Usernames, Tagging and Liking.
I gave a few pointers in another blog a few days ago about business pages but here are some basic queries answered. If you are new to Facebook you may want to see those earlier blogs as well after you have read this one:
1. Register Your Username Get your own URL (website username) for your personal page. You can now get a username for your own page as well as a business page, so get yours while there is one available close to your name, for instance mine is www.facebook.com/suzy.jenkins. This is very useful if you want to add it to any paperwork or a website as you have your own URL (rather than my messy LinkedIn username – see below - this is typical of what your Facebook username looks like now if you don’t register it. It is FREE, so take advantage of it. Go to http://www.facebook.com/username and follow the instructions.
2. Register Your Business Username Get your own URL for your business page when you have reached 25 Fans (which is another name for Likes on business pages). But first see “5.Choosing A Username” below. Once again go to http://www.facebook.com/username when you have at least 25 Fans on your business page. It seems a lot of Fans to be able to get but it doesn’t take long if you ask your family and friends to “Like” your page. It is best to give them a direct link to your page and tell them to click the Like button at the top of your page, as it is surprising how many people just think you have to just click Like in the comments section (which is actually Liking the comment and NOT your business page). When on your business page copy the www bit at the top of your page and paste it to a message to send them and ask them to go to the page and click the Like button by your page name at the top. This then registers and show how many Likes (Fans) you have (half way down on the left) where it says the number above “people like this”
3. Tagging This can only be used when you have registered your username and is a useful direct link to your page. A tag (or tagging) is when you put @ followed by your name or business name (no space after the @ sign). Therefore mine is @pendant-heaven. As you type the first couple of letters a drop-down box will appear and you click into your name. Type more letters if your name isn’t showing straight away. For instance I have to type @pe usually to see my name and sometimes @pen. When it appears in the post it doesn’t have the @ sign but just your name which will turn blue after you have sent the post. This means anyone can click directly into that name which will then take them to your page. If you see a blue name like that in any post just click it and it will take you direct to their page. This is very useful if you see someone or a page you may be interested in as you can go direct to them.
4. Liking Pages You will need to Like another business page from your Personal Page for it to count as a Like (Fan) on their page – Likes from business pages are not counted.
The same goes for you – if you want a Like to add a count on your business page make sure your friend (or whoever) Likes your page from their Personal Page, otherwise it wont add to your Fan count – this is especially important when you are new and want to get to that magic 25 to get your own URL.
5. Choosing a Username A point here about choosing your URL – you cannot change it once you have picked it, so think carefully while waiting for those 25 Fans and make sure you pick a name you definitely want and will want to keep. It is best to always choose a memorable name for a business and not something that is just initials as no-one can ever remember them, for instance I could have chosen S.J. Jewellery. It is probably best to not just make up a weird unmemorable name like Flixonatic as again people will forget it. I am not saying mine is a good name but hopefully it is more memorable than some. The only problem I have found is that I chose a name with a hyphen in it when I opened my ArtFire studio, which is absolutely fine on there, but when I got to registering the name on Facebook, Twitter, Blogger etc. I had to use multiple variations, as a hyphen couldn’t be used on all of them. Some only allow a dot, some nothing at all to separate the words which ended up a bit confusing. So, as you can see, this is how mine ended up on all the different sites:
Artfire: www.pendant-heaven.artfire.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/Pendant.Heaven
Twitter: www.twitter.com/PendantHeaven
Kaboodle: pendantheaven
You can see that there is a lot to be said for either using one word for a name, or if you choose 2 or more words it would probably be best to just separate them out by adding the capital letters at the beginning of each word (as in my Twitter name) which I presume would then be quite universal in all of them. And no, the reason I didn’t do that myself is because I didn’t realise until after I had been using ArtFire for a while and then joined Facebook that it would cause a problem, so it was too late by then. But you have the chance to learn by my mistake J
Oh and did you know that if you click Facebook (top left) or Home (top right) it will take you back to your Home page (or wall).
I will be adding another Facebook help blog soon so if you don’t want to miss it become one of my followers.
Just to add to your comments about needing to 'like' other people's business pages from your personal page - this leads to all their posts coming through your feed. I found that my feed was so cluttered up with business page posts that I was missing things from family and friends.
ReplyDeleteMy solution was to hide all the business pages from my feed and "like" them again from my business page - this way the pages don't lose likes, only personal posts are coming through my personal page's feed, and all the business posts are available through my business page feed instead.
PS - I'm Bettina from G+ - I did say I'd come visit your blog :)
ReplyDeleteLOL - yes that is the problem with Liking pages from your Personal Page. But I am afraid that is the whole point of the idea in getting your business seen by their friends on their personal pages (or their business seen by your friends on your personal pages). If you use Status Update to look at your wall then it bypasses all the links that have been posted. If you Like them from your business page then your business page wall fills up with not only the people who have Liked you but also the people you have Liked as well even if they haven't Liked you back.
ReplyDeleteIf you change your mind, don't like the content or the amount of links you get from certain people you can Hide them (see my earlier blog on this).