Writing, Self-Publishing, Book Marketing

Authors, New Opportunity to Promote Yourself on Facebook with Customized URL

June 11, 2009 at 12:48 pm angiekp 1 comment

Facebook recently announced that starting at 12:01 a.m. EDT on Saturday, June 13, 2009, you’ll be able to claim a customized Web addresses for personal profile pages or Facebook Pages on a first-come first-served basis. So instead of having a random number for your URL, you can have a URL with meaning. Very cool opportunity, especially for authors.

As an author, your name is an important piece of your brand essence. Readers associate your name with your genre and style of writing, and the more that you can publicize your name online the better. By claiming your own Facebook URL using your name, it will be used as a search term not just within Facebook, but in other search engines such as Google, Yahoo or Bing.

Of course, choosing a personalized URL doesn’t automatically publicize your Facebook account. You change the security setting if you’d rather not have your name out there on Google, but for authors this is a wonderful opportunity as long as you meet Facebook’s requirements.

Facebook has put some strict requirements in place that you must meet in order to be eligible to claim your personalized username URL:

First, only profile pages and Pages are eligible – not groups or events.

Second, you must have created your Page before May 31, 2009, or your personal profile before 3:00 p.m. on June 9, 2009. (The limitation is only temporary, so if you are a new user or haven’t joined yet, you can still claim your username on June 28, 2009.)

Third – and this is the real kicker – if you want to create a username URL for your Facebook Page (of which you are the administrator), you have to have at least 1,000 fans prior to the May 31 cutoff date. Ouch.

It’s still not clear whether Facebook will lift this requirement of 1,000 fans or not, and this restriction has become a topic of much debate. As an emerging author, or any other business or organization, getting 1,000 or more fans of your author fan page is no small task. While I understand that Facebook is trying to avoid the feeding frenzy of URL consumption that would ultimately occur if there was no regulation, it seems that they may be setting the bar a little too high. What do you think?

Regardless of your Pages’ fan count, you should not be discouraged from registering your personal profile this Saturday at 12:01 a.m. (well, let’s face it – it’s LATE Friday night).

And if you have not already, set up a Facebook Page for your “author-self” and start promoting your brand and your books. You may not be able to claim your custom URL for your Page just yet, but you can still spread the word online, which will ultimately help you forge more connections with readers and sell more books.

-Angie

P.S. Become a Fan of Wordclay’s Page and join our Wordclay Writers Group to connect with fellow authors.

Entry filed under: In the News, Marketing. Tags: Book Marketing, Facebook, Facebook username, Online Marketing, promotion.