That is when it hits you like a ton of bricks.

Oh my gosh, my Facebook page name is awful because it is too long and includes the word page which seems redundant, and what appears to be a long string of random numbers at the end.

Technical Aside: These numbers that are part of the default Facebook page name are actually a Facebook identifier to identify a single Facebook page among the millions of Facebook pages online.

Then you ask yourself, will the current (default) Facebook page name fit on a printed marketing piece? Will the default Facebook page name be easy to say to someone or perhaps most important, is your existing Facebook page name is to remember?

For Facebook Page Name, It’s All About Recall

Let’s start with a real example that begins with a Facebook page name that only a mother could love:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Glenville-Oktoberfest/215912375119948

and only the Rainman could remember!

Its, definitely http://www.facebook.com/pages/Glenville-Oktoberfest/215912375119948, yes, definitely http://www.facebook.com/pages/Glenville-Oktoberfest/215912375119948.

Alternatively would you much prefer to use the following Facbook page name to promote your Facebook fan page:

https:// www.facebook.com/GlenvilleOktoberfest

A Facebook page name that we mere mortals can remember is a must. Don’t worry about the www.facebook.com part of the Facebook page name as more than 1 billion people can remember and type that part of the name in their sleep. The key is to make what follows that easy to remember, something like the event name in this example. Now users just need to remember GlenvilleOktoberfest. Oompah!

This kind of Facebook page name is more user-friendly and will help increase your return on marketing investment so that we can promote our Facebook page through multiple channels such as radio, television, outdoor, print or any other medium using an easy to remember name that will drive Facebook users to our page.

OK, OK, I Get it! Now How Do I Change My Facebook Page Name?

The good news is that changing the Facebook page name is easy. Here is a screencast demonstrating  the easy steps required to update your Facebook page name, and by extension, the Facebook page web address.

For those that prefer the book over waiting for the movie, the remainder of the post includes the steps along with screen shots showing readers step by simple step how to do change a Facebook page name.

The first thing is to make sure that you are logged in as administrator for the Facebook page, then click
Edit Page >> Update Page Info on the Admin Panel:

This will take you to the Facebook Update Page Info section of your Facebook page Admin Panel.

Next, click on the Enter a Facebook Web Address. This will change the link in the update page info page from
Enter a Web Address – to – Create a web address for this page.

Now we click on the Create a web address for this page link and the following dialog box will come up:

Here we will enter the desired Facebook page name , in this example, the event name, GlenvilleOktoberfest into the interface, then click the Check Availability button to see if our desired Facebook page name is available.

The following ominous warning will come up. Read this carefully as it contains relevant information.

The most important aspect of this dialog box is that you can only change the username (and by extension, your Facebook page name) once after you set it for the first time, so choose carefully.

Make sure that the name is spelled correctly and that you are certain that name is what you want before you click the confirm button, as from this point on, you’re going to become invested in your new Facebook page name.

Once we hit confirm and wait a few seconds (with a steady drum roll playing in our head), we should receive the following confirmation of the Facebook page name change:

Yeah. Success! We confirmation that we have successfully changed the username to facebook.com/GlenvilleOktoberfest.

From  this point forward, to promote our Facebook event page, we can simply reference facebook.com/GlenvilleOktoberfest, which is a much more user-friendly Facebook page name than the default, definitely more user friendly, definitely 🙂

As a final step and best practice prior to publicizing our newly minted Facebook page name, we will make sure to test the link and that it actually directs users to the GlenvilleOktoberfest Facebook page as seamlessly as the original, default Facebook page name.

Summary:

Creating a Facebook page name that is more user-friendly will help increase your return on marketing investment so that you can more effectively promote the Facebook page through multiple channels such as radio, television, outdoor and/or print.

As you can see from this post, changing your Facebook page name from the default, non-user-friendly name is easy and painless if you know the name you want to use and it’s currently available within Facebook.

The end result is a much more user-friendly Facebook page name and web address that you will be able to effectively promote, driving more users to your Facebook page with a web address that you can easily recite and that people can actually remember.