Photographers are about as vain as any group of individuals I’ve ever worked with and around. We’ve got custom graphics on our cars, personalized license plates, fancy business cards and websites with our names in the URL, so it only seems fitting that we have vanity plates for our Facebook page instead of the standard out of the box cryptic URL Facebook gives us by default.

This is your typical run of the mill Facebook Fan Page URL

This is a custom Facebook Vanity URL

Below is a quick tutorial to show you how to bling out your Facebook fan page with a vanity URL that will not only look cool to your friends, peers, but also make it easier for your clients to find your page.

The first step in the process it to make sure you have a Fan Page; this is not your personal Facebook this is one set up specifically for the purpose of doing business on. I won’t go into the difference between the two types of Facebook accounts in this article as there are a million other articles out there on the internet that explain this particular nuance.

With your Fan Page in place head over to http://www.facebook.com/username/

Next to page Name Select the page you wish to create the vanity URL for and then enter the name you wish to associate with this account and click Check Availability.

If the name is available you’ll get the following popover screen, just select Confirm

Complete the signup process!

In the event you are trying to add a vanity URL and receive an error stating that you are not eligible for a username at this time the reason is that under Facebook rules you must have at least 25 followers before applying for a vanity URL, so hit up your inner circle and then give it a try again.

There are many advantages of having a Facebook Vanity URL including the ease of remembering, continuity in branding and most of all it’s FREE!

Have fun I look forward to seeing your new Facebook Vanity URL somewhere along  the Cyber Highway.

This tip was originally shared with my by Tim Suolo at FBML-Templates.net. Keep an eye out for the new ProPhotoResource.com Facebook Fan Page look compliments of Tim and his team.

© Cris Mitchell